How to Identify and Capitalize on Buyer Intent in Your Marketing Strategy

Did you know that, on average, only 3% of website visitors fill out contact forms? So, how do you follow up with the remaining 97% if they’re not leaving their information with your marketing team?

Understanding and capitalizing on buyer intent is crucial in today’s marketing landscape. Identifying when a potential customer is actively researching or showing interest in your product or service can significantly impact your marketing strategy’s effectiveness.

By leveraging buyer intent data, businesses can tailor their outreach efforts, engage with prospects at the right moment, and ultimately increase conversion rates.

In this guide, we’ll delve into the importance of buyer intent in shaping marketing strategies and explore actionable steps to harness this valuable information effectively. We’re covering:

• Understanding buyer intent
• Identifying and capturing buyer intent
• Turning buyer intent into revenue
• Intent data in action

Understanding Buyer Intent

When someone is thinking about making a purchase, they typically do some research first, leaving behind a trail of digital breadcrumbs when they do so. The further they get along in this process, the more pointed their searches become. For example, maybe they sign up for a free version of a product, request a demo, or search up pricing information. Or maybe they’ve repeatedly visited a product page over a certain time frame or clicked on a social media ad multiple times.

These are all indications of “buyer intent” and they might as well be bright red, flashing signs pointing the observing sales professional towards a primed and ready prospect.

Buyer intent versus buyer interest

Buyer intent is different from buyer interest. An interested buyer has the potential to turn into an intentional buyer but they’re not quite there yet. For example, an interested buyer might download a whitepaper, hit “follow” on a social media account, or subscribe to a newsletter.

While the difference might not seem that significant, how you respond to buyer intent vs buyer interest can be the difference between closing a sale or totally turning a prospect off to your brand by overwhelming them.

Think of it like buying a car. If you’re in the market, you might be thrilled to hear about the many available CR-V options that your local Honda dealer has. But if you were doing some casual research and now feel the need to change your number because of the insistent sales calls you keep getting, you’ll probably feel more animosity than gratitude. And when the time to upgrade does come, you’re gonna take your business elsewhere.

Breadcrumbs, cookies, and buyer intent data

No, that’s not the name of a trendy new bakery.

Remember those digital breadcrumbs we mentioned? Well, the technical term is “buyer intent data”. When someone hits “accept cookies”, their behavior is tracked across the website that they’re on. The cookies can record actions such as pages visited, products viewed, items added to the cart, and form submissions. This record, in turn, lets that company gauge where in the buyer intent journey a particular user falls.

In other words, buyer intent data is the secret weapon behind marketing and selling in the right place at the right time.

By identifying buyer intent, businesses can personalize their marketing messages and offers to align with the needs and preferences of potential customers. Plus, it saves resources — understanding buyer intent allows businesses to allocate resources more efficiently by focusing on prospects who are more likely to convert into paying customers.

Identifying and Capturing Buyer Intent Data

Let’s back up a bit and dive into some of the more technical details of categorizing and capturing buyer intent data, including the differences between first- and third-party data and where you can source this kind of data.

First vs third party data

First-party data

First-party data comes directly from your company’s interaction with your current customers or known prospects. When they surf your website, use your mobile app, check out your social media, or subscribe to your email list-serve, the data you collect is totally owned and controlled by you. This is great for accuracy and reliability purposes.

However, first-party data can be narrow in scope and doesn’t tell you much about the buying intent of new prospects who are shopping around within your industry but haven’t discovered your product or website yet.

Third-party data

Third-party intent data, on the other hand, is collected by external intent data sources, such as data brokers, publishers, and social media platforms. Because of this, its reach is much broader than that of first-party data. It can tell you a lot more about general market trends or buyer search patterns that exist outside of your immediate customer base.

But to access it, you have to purchase it from an intent data source. Third-party data is normally purchased by companies looking to supplement their first-party data, not in lieu of first-party data tracking.

The types of buyer intent data

Buyer intent signals can include:

• Website activity: This includes things like time spent on specific website sections, and interactions with product, service, or pricing pages.
• Email engagement: Engagement with email campaigns, including open rates, click-through rates, and responses to calls-to-action, provide insights into a prospect’s level of interest and receptiveness to offers.
• CRM stage: Lead scoring, stage in the sales funnel, and previous interactions with sales representatives can also gauge readiness for a purchase.
• Competitor analysis: Activities related to competitors, such as visiting competitor websites, comparing features and pricing, and researching alternatives, can indicate a comparative evaluation phase in a prospect’s decision-making process.
• Chatbot interactions: The questions a user poses to a website chatbot, what topics they’re interested in finding out more about.
• Webpage interactions: Interactions with online advertisements through bidstream data provides insights into a prospect’s responsiveness to targeted ads, but general browsing can also show topical intent.
• Research intent: When a prospect visits a website to discover specific information about the product they want to purchase. For example, they could visit a blog page or other publication.
• Job posts: Company job postings can offer insight into what technology a company requires, projects they’re working on, and their operational challenges.

Capturing buyer intent data

At this point, you might be feeling a bit overwhelmed about the amount of data that you need to be tracking. So, how do you actually go about it?

Luckily, there are tools you can use, such as Bombora and 6sense. These can be really valuable for uncovering intent signals at companies you’ve identified as target accounts.

With tools like Bombora and 6sense, it’s not an either/or — for a truly comprehensive buyer intent data collection strategy, many companies use both.

Bombora

Bombora focuses on aggregating and analyzing third-party data from diverse online sources — many of them publishers that are exclusive to Bombora’s dataset, like the WSJ, Bloomberg, Business Insider, and Forbes — to uncover research topical intent. Publications included in Bombora’s exclusive dataset includeBombora’s research intent data tells you whether your prospect is reading around the product they want to buy. Perhaps they’re watching YouTube videos that compare products, reading reviews on publications, or just generally learning more about the problem that you solve.

Consequently, Bombora’s approach revolves around broader market trends, industry topics, and areas of interest. By using data from sources such as blogs, social networks, and industry solution providers, Bombora gives users a holistic understanding of the overarching themes driving buyer intent within their target markets.

They do this by using script tags on sites included in Bombora’s Data Cooperative group. These script tags deanonymize the traffic coming to that web page, and enable Bombora to link traffic to a particular company.

The level intent the prospect is demonstrating can be gleaned from the type of webpage they’re viewing and how long they spent on the page. When you know whether a prospect is in active research mode or low-intent, early-research mode, you know whether they’ll engage with your marketing efforts.

Let’s say you’ve identified topic clusters that are relevant for accounts interested in products like yours. This might include research into competitors, similar topics, or use cases. If your product is an AI chatbot, you might be interested in finding out if target accounts have visited sites comparing chatbot solutions, or if they’ve been reading about AI chat technology more generally.

By analyzing the sites they’ve visited and how far along their research journey they are, you can tell if they’re a high-intent or low-intent prospect‎, and adjust your sales prospecting accordingly.

6sense

6sense combines both first and third-party data sources, including CRM systems and bidstream data, to provide businesses with personalized insights into individual prospect behavior and purchasing intent. They specialize in personalization and account-based marketing (ABM).

It’s worth delving into what bidstream data is and how it differs from Bombora’s Data Cooperative approach. Bidstream data is data sourced from an analysis of the ads shown to each user as they browse the web. Based on the ads shown to your prospect, 6sense can pull out the topical keywords they’ve been searching for, and consequently uncover research intent.

So, rather than analyze the content of the page they’re viewing, 6sense understands the ads being shown (which are targeted via keywords) and the keywords on each page.

Turning Buyer Intent Data Into Action

Collecting buyer intent data is the set-up, not the end result that you’re looking for.

Actioning intent data means connecting it with your outbound workflows in a way that informs your prospecting. Add to this the need for hyper-personalization and efficiency (remember, timing is everything) and you have quite the task in front of you.

Example workflow for actioning buyer intent

So, you’ve got your buyer intent data from platforms like 6sense and/or Bombora. How can you use that to develop a sales process that targets the right prospects at the right time?

This right prospect-right time is a critical element of your sales strategy. You might have prospects who are looking into what you’re selling but aren’t ready to buy — you don’t want your sales reps wasting time on them. So it comes down to knowing who is interested in your product, and who is ready to buy.

You can start figuring out those buy-ready prospects by importing all that intent data from 6sense and Bombora into your CRM. Then, with tools like Apollo, you can start to collate contact details for those prospects that you’ve identified as high-intent.

After that, you’ll want to create personalized outreach campaigns based on other demographic data such as job title, stage in the stage funnel (ToFu, MoFu, etc.) or seniority level.

To do that, you’re going to need to import the accounts showing high-intent into something like Outreach to create email sequences. At the same time, maybe you’re putting together a unique LinkedIn sequence to target prospects on a more personal platform.

And by the time your reps have accomplished all this? That prospect might have been and gone. In that time, they’ve landed on a competitor’s website and booked a demo. Or, they’ve been told by a senior decision maker to give up the search.

This process is more than a bit annoying. Losing prospects every month because you can’t quite find the right time to contact them is costing your business money.

Capturing Buyer Intent with a Revenue Orchestration Platform

When we were developing Warmly, we didn’t see an option to capitalize on buyer intent without adding a whole bunch of tools to an existing tech stack, like in the example above. This is expensive, laborious, and opens the door for human error.

We knew there had to be a better way, so we created Warmly, the first autonomous revenue orchestration platform.

The power of Warmly

Warmly integrates with your website to capture visitor data, such as pages visited, time spent on each page, and interactions with specific elements (e.g., downloads, form submissions).

For instance, if a visitor spends significant time on the pricing page or repeatedly visits a particular product feature page, Warmly interprets this behavior as high purchase intent.

Warmly then triggers automated actions, such as sending personalized email follow-ups or displaying targeted chatbot messages offering assistance related to the products or features the visitor showed interest in.

This way, you can target the right accounts (those that match your ICP and are showing high-intent) at the exact moment that they’re ready to buy, minimizing any wasted time for your sales reps and improving your chances of a sale.

One platform, multiple integrations

Let’s get a little more into the details on how we actually do this. Remember those tools we mentioned, 6sense and Bombora? Well, we leverage their capabilities as first- and third-party intent data sources to fuel our automated inbound workflows.

Warmly + 6sense

The power of 6sense and Warmly gives users real-time insights about website visitors. This includes total deanonymization, allowing for the identification of key prospects and customer accounts.

Additionally, Warmly utilizes the intent data source to hyper-personalize interactions based on visitor intent signals, enabling tailored engagement that aligns with each prospect’s stage in the buyer journey.

Warmly + Bombora

We leverage third-party intent data from platforms like Bombora to gain insights into broader market trends and specific industry topics.

For example, if Bombora indicates a surge in intent for a particular industry solution or topic, we tailor marketing content or outreach efforts to align with the identified trends.

Warmly can also prioritize outreach to companies showing increased intent within Bombora’s data, ensuring timely engagement with prospects actively researching relevant products or services.

Then, Bombora insights can be combined with 6sense, website, and demographic data to pinpoint target accounts that are looking to make an immediate purchase.

‎Warmly + Slack/Teams

We’ve said it once, we’ll say it again. Timing is everything. Real-time notifications directly to your Slack or Teams app on your phone or computer make sure you’re taking action as soon as a high intent buyer is making moves.

What action could you take? Well, with Warmly’s AI Chatbot, you can loop in one of your (human!) sales reps at any time. Our chatbot can notify a specific sales rep when the prospect taking high-intent actions (like spending time on multiple pages or visiting your pricing page), and then your sales rep can hop immediately on a video call with the prospect, without them leaving your website.

‎ Warmly + CRM

Finally, we make sure all of your CRM data is up-to-date. Warmly syncs website activity, enrichment, and intent data on all identified visitors and companies back to your CRM.

Warmly’s outbound workflows

Post-lead generation is where it gets really cool. Warmly takes your intent data and supercharges it with AI to execute automated, timely outbound sales workflows that put you in contact with strong intent prospective buyers. This removes opportunity for human error, saves you time, and ultimately drives higher conversion rates.

Personalized marketing campaigns

First, we segment leads based on their intent signals and tailors marketing campaigns accordingly.

For instance, leads displaying interest in a specific product feature receive targeted email campaigns highlighting the benefits of that feature.

Real-time engagement

Then, we create automated triggered campaigns that respond in real time to buyer intent signals.

Warmly triggers a personalized email or LinkedIn chat message offering assistance or a special discount to encourage higher conversion rates.

Warmly + Connect The Dots

Plus, Warmly integrates with Connect The Dots to identify your team member with the closest connection to your prospect. This makes it easy for your sales team to stand out to prospects via warm intros.

‎Conclusion

With increasingly competitive buying landscapes, sales reps and marketing teams need all the help they can get. Buyer intent data and online behavior is key for perfect timing and intervention during the customer journey.

Buyer intent magnifies marketing efforts, gets relevant content in front of qualified leads, and primes them for the buying stage. Then, it signals to a sales rep exactly when they should intervene — when those intent signals are at their highest.

If you want more insights on how Warmly can help automate sales outreach at your organization, book a demo (or, chat with one of our sales reps directly using our handy chatbot.)

Cover image by Freepik.