However, the key to success isn’t just investing in tools, it’s about strategically setting up your tools in a way that they talk to each other and work together smoothly. When integrating martech tools, it’s all about ensuring that your team can work smarter, not harder. Marketers use more than 12 different tools on average. Such an abundance of tools can be a challenge to manage, integrate, and scale. 

In this complex environment, a pivotal question emerges: How can businesses make sure their marketing tools work well together and are easy to manage and grow as the business expands? 

The holy grail of succeeding is following the integration strategy where it’s a with everything else that is around it (think solar system). This is like 90% of your success.

Nadia Davis, Director of Revenue Marketing, PayIt 

Understanding the modern B2B marketer’s tech stack

What is a martech stack?

A martech stack (short for marketing technology stack), is a comprehensive collection of various software tools and technologies that marketers and businesses use to plan, execute, manage, analyze, and optimize their marketing efforts and strategies. It allows businesses to centralize data, automate processes, gain insights into customer behavior, monitor the competition, and tailor marketing campaigns to specific target audiences.  

A well-constructed martech stack is essential for modern marketing operations, as it helps businesses stay competitive and adapt to the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape. 

What tools should be in your martech stack?

The tools in your martech stack need to be tailored to your specific organization and strategically chosen, so you are confident your investments will set you up for success. For example, let’s look at a small startup vs a large established enterprise.  Say the small startup we’re looking at has limited resources, and aims to establish an online presence, generate leads, and track basic website analytics. They might look for a single marketing tool that offers lighter version of each of these functions, that has a user-friendly interface, is cost-effective, and has essential features tailored for startups.  

On the other hand, the established enterprise has a comprehensive marketing strategy involving multi-channel campaigns, multiple functional and technical departments, personalized customer experiences, and in-depth data analysis. They might look for an integrated set of marketing tools that offer advanced features such as AI-driven customer segmentation, real-time campaign optimization, and detailed ROI analysis. With a larger team and more complex goals, the enterprise organization would benefit from a sophisticated and scalable tool. 

There are a few common tools that every marketer should consider adding to their tech stack. These include: 

• Customer relationship management platforms (CRM) 

centralize your customer and prospect data, enabling targeted campaigns and personalized communication. 

• Marketing automation platform (MAP) 

streamline and scale your marketing efforts. These systems automate repetitive tasks such as email campaigns, lead nurturing, and social media posting, saving time and ensuring consistency. Additionally, they offer data-driven insights, enabling optimization of marketing strategies for improved efficiency and effectiveness.  

• Content management systems (CMS) 

Content management systems empower efficient content creation, organization, and distribution. They enable marketers to easily manage and update website content, blogs, and other digital assets, ensuring consistency and relevance. 

• Account-based marketing (ABM) 

Account-based marketing software enables highly targeted B2B marketing strategies. ABM platforms facilitate the identification of high-value accounts and decision-makers within those accounts, allowing marketers to deliver personalized content and messaging. ABM drives more meaningful interactions, accelerates the sales cycle, and enhances alignment between marketing and sales teams.  

• Generative AI 

Gen AI is on the rise among B2B marketers. In fact, 89% of IT decision-makers are either researching or using AI technology. Gen AI tools empower marketers by automating content creation, enabling personalized communication, analyzing vast datasets for valuable insights, and more. 

• Intent data 

Perhaps one of the most important components to your martech stack, is intent data. Incorporating intent data into your martech stack is essential as it provides valuable insights into potential customers’ buying behavior and interests. 

The data integration problem

What’s the point of having all these tools if they can’t work or communicate with one another? 

However, 52% of marketers say martech stack integration is the most challenging barrier to harnessing marketing technology trends. With so many tools, utilizing integrations to their fullest extent and connecting your data is easier said than done. 

Not properly integrating contact information across your martech systems can cause an array of challenges such as: 

• Underutilization of expensive integrations 
• Marketing and sales silos 

• Issues with data quality/standardization 
• Difficulty measuring ROI 

The key to properly utilizing the entirety of your tech stack lies in successful data integration. When done right, it unlocks the full potential of your martech stack, paving the way for cohesive, efficient, and insightful marketing strategies. It’s not just about having the tools; it’s about making them work together, ensuring that your investment translates into tangible results and meaningful insights. 

Let’s say a SaaS software company is faced with the challenge of enhancing their customer experience across various touchpoints. They have a robust martech stack, including CRM software, email marketing tools, social media analytics, and customer support tools. Individually, these tools provided valuable insights, but that’s the problem – they’re siloed. These siloed tools have led to issues in communication among their marketing and sales teams, struggles with understanding insights, and inaccurate measurements of ROI. 

Their solution? Placing focus on linking customer information across all tools and systems and creating a unified view of each customer. Analyzing integrated data allows them to optimize their strategies, resulting in increased sales, higher customer satisfaction, and measurable ROI. Successful integration transformed their martech stack into a powerful tool for efficient, insightful, and cohesive marketing strategies.  

How is this integration accomplished? 

Integrating your martech systems and data 

How can you properly integrate your martech systems and ensure a seamless data flow? Whether you’re expanding your existing tech stack or evaluating new tools, there are key steps to follow. 

1. Align your goals 

Before making any purchase, align your decisions with your long-term strategy. Avoid impulse buys and quick fixes, because often, shiny new software is just that – exciting new toys that will go on the back burner in a few months if they don’t make an impact on your goals, processes, or efficiency, or if they are a hassle to cross-communicate with your existing tech.  

Engage both marketing and sales teams to establish clear goals, and to determine if a new tool fits into your existing processes and contributes meaningfully to your objectives. Aligning goals from the get-go will allow for better collaboration throughout the implementation and integration processes. 

2. Audit your current tech stack/processes

Is your current tech stack delivering as expected? Is data connected between marketing functions, and between marketing and sales? To truly perform a comprehensive audit, involve multiple areas of your business in the audit like marketing, sales, customer success, and product. Ask critical questions:  

• Are your systems working efficiently?  
• Is the data reaching where it needs to be?  
• Is there a well-defined process for transferring marketing leads to the sales team?  
• Is there a system for sales to provide feedback on lead quality and customer interactions to marketing? 
• Is anything missing or a pain to find when you need it? 

When expanding your tech stack or evaluating new tools, prioritize platforms that support the integration and analysis of cross-functional and cross-channel information. Ensure that these tools can communicate valuable insights for your marketing strategies.  

3. Map your data strategy 

Once you’ve set your goals and audited existing systems, map out a comprehensive data strategy. Visualize how data will move within your organization. Consider the entire journey, from data collection points to storage, processing, usability, and measurement.  

Identify the touchpoints where data enters and exists in your system. Understand how different teams interact with this data at various stages. For instance, data collected by the marketing team may need to be integrated with the CRM used by the sales team. Establish robust integration processes that enable the smooth flow of data between different systems. Use APIs and data connectors to link your martech tools, CRM systems, and data warehouses, ensuring that insights are accessible where it’s needed.  

Here is an example of what a data map might look like: 

Once you’ve mapped your data strategy, take time every quarter to monitor performance and assess whether the chosen tools and processes are meeting your goals efficiently. 

4. Choose the right data vendors 

It’s not just about finding vendors; it’s about finding reliable partners. Ensure the data complies with privacy policies, including GDPR and CCPA regulations. Poor-quality data can hinder the integration process and compromise the efficiency of your tech stack. Seamless integration of insights into your martech stack is vital for real-time decision-making. Vendors offering APIs and integration support facilitate the flow of information across your systems, enabling timely and relevant marketing actions. 

One source of truth 

A well-integrated martech stack serves as the single source of truth for both marketing and sales data. Everyone is reading from the same page of the same book, eliminating confusion and ensuring that decisions are based on unified, accurate information. Key benefits of this include: 

• Marketing and sales alignment 

Cohesion between marketing and sales strategies leads to a unified approach. Also facilitating personalized and efficient customer interactions, promoting effective lead nurturing and engagement strategies. 

• Streamlined workflows 

Automated processes that reduce manual interventions and eliminate redundant tasks.  

• Enhanced insights 

Access to in-depth, actionable insights derived from unified data, enables data-driven decision-making and strategic planning. 

• Improved marketing attribution 

Enables accurate tracking of marketing efforts, attributing conversions and sales to specific channels and campaigns, providing a clear understanding of return on investment. 

Conclusion  

Constructing a powerful B2B marketing strategy requires the right tools, thoughtful planning, and seamless integration. Your martech stack isn’t just an assortment of software; it’s a dynamic ecosystem where every tool communicates, collaborates, and contributes to the overarching success of your marketing initiatives. 

ABM demands discipline in the use of metrics, so it’s not surprising that 91% of marketers said they use intent data to prioritize accounts, identify content to be served, and build target account lists. To learn more about the ABM and intent research, download the white paper today.

Download this white paper to learn about:

• • The many uses of ABM
  • How tech marketers measure the success of their ABM efforts
  • How intent data is used to fuel ABM programs
  • The success and challenges marketers see with both ABM and intent

What makes intent so confusing and difficult to get right? What does it REALLY mean? What makes an intent signal, and what makes one signal better than the other? And most importantly, how do you go about harnessing them in support of best-in-class B2B demand generation? 

The what and why of intent signals? 

Intent signals are specific observable activities exhibited by an employee of a company or the company as a whole, that indicate their current or potential need for a product or service. It comes in a wide variety – ranging from various locations to various types. However, not all intent signals are created equal. Here, we’ve categorized intent signals into five types, which all mean different things, and require different kinds of actions to take full advantage of them.

The five main types of intent signals are: 

• Engagement – what are specific actions employees within organizations are taking? 
• Research – what are people in the organization researching and reading online? 
• Hiring – what types of roles are organizations trying to hire and grow teams for? 
• Technographic – what types of technologies did the organization start to use or drop? 
• Company event- what newsworthy activities have occurred within an organization that can tilt the scale for purchasing decisions?  

In aggregate, these signals are generated by customer actions and behaviors. These actions and behaviors can be measured by marketers when observing several types of channels like email, web, social, or ads. On the other hand, other signals are more difficult to track, like face-to-face meetings, search queries, and water cooler chats! Putting all these signals together is like following the breadcrumbs your buyers are dropping.  

Now, let us dive into the nitty gritty and break down what each type of intent signal is, and why each is significant in optimizing your intent strategy.  

1. Engagement intent signals

Think of engagement signals as little clues that potential buyers give off when they are in the market for what you are offering. Engagement intent signals refer to specific actions that potential buyers take to indicate their active interest in your brand or product. These signals could come from various actions such as: likes, follows, comments, downloads, going to conferences, or visiting event booths.  

Engagement signals are broken down into two categories: 

• Public – An action that is publicly observable, for example, a like or comment on your company’s or competitor’s LinkedIn. While these signals are great, context is necessary. Just because someone liked your LinkedIn post about company culture, does not mean they are ready to make a purchase. 
• Private – An action that not everyone has access to. For example, a research whitepaper is downloaded, or content is read on a publishing site. These signals can be of much higher value because they are proprietary.  

Engagement signals are valuable because they show you that your brand is top of mind for buyers. They demonstrate an active connection between the prospect and your brand or content.  

Let’s say you have a prospect who just downloaded one of your eBooks and tuned in to an online seminar you hosted. These actions are like bright neon signs saying, “Hey, I’m really interested in what you offer!” Armed with this insight, you can then craft a highly customized follow-up strategy that caters precisely to the prospect’s individual interests and requirements. This approach allows you to nurture the prospect by delivering targeted content that aligns with their demonstrated areas of interest, ensuring a more effective and engaging interaction.

2. Research intent signals

Imagine someone has just started the buyer‘s’ journey – they are surfing the web, checking out blogs, and visiting websites. These actions send out what we call “research signals.” Research signals are more of a passive signal since the prospect is simply surfing the web and not taking any active, public action. 

Understanding research intent provides a sort of roadmap for your next strategic moves. You can use this data to identify what topics buyers are researching, what they are interested in, and which part of the buying journey they are in. Once you know that, you can then determine the best ways to follow up and engage your potential buyer. For example, say you are a CRM provider, and you notice that a prospect just did an online search for “what is the best CRM.” This signals that whoever is researching this topic is beyond awareness and starting the consideration stage research. With this knowledge, you could then begin to target them with ads about your brand and solutions. 

3. Hiring intent signals

Hiring signals are mainly job postings.  

Hiring signals let you know a company has money, and they are ready to spend it. For example, if a company is hiring for various tech positions, chances are that they are expanding, and could use scalable technology of a certain type. Or, if a company is hiring a whole team of developers, they could need better devops systems. 

4. Technographic intent signals

Technographic data is a popular commodity by which we track what technologies a specific company is using. We turn this information into intent signals by tracking when someone started to use a technology or stopped using another one! 

For example, say the product you are selling is a Salesforce app. In this case, you would want data signaling if a prospect recently began using Salesforce as their CRM. This information can assist you in determining what buyers are in market and tailoring your outreach to their specific needs. 

5. Company activity intent signals

Activity intent signals encompass meaningful or newsworthy events for a company. These could be things like; a company just opened a new office location, a company successfully ran a series funding, or even if a company laid x number of people off. Think about these signals like little alarms that go off when something interesting happens in a company’s world and they would inexplicably create changes within the organization.  

Each of those activities has implicit signals of intent. In the example of raising funding, it would signal a company is flushed with cash right now – of course, they are going to be spending money, and you want them to spend it with you. 

‘How?’ Painting the full intent data picture

So, here is the deal: figuring out ‘what’ each intent signal means and ‘why’ it matters, that’ is the straightforward part. The hard part is understanding ‘how’ to combine all these signals together and leverage them in a way that paints a full picture of the buyer‘s’ journey.  

What makes “doing intent right” is understanding that buying is not only happening in one place – it is happening on social media, blogs, news, job postings, apps, phone calls, it is even happening at the water cooler. Buying happens everywhere, it is not just one source or one signal that is the silver bullet. It is the context of all signals that are put together like a puzzle to create the customer journey. 

How do marketers leverage different intent signals to paint the full picture? Two ways: 

1. Consider each signals different meaning and weigh them appropriately 

Because not all signals are created equal, we must figure out how to prioritize them. This involves assigning a level of importance or a ‘score’ to each signal based on its relevance and context. 

Now, when you add up all these scores from different intent signals, you get a prospect’s “total score.” (Well… usually there’s more to it than just adding up a bunch of numbers, but you get it.) This total score is like a key that helps us understand where a prospect stands in their buying journey and guides us on how to approach them. This way, we are not just guessing; we are using data to understand where prospects are and how best to follow up with them. 

2. Adopt the most 360-degree view possible

Marketers must be able to capture and contextualize various kinds of intent and arrange those signals accordingly.  

The best way to think about this is by imagining a timeline view of a prospect’s journey – In the beginning, say a prospect has just started reading blogs. At this point, you would not immediately have a salesperson calling them. But then the same prospect posts a few job openings, now it is a promising idea to run some ads. And then they begin engaging with your content, that might be the golden moment for a salesperson to reach out. ����’s how you use intent signals to understand and act on the buyers’ journey that makes intent data a truly valuable and powerful tool. 

Don’t let anyone convince you differently – a single web visit or download may mean nothing, but within the timeline of events, it might just be the signal you need to close that million-dollar deal!  

Conclusion

You’ve heard marketers say it plenty of times – not all intent data is created equal. But that’s what makes intent signals so valuable. We continue to strive to understand better, the what and ‘why’ behind each type of intent signal, so we can understand ‘how‘ to optimize the customer’s journey the best. 

Would it not be an ideal world where we could always provide prospects with the exact information, they need at the exact time they need it and eliminate all guesswork? 

The reality is sales and marketing misalignment is extremely common. So common that only about of B2B organizations have actually aligned their teams successfully through collaborative efforts that drive revenue, conversion, and overall growth. 

However, the results of a unified team speak for themselves. Aligned teams are more efficient at closing deals and reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) by . 

While aligning your marketing and sales teams might seem like a no-brainer, many teams continue to struggle with true alignment, which involves not only coordinating goals and strategies but also fostering a shared understanding of the buyers’ journey. So, what does it take to turn these teams from acquaintances (or even frenemies) to collaborative partners? While there isn’t one easy fix, there is one major commonality sitting at the intersection of these two teams. Their buyers. 

How connected data can help 

Just as individuals possess distinct qualities, interests, and potential, leads also exhibit varying degrees of readiness to engage and convert. 

Consider leads as a spectrum of opportunities. Some leads might be highly interested and proactive, actively seeking information about your offerings and showing strong intent to make a purchase. On the other hand, some leads might be just starting to explore their options and require more nurturing before they are ready to commit. Say marketing passes on 100 leads, and 79 of those are later disqualified by sales, that signifies a major misalignment between the marketing team’s targeting and sales’ expectations.  

This disconnect can turn into a vicious cycle – a lack of faith in the leads sales is being handed means they are less likely to follow up. If leads aren’t being nurtured or there isn’t a feedback loop informing marketing of the problem, marketers get frustrated and can lose the motivation to spend time, energy, and budget driving better leads.  

The solution? Understanding where each lead stands on this spectrum allows these teams to tailor their strategies accordingly. Sales can engage high-intent leads with targeted and persuasive messaging, while leads in the early stages might benefit from additional marketing nurture and educational content to guide them through their decision-making process. This distinction in lead readiness is crucial for sales and marketing teams. 

This is where intent data comes in. 

Building trust with data provenance

Data provenance refers to information about the source or origin of data. This includes details about where the data was initially collected or generated, who collected it, when it was collected, and under what conditions.This plays a significant role in establishing mutual trust between marketing and sales and acts as a bridge by providing valuable insights into lead behavior and qualification. 

Organizations gain a clearer understanding of the “why” behind leads, such as origin, qualification, and readiness for engagement. This information helps establish a solid process and rationale for passing leads from marketing to sales and enhances the handoff process. Moreover, intent data offers a glimpse into the actions and interactions of leads, answering the crucial “why” behind a lead’s readiness for engagement. This transparency not only boosts confidence in lead quality but also ensures that leads are nurtured and engaged based on their demonstrated interests and behaviors. 

Building more efficient processes 

Connected and reliable data is the driving force behind this collaboration. 

High-quality, accurate, reliable, and comprehensive intent data empowers marketing to focus on the best channels and best audiences. It also motivates sales to do something with them. Whether that’s initial nurture, following up on active deals, or even re-engaging closed lost accounts. This data-driven alignment fosters a culture of trust and cooperation, as teams can rely on accurate information to guide their strategies and decisions. 

Steps to making it happen

Ultimately, marketing and sales want the same thing – to effectively convert buyers into loyal clients. This is only possible when marketing is optimized to scale demand based on a lead performance feedback loop so that sales are empowered to follow up confidently. Armed with connected data, marketing teams can provide context on readiness, priorities, and more.  

How do you properly build that bridge? Here are six actionable steps to align marketing and sales in your organization. 

1. Revisit your ideal customer profile (ICP) 

Revisiting your ideal customer profile (ICP) is a crucial first step that sets the foundation for effectively utilizing intent signals. 

In order to actually understand and act on intent insights, both teams must agree on who exactly they are targeting. Revisiting your ICP entails a comprehensive evaluation of the characteristics, attributes, and behaviors that define your most desirable customers, such as: 

• Demographics: characteristics such as age, gender, location, company size, industry, and job title. 
• Firmographics: company revenue, number of employees, geographic locations, and organizational structure. 
• Technographics: the technology stack and tools that a company uses. 

In addition to these, you should also consider similarities among your top customers and areas you have been able to up/cross-sell into. 

Defining your ICP should be a joint effort across your organization so teams have a shared understanding of the ideal customers to target and can collaborate effectively to align strategies with intent. 

Note: ICPs are not a one-and-done deal. The market is always evolving, which means your ICP will periodically need updating. You may need to recruit the help of your customer success team and set up quarterly calls to check in on customer satisfaction or ask questions about your hero customers (who has been successful, and who have they successfully upsold?). Include sales in the conversation as well, inquire about new or larger opportunities in a certain vertical or deals that aren’t converting as well as they used to. Involving marketing, sales, and CS gives you valuable information from different vantage points to decide if your ICP needs updating and how to define it.  

2. Identify weak points  

Take a good, honest look in the mirror at your current lead generation and automation processes. Do you like what you see? Or are there workflows or strategies you could clearly improve? 

Identifying weak points is like shining a spotlight on areas that need improvement. While this step can be difficult to do, it’s necessary to identify which areas can be optimized for success, then prioritize solutions based on impact and lift to solve them. Try asking yourself and your team the following questions: 

1. Where could data be better connected, utilized, or reported on? 
2. What data is missing that could improve alignment of marketing and sales strategies, collaboration, and overall success? 
3. What does the data we have now tell us about potential shortfalls? 

Addressing these discrepancies in conversion rates requires open communication, collaboration, and a shared understanding of data-driven insights. A plan of action could include setting up regular meetings between marketing and sales teams to discuss performance, challenges, and opportunities. 

Other areas that could identify weak points include: 

• ICP/Firmographics 
• Lead quality 
• Content/personalization 
• Pipeline velocity 
• Operational efficiency – example: form fills booking directly from a submission 

Best practice is to perform a sales and marketing alignment audit. Have marketing audit their process and ask sales to do the same. Set up a time for your teams to come together and identify areas containing gaps, and brainstorm processes to improve. 

3. Prioritize in-market buyers

Unite both teams under a common objective: identifying and engaging with leads displaying active buying intent.  

Leveraging intent data allows you to understand and agree on exactly what “in-market” means for your organization. Intent data reveals which prospects are engaging with relevant content, visiting your website, and exhibiting signs of purchase readiness. You may identify prospects based on a combination of factors such as specific content interactions, frequency of website visits, engagement with certain product pages, and explicit indications of purchase intent. 

To use intent insights effectively you’ll need to establish clear lead-scoring definitions and segment those accordingly. At its most basic, intent data reveals who is in-market to buy, but dig a bit deeper to answer questions about how your marketing and sales teams should target certain prospects. 

Common ways to prioritize and score leads include: 

• MQL (marketing qualified lead): Leads that have shown interest and engagement with marketing efforts, such as downloading content, attending webinars, or signing up for newsletters. They meet certain predefined criteria set by marketing and have shown enough interest to be passed on to the sales team. 
• SQL (sales qualified lead): Leads that have been further evaluated by the sales team and deemed ready for direct sales engagement.  
• BANT: A lead qualification framework that assesses a lead’s budget, authority, need, and timeline to determine their readiness for sales engagement and likelihood to convert. 
• SAL (sales accepted lead): Leads that have been reviewed and accepted by the sales team for further engagement. While not fully qualified, they show potential and are worth pursuing. 

Once this is identified, you can determine which leads need what.  

For example, SQLs may continue to receive marketing emails, but the content strategy may evolve to incorporate heightened social proof and tactical insights. 

4. Centralize your data

Connected data is only valuable if made easily available for both your marketing and sales teams.  

Ensure that both teams have access to the same information and can track lead interactions, behaviors, and engagement. One way to do this is by integrating your CRM system to allow seamless data sharing between marketing and sales. This integration enables a real-time flow of information about lead interactions, preferences, and behaviors, fostering a sense of unity and a shared mission. Within your integrated CRM, you should automate alerts and notifications to inform sales teams when high-intent leads engage with specific content or reach certain thresholds to facilitate timely follow-up. 

����’s important to continuously monitor the integration and data flow to identify and address any issues. Regularly review the effectiveness of intent data and make necessary adjustments. This enables both teams to access, leverage, and collaborate effectively with intent signals. 

5. Map your content strategy 

A large part of marketing’s job is to identify why people have a certain pain and educate buyers on solutions by providing valuable insights. 

However, that important messaging can be clouded by misalignment between marketing and sales. Marketing and sales must have consistent content and messaging when helping solve buyers’ pain points. 

Using intent allows you to deliver the right content to the right leads at the right time. Once leads have been segmented and prioritized based on intent, map your existing content to their specific needs and interests. This will identify any content gaps that should be filled with new content.  

One approach to this is to map your content based on lead scores: 

This ensures that your content aligns with the varying levels of awareness and engagement among leads, ultimately guiding them through the buyer’s journey more effectively. Sales should communicate what content resonates with leads and what additional areas need to be addressed back to marketing so that both teams are delivering content aligned with what buyers want. 

6. Communication is key

After all, collaboration between teams really comes down to the people. One of the best ways to centralize efforts is by establishing a feedback loop between marketing and sales, whether that’s a Slack channel, a weekly stand-up meeting, shared reporting, or other means of joint collaboration. This encourages open communication about lead quality and the performance of marketing efforts. 

Before and after intent data 

Let’s look at an example of what collaboration might look like before and after adjusting your organization’s alignment strategy: 

Measuring results

Regardless of any gaps, marketers and salespeople are driving the same thing: revenue. 

Measuring the results and success of aligning marketing and sales with intent data involves tracking various key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect the effectiveness of your efforts. Analyze the impact of connected data and aligned strategies on lead quality, conversion rates, revenue generation, and more: 

• Lead quality 
• Conversion rates 
• Sales velocity 
• Return on investment (ROI) 
• Quality of engagement 
• Sales acceptance rate 

Regularly analyze these metrics over time to gauge the ongoing impact of aligning marketing and sales. Keep a constant feedback loop between teams and adjust your strategies based on the insights gained, continuing to refine your approach to maximize success. 

����’s important to talk to your teams and understand their point of view on alignment efforts by utilizing surveys or feedback mechanisms to gauge the perception of alignment between teams and assess whether they feel more aligned and collaborative. As results from joint efforts present themselves, make a point to celebrate success — recognize and celebrate joint successes achieved through aligned efforts and celebrate wins together to foster a sense of collaboration and motivation within both teams. 

Conclusion

Reliable and integrated data allows B2B organizations to bridge the gap between marketing and sales efforts to generate and scale revenue. Marketing is confident in the leads they are generating for sales, so sales teams are empowered to reach out with relevant content to in-market leads. By aligning teams through intent and connected data, you’ll see more collaboration, better results, smooth optimizations, and a streamlined path to your revenue goals. To learn more about using intent data to achieve your goals, check out our intent activation guide. 

Intent data is a powerful tool for marketers and salespeople looking to drive revenue for their organizations. However, actually making intent data actionable is among B2B marketers’ top challenges.

Intent data helps you identify and understand the behaviors of those actively, or about to be, in-market; so you can strategically tailor your messaging, target your outreach efforts, and optimize your engagement strategies. Yet, unless you can effectively turn intent data into actionable insights and strategies, its potential remains untapped.

Once you have intent data, how can your organization harness its full potential and create actionable strategies? We’ve created a comprehensive guide to understanding and activating intent data across marketing and sales activities, along with an easy-to-use strategy template to get you started.

Get your intent strategy template

What is intent data?

Intent data is information that captures an account’s digital behavior and provides insight into their interests, needs, and purchase intentions. It can include data such as website visits, search terms, content downloads, social media activity, and more.

The goal of intent data is to provide marketers and sales teams with a more complete understanding of a potential customer’s behavior and preferences, allowing them to deliver more targeted and personalized communications. By analyzing intent data, companies can gain a deeper understanding of their target audience, prioritize sales leads, and develop more effective marketing strategies.

The types of intent data and their benefits

First-party intent data

First-party intent data pertains to information originating directly from your own digital channels and customer interactions. These interactions could be page visits on your website, content downloads, and data from your CRM. First-party data is important because:

1. ����’s uniquely yours.
2. You’re likely spending money to drive traffic to your website.
3. That audience is already aware of your brand and offerings.

Only 2% of buyers fill out web forms, so by waiting for your website visitors to complete a form, you risk leaving money on the table. Capturing first-party data helps your marketing spend go further by adding insight into activities from the audience you’re already paying to reach for retargeting, dynamic messaging, and prioritization.

Second-party (or proprietary) intent data

Second-party data is sourced from another company’s first-party data that you obtain directly from them. Acquiring second-party intent data can be done by purchasing it directly or through a data partnership. Review sites like G2 are a clear example of second-party intent data. These providers analyze their site activity and provide relevant in-market activity signals to their customers.

Second-party intent data combined with your first-party intent data provides a broader perspective on customer behaviors and interests. This broader audience understanding helps you expand your reach and attract new prospects.

Third-party intent data

Third-party intent data revolves around how users interact with the digital channels an organization doesn’t control, such as publishing networks, external blogs, online
forums/communities, social media, and other public web sources. In comparison to first-party signals, third-party data signals typically occur earlier in the buyer’s journey, making these signals best for reaching leads early in the decision process.

Most third-party intent vendors look at data from content engagements on publisher sites they’ve built relationships with. However, vendors collect third-party intent data across millions of sources, such as websites, public forums, SEC filings, data co-ops, ad networks, social networks, etc.

Purchasing third-party intent data can help B2B marketers discover and target audiences who may not be visiting their websites but are in-market to buy based on their outside research. By capturing this data, you can drive demand from buyers who might not even be aware of you yet, make yourself top of mind, and, ideally, convert them.

Foundry Intent adds a comprehensive lens by showing intent across the places buyers make decisions based on your specific, relevant triggers.

See how Foundry does intent differently.

Getting started—how to activate intent

Define your goals

Before you can begin activating intent, you need to clearly outline your objectives for using intent data. Are you aiming to improve lead generation, personalize marketing campaigns, enhance sales prospecting, or something else? Having specific and defined goals will help you focus your intent data efforts and measure success properly.

What are some of the common goals marketers have when using intent data? Foundry found that marketers primary goals for using intent data includes:

1. Align sales and marketing
2. Prioritize prospecting
3. Identify new prospects to target
4. Monitor potential customer churn
5. Tailor messages based on intent topics

Following standard practice, goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. An example could be “Increase email click-through rates (CTRs) by 20% in H2 for our healthcare software product among potential customers actively researching healthcare solutions.” Having clearly defined goals will make the activation and implementation of intent data simpler and more effective.

Define your ICP

ICP is a critical part of any intent driven strategy. Your ICP will ultimately guide your intent data strategy by serving as the blueprint of the type of prospects or accounts that are most likely to benefit from your product or services.

Identify intent data sources

A single buying decision involves many people, channels, and actions. Think about the last time you bought anything, whether It was software, a car, or even a new pair of sneakers. When buying sneakers, you probably read reviews online, researched prices on a few websites, clicked on a retargeting ad, and asked your friends their opinions. Regardless, you likely didn’t click the first link on Google and press the big shiny “Buy Now” button. Looking at one action isn’t enough to know you were picking out those sweet new kicks.

The same goes for intent data. One signal is not enough to understand what your potential buyers are up to. Given that intent signals come from many different channels, sources, and interactions—you want as many reliable data sources as possible to provide the most straightforward and reliable visibility into the buyers’ journey.

So once you have all these intent data signals and sources, how do you turn that into actionable insights? Two ways:

1. Use an intent data tool. Multi-source intent tools deliver a full picture of the buyers’ journey to provide comprehensive insights for data activation without the manual task of aggregating it.
2. Aggregate, normalize, and analyze data in-house.

Since data comes in all shapes and sizes, many vendors define and deliver intent differently. From there, it’s up to the end-user to normalize and combine it based on their needs. It is possible to combine data sources through CRM or marketing automation integrations; just be sure you have a process for field mapping across sources and maintaining the history of intent signals associated with each account.

Knowing which accounts to target makes for more precise, relevant targeting and helps the budget go further on intent-led strategies like ads, account-based marketing (ABM), or outbound sales. A cohesive data flow is crucial to what you can accomplish. Typically, the more accurate data points you can associate with an account, the better, especially if you rely on property overlap to layer data from different sources.

Connecting the dots

Audience segmentation

You can’t effectively act on intent data without first segmenting the various signals to arrive at meaningful insights. Distributing intent insights to relevant teams does little unless those teams are educated on how best to act on them. Further, if the digestion of data and distribution of insights takes too long, the intent data may no longer be relevant.

To make your data actionable for teams, you must segment your core audiences by their interests and recognize their differences. This allows you to craft messaging and select channels based on what resonates best with that group. The basis of an effective sales or marketing channel is often built on this kind of intelligent, meaningful segmentation, such as firmographics or persona-specific criteria.

Diving deeper: Understanding audience segments

Once you’ve identified your core audience segments, it’s time to dive deeper into understanding each segments’ needs and mapping messaging that resonates with them. Segments that are looking for general awareness need to get to know your solution and your brand compared to audiences engaging with competitors who may be more interested in how you’re different, why you win, or what your customers love about you.

Intent data aims your marketing towards the most relevant targets and highlights what may resonate based on their engagements. For example, consider a network security provider. If a company is exhibiting intent signals related to researching advanced firewall solutions or cyber security protocols, you might have better luck tailoring your outreach with content about enhancing network protection versus generic messaging.

Best practices for different score ranges

• 80-100: These companies are showing significant increases in likelihood to purchase and should be prioritized for direct marketing, outbound lead gen, and sales prospecting.
• 60-79: These companies are showing an increased likelihood to purchase and can be included in advertising campaigns for top funnel nurture or reached over email and social channels.
• 40-59: These companies are showing modest purchase signals. Nurture leveraging unpaid channels, in particular website personalization and email marketing.
• 0-39: These companies have not demonstrated any meaningful purchase intent signals. Ignite their interest in the topic with quality content and relevant business cases.

Activating intent data for marketing

Making sure you’re reaching the right people with the right messaging and the right timing seems like a no-brainer, but it’s easier said than done. Let’s break down how to tailor your marketing efforts to address the unique needs and preferences of each segment:

Ad targeting and retargeting with intent

Why waste resources showing ads to people who have no interest in seeing them?

Building audiences based on intent data is a game-changer for and getting your ads in front of in-market buyers. Intent-based audiences are a fresh targeting dimension to improve conversion rates and lower cost-per-click (CPC). This is possible on Google Search Ads, paid social channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, or any platform that enables custom audiences.

To set up intent-based ad targeting, evaluate the data you have on hand. If you’re able to customize your intent triggers, consider broadening them for general ad audiences. Volume isn’t a bad thing for ad targeting if you know everyone on the list is a fit and likely in-market. For example, hiring signals for roles like “technology marketers” will result in high volumes of data, but if expanding marketing teams is relevant to your business, they’re probably all relevant. This quantity could be too much for your outbound team, but the volume is perfect for building ad audiences.

Try creating an audience with lower- funnel intent signals to take it one step further. For example, your team could show audiences engaging with “lead generation software” or “engaging with competitor X” product-focused or social proof ads which may also be worth higher bids. Double-check that you can build a large enough audience for targeting minimums if you’re going down this path.

Setting up intent for ads:

1. Choose your topics and keywords: An easy place to start is to take a look at which keywords and topics perform well on Google Ads and organic search. Add those topics and keywords to be captured by your intent provider. Also include any other adjacent keywords around your solution, best use cases, and any topic or problem an ICP might be engaging with or trying to solve.
2. Set up your personas: Who do you want to click on your ads? Try to keep this a little broad. This serves two purposes. One is a brand play. Eventually, junior marketers move up. You want to have a permanent home in their brain whenever they’re thinking about the problems you solve. The second is that word travels fast, so create a killer offer and let teams talk.
3. Automate your delivery: It may be easier to get your first few deliveries as CSV files so you can edit and optimize intent signals and audience filters before having them delivered directly to your or . While, this depends on your workflow, receiving intent data on a weekly basis is a great place to start.
4. Normalize your data: Before passing data on, edit and update CSV columns to match exactly what the custom audience import instructions say in your chosen ad platform(s).

“Intent data at its core helps predict the likelihood of an organization being in-market for a specific solution at a given time.”

Tukan Das, VP of Product Management at Foundry

Retargeting

Dynamic ad retargeting based on your website visitors strengthens brand awareness and drives engagement among visitors who showed interest but didn’t convert. Thanks to intent data you can take ad retargeting a step further. With intent data, you have the tools to understand buyers’ needs and re-engage them with messaging that speaks directly to their pain points.

First-party intent signals identify the companies visiting your website and provide the firmographic data you need to put the right ad in front of them at the right time. These audiences can be segmented by which page(s) they visited, firmographic details, or a mix of intent data and CRM insights.

How to set up website intent audiences:

1. Identify your visitors: Who’s visiting your site but not converting? Who’s visiting and in an active deal? Are customers actively on your site, and what are they looking at? This will determine your channels and messaging for engaging these audiences.
2. Upload or integrate: Normalize the data, then upload it to your chosen ad platform(s) or directly into tools like Google Analytics for dynamic targeting.
3. Adjust your bid strategy: Determine which audiences are worth higher bids. Firmographic traits like higher employee headcount or annual revenue are a great place to start. To take it a step further, consider which page visits are valuable to your business and double down. For example, a prospect that visited your site multiple times or spent time on the pricing page may be more likely to convert versus a prospect that only visited your homepage.
4. Set up suppression lists: There are likely audiences that you don’t want to show ads such as out-of-market prospects, competitors, people that work at your company, or existing customers. By only showing ads to in-market companies, you can save money while improving conversion rates and passing more relevant leads to your sales team.

Tailored content journeys

Informed content

. So how exactly does intent data give your content a personalized touch? The key is to track what type of content each of your audience segments are most engaged with. After identifying audience segments based on varying levels of intent, you can then use additional intent insights to tailor their buyer journeys.

However, developing content specific to your prospects’ challenges requires you to know a few things about who you’re targeting. That’s where intent data can help you dig even deeper by:

• Selecting the right content: What content resonates with your buyers? Intent data reveals the types of content that resonate most with particular audience segments. By analyzing which topics, formats, or channels prospects engage with, you can suggest relevant content that aligns with their interests.
• Identifying content gaps: Are there any gaps in your current content? Use common intent signals to generate the most useful content ideas and identify gaps in existing content.
• Personalizing content: Get personal with prospects. With intent data, marketers can deliver personalized content to each segment. Content can be tailored to address specific pain points, challenges, or preferences of the audience. Personalized content resonates better with buyers and increases engagement.

����’s also important to look at your recent customers. How were they spending time online before buying? Use these data points to inform the content on your site, across your campaigns, and wherever else your buyers spend time. When organizations are able to identify the information that prospects care about, they can proactively speak directly to potential buyers.

Dynamic web personalization

Personalizing content and messaging based on buying behavior significantly drives engagement and increases web conversions. In fact, 80% of consumers are more likely to buy when brands offer personalized experiences.

Platforms such as Adobe Target, Google Optimize, and Foundry ABM can use intent data and firmographic information to deliver relevant, tailored content to website visitors. Their experience can be customized down to modifying welcome banners, navigation menus, and CTAs. With intent built into dynamic personalization, you know when to show social proof, when to show different pricing packages, and when assets like guides or templates are the most valuable. This is a great chance to experiment and get creative.

For example, if you target a range of company sizes and industries, firmographic data can help you show the appropriate solution or messaging for each type of visitor. Or, if you know they’re engaging with a competitor, you can include specific features and value propositions on that page to resonate clearly.

Steps to setting this up:

1. Segment your audience: Segment prospects by firmographics or intent data based on how you plan to customize your pages.
2. Set up templates: In your CRM, marketing automation, or chosen ABM platform, create landing pages with customizable CTAs, banner images, redirects, you name it. Keep in mind the behaviors and firmographic dimensions you’re targeting. For example, if a prospect engages with your competition, set up your website to redirect them to a competitive analysis landing page automatically.
3. Monitor and optimize: Monitor metrics like total page views, page clicks, conversion rates, and time on page to understand what is resonating and optimize accordingly.

Email marketing

Gone are the days of generic emails. Intent data takes email nurturing to the next step by allowing marketers to tailor their email campaigns for better engagement and conversion. Let your
email marketing shine by molding it to fit your audience without drowning in manual list building and CRM data hygiene.

Based on buying behaviors, marketers can use custom creative, copy, and cadences. By marketing in a way that fits what they’re looking for, prospects are more likely to find your content valuable and interact with it. This helps your audience feel like they’re more than an email in a CRM.

Steps to setting this up:

1. Determine the most relevant segments based on intent data.
2. Map messaging to each segment: Segments looking for general awareness need to get to know your solution and your brand, compared to audiences engaging with competitors who may be more interested in how you’re different, why you win, or what your customers love about you.
3. Build and connect your email cadences. What must happen for someone in a general awareness audience to transition into a competitive research audience? What timing or triggers must your team consider to ensure messaging stays relevant to that prospect? Maybe more than five visits to your website, a jump in intent score, or new competitive engagements identify a time to evolve the messaging.
4. Analyze and optimize. This is an iterative process, and you’ll see the most success if you remain open to experimentation. As you monitor results, you’ll learn when certain messaging resonates with each segment or in each buying stage.

Activating intent data for sales

How should you make intent data actionable for your sales team to drive results?

Inform prospecting, prioritize outreach, tailor personalization, and improve relationships with current deals and customers. Intent helps you identify who’s buying early on, what your active deals care about, and how to create an order of operations when managing your sales process.

Prospecting with intent

Why guess who your buyers are when you could know for sure? Imagine the time you could save and the increased opportunities for valuable interactions with potential prospects. Historically, prospecting has been tied directly to a company’s perceived fit to an ICP. However, this is just one piece of the puzzle, and on its own, this model doesn’t consider whether prospects are in-market. Intent data paints the full picture, allowing sales reps to know exactly who is in-market and how to:

• Choose the right channels: Select the appropriate communication channels for your outreach, such as email, social media, or phone calls. Match the channels to the preferences of your segmented prospects.
• Time outreach: Use the timing of the intent signals to your advantage. Reach out to prospects when their interest is at its peak, increasing the chances of engagement and response.
• Nurture and follow-up: Implement a structured nurturing process for prospects who show intent but may not convert immediately. Use a combination of automated and personalized follow-ups to maintain engagement. Intent helps you identify where prospects are in the buyers’ journey. With intent in your arsenal, you can proactively engage those in the exploration and comparison stage before your competition does, shortening the sales cycle and winning more business.

Trigger personalized outbound

Outbound is best when it’s short and sweet. You don’t need to close the deal in your first email. Rather, you should showcase how you understand their pain points and pique their interest in what you offer. Intent data streamlines this process, allowing sales reps to use specific and personalized outbound efforts towards prospects actively seeking to make a purchase.

To make these insights actionable, match a prospect’s intent signals to a relevant outbound sequence. Use specific value propositions, choose relevant resources, and trigger certain touchpoints around a buyer’s intent signals. For example, maybe they’re in an nurture-based sequence, and now they’re spending time on your pricing page; it could be a good time to notify the rep to send a quick video walkthrough of your packages. Knowing what they’re looking for, where, and when lets you immediately provide as much value and relevance as possible.

How to set this up:

1. Set up alerts: Notify sales when key activities or signals are taking place via email or integration to your CRM, marketing automation, or other martech tools. This helps your team act quickly with pre-drafted content. Some good triggers to set alerts for, include: visits to your pricing page, competitive comparisons, multiple web visits (or multiple people within an account visiting), or an increase in intent score.
2. Queue up content: Create email templates, LinkedIn DMs, short videos, or a folder of relevant resources for each alert.
3. Add personalization: Once you receive your first notification, add personalization, such as: the prospect’s name, title, industry, or intent signal. If you want to stand out, more personalized is better. You’re saving time prospecting, so focus on meaningful outreach. Nothing puts the “cold” in cold email like a copy-pasted message.

Intent for marketing and sales alignment

Intent scoring

Intent scoring empowers teams with intelligent, dynamic prioritization that goes beyond firmographic scoring. Sales and marketing teams should collaborate together to determine how intent scores fit into existing scoring models in their marketing automation, sales engagement, or CRM workflows. Once a process is defined, integrate it into existing workflows for seamless, dynamic prioritization.

Marketing and sales teams often use scoring tiers when determining the highest quality prospects. Here’s an example of what a scoring tier based on intent could look like:

• 80-100: These companies are showing significant increases in likelihood to purchase and should be prioritized for direct marketing, outbound lead gen, and sales prospecting.
• 60-79: These companies are showing an increased likelihood to purchase and can be included in advertising campaigns for top funnel nurture or reached over email and social channels.
• 40-59: These companies are showing modest purchase signals. Nurture leveraging unpaid channels, in particular website personalization and email marketing.
• 0-39: These companies have not demonstrated any meaningful purchase intent signals. Ignite their interest in the topic with quality content and relevant business cases.

This allows both teams to ask questions such as, “Are there other complementary actions, such as engaging with ads, that when paired with an intent score above 90 the lead is passed directly to sales? Or a type of content view and a score above 70 that enrolls a prospect into a lower-funnel ad audience?”

Based on intent scoring, intent insights are categorized into different tiers, enabling your teams to prioritize their efforts effectively. High-scoring leads with significant intent signals and engagement can be fast-tracked for more personalized sales interactions. While on the other hand, lower-scoring leads may require further nurturing through marketing campaigns. This approach ensures that both marketing and sales resources are allocated optimally.

Prioritization

According to Foundry, more than 90% of marketers said they use intent data scoring to prioritize accounts, identify content to be served, and build target account lists.

Prioritization based on intent is a clear connector between marketing and sales. Collaborating on how intent plays into scoring and the handoff process builds team trust and creates a feedback loop. Sales teams are motivated to relay lead and messaging performance to marketing teams, and marketing teams are incentivized to act on that feedback.

Using intent data enhances lead scoring relevance and accuracy, so marketing and sales teams can prioritize based on buying behavior. Intent-based scoring brings highly engaged prospects to the top of the list and informs the best next steps. Focus on the most active prospects in real-time. Since these accounts fit your ICP and are showing a propensity to buy, they should be contacted by your team first. Most intent data providers offer intent-based lead scoring to use independently or as a factor in your existing score.

Account tracking

A lot of ABM programs fail to prioritize their spend on the right accounts, but with intent data you can eliminate this obstacle. While intent data is commonly associated with identifying new potential customers, its value extends far beyond this initial phase. You can use it to keep track of activities and prioritize named accounts, so you know when to double down on existing opportunities and when to shift your focus to more promising prospects.

There are two primary audiences to do this with:

• Target account lists: The core of ABM lies in the relationships with specific high-potential accounts. Here, intent data guides your actions by monitoring intent signals within your designated target account list. These insights provide a dynamic understanding of account activities, interests, and engagement levels. Monitoring intent signals on your target account list helps you know which accounts to focus on and how to engage them best. Use signals to trigger sales or marketing steps like a phone call or enrollment in an email campaign to reach buyers more dynamically.
• Existing clients: For existing clients, following their buying behavior helps know when an account is either a) potentially ready for an expansion or b) potentially unhappy and needing a check-in. Armed with this knowledge, you can swiftly address concerns, ushering in timely interventions that strengthen relationships and curb potential churn.

Measuring success

How should you measure the success of your intent data efforts?

����’s important to continuously measure the success of your intent data strategies and efforts. When it comes to optimizing your intent data activation, the metrics you track are paramount to your growth and overall success. We recommend measuring your strategy based on these insights:

• Engagement rate: You should notice a boost in your engagement rates as prospects are interacting with more targeted content and campaigns. Measure how effectively these are engaging your target audience. Look for metrics like click-through-rates (CTR), open rates, and content downloads.
• Lead quality: Assess the quality of leads generated through intent data. Are they aligning with both marketing and sales expectations?
• Conversion rates: Measure the percentage of leads influenced by intent data that convert into customers. Compare this conversion rate with other lead sources to evaluate the effectiveness of intent data.
• Return on investment: Calculate the ROI of your intent data initiatives by comparing the revenue generated from intent-driven activities against the costs of acquiring and utilizing the data.

Conclusion

Transforming intent data into actionable insights marks a critical stride in maximizing its potential. Research shows campaigns using intent-based targeting were 2.5x more efficient than campaigns using standard targeting dimensions.

We’re in an era where simple lead lists aren’t enough. To keep up in the market B2B organizations need to reach buyers first—by knowing exactly who’s looking, what they care about, and how engaged they are in the buying process. When digested properly, multi-channel intent provides you the insights to act on buyers’ needs dynamically. This involves tailoring content, selecting channels, and determining the cadences, to align with your buyers’ priorities and their specific points in their buying journey.

Now that you’ve read our guide on understanding and activating intent data across marketing and sales activities, download our customizable template for outlining, segmenting, and prioritizing your own intent data strategy.

Intent data serves a unique purpose

What is intent data, and how does it deliver on the promise of marketing?

Intent indicates which topics a buyer is interested in and what kinds of products or services they might be looking for. Marketers care about intent because it acts as a beacon, pointing them in the right direction during a lead gen campaign.

Definition: intent data tells us what a buyer is interested in (topics) and helps marketers who sell in those categories persuade the buyer to act

By considering intent, marketers can understand, for example, who might be looking to purchase new project management software. Perhaps the buyer read a few articles titled “How to Budget for Project Management Software” and “The 6 Best Project Management Tools for B2B.” Based on this content consumption and similar browsing behavior, we can assign some level of intent that indicates the buyer is looking to buy new project management software.

Of course, intent signals can vary in significance. If a buyer clicks one email CTA, this is not solid enough data to truly qualify the lead. But take an e-commerce shopper for example. If the buyer adds a product to their cart, this clearly indicates an intent to buy. If the buyer leaves the product in their cart for some time, then this is the perfect opportunity to reach out with a nudge email. If the buyer is browsing competitor content, it’s also a good opportunity to send them your content so they can weigh all their options when it comes to decision time.

In a marketing context, we can see why intent data is so valuable. Marketers use this information to choose whether to continue nurturing the buyer down the funnel or directly reach out.

But intent is just the tip of the iceberg. Engagement—the measure of actual, human interaction—is what marketers want. While intent data can be used to inform and activate campaigns, engagement applies that data to brand-specific content, products, and timely activity. The main question is: “how can I use intent data to generate engagement?”

Engagement is the marketer’s end goal

Consider again the buyer looking for project management software. We’ve collected intent data based on their browsing preferences, research behavior, etc. This is the starting point. Then, we need to measure their individual actions to see if they’re interested in YOUR software. You can begin to see how we use intent data to activate engagement.

Think of it like this:

• Intent is a quantitative way of sorting data, which can be collected and stored for a while
• Engagement is qualitative in that is consists of more dynamic, meaningful activity that is collected digitally

Engagement tells a story about a buyer’s relationship with the brand and their investment in it. While intent allows marketers to activate campaigns, engagement takes us across the finish line.

Definition: engagement is a metric used to understand the buyer’s awareness of and demand for a brand, reinforced by high-quality digital actions across multiple channels

Because engagement tells a richer story about the buyer, it is a justified, legitimate, and highly successful way to qualify leads.

In the world of lead gen, engagement is critical to measure for three main reasons:

1. It provides a source of truth on the buyer journey

Engagement tells a story. It shows exactly how buyers engage with your content and how invested they are in your brand.

2. It connects the marketing funnel to the sales pipeline

We use engagement to understand how a buyer moves down the funnel, bringing context to every sales conversation. Could the struggle to align sales & marketing finally be over?

3. ����’s qualitative and dynamic

Intent can be stored over time, but engagement shows the most accurate picture of the buyer in real-time throughout the buying process. Plus, it builds over time.

����’s important to note that measuring engagement does not mean taking a best guess at determining a buyer’s feelings; it can actually be observed through digital actions. Perhaps the best way to understand what engagement signals look like is to posture them against the metrics that we’re used to seeing: abstract activity.

Abstract activity includes random clicks, one-time site visits, idle time spent on a page without moving. In other words, these are not actions that we would consider acceptable to qualify a lead, yet these are the only metrics that most of our tools and vendors make available to marketers at the end of a campaign.

On the other hand, meaningful engagement includes chat activity, content sharing, considerable time spent on an asset, activity across multiple channels, etc. When a buyer consumes multiple pieces of content from one brand— staying on the page for a minute or so—and views the company’s website, this is meaningful engagement. Furthermore, marketers can deliberately measure engagement by looking at digital activity, opposed to looking at high-level intent topics.

Better together: use intent data to achieve real engagement

Though the difference between intent and engagement is subtle, it is important to consider in the scheme of identifying and qualifying leads. Intent is part of the story but not the whole story. Engagement is where the truth lies, and marketers should measure it with precision and care.

Intent data is a valuable tool for marketers. We use intent data to understand a buyer’s preferences and behavior. We use it to activate campaigns. But engagement is a KPI, a metric used to assign value to the buyer’s actions.

✓Marketers should use intent data to activate their campaigns at the onset and measure engagement throughout. Together with other campaign parameters (demographic, firmographic, technographic), use intent data to trigger a series of content marketing and programmatic campaigns. What is an end point for many lead gen vendors should be the starting point.

✓After the campaign activates, pursue engagement. Marketers can use predetermined lead qualification standards based on how the lead engages with their brand and their brand alone. Don’t just consider engagement via email. Use the same (first party) dataset to capture engagement across multiple channels. This allows marketers to see if the same buyer consumes a client’s content via email and on their website.

✓You can also use engagement to trigger buying committee outreach. When the primary buyer engages with a brand via email, launch a series of programmatic programs to get the rest of the buying committee warmed up to the brand. These activations count on engagement to be successful.

Intent and engagement work better together. Intent informs the campaign and helps to narrow down parameters —ultimately saving time and money. Engagement qualifies leads by actual interactions with a brand and their products or services. Together, they will yield better quality marketing leads and a stronger sales pipeline.

Marketing efficiency has been a hot topic throughout the last year. With new ideas, technology, and points of view informing marketers what their best bet is to do more with less, how do you anchor your strategy in what drives real results and generates revenue? 

It all comes back to the basics. Market to those who want to be marketed to. Identify active buyers facing a challenge you solve, and make sure they know who you are and how you can help.

Enter: intent data. Intent is championed as a silver bullet for reaching in-market buyers. Some doubt if it really works or if generic ICP-based targeting is still the way to go. So, we set out to find the answer. 

Does intent data improve ad efficiency, and by how much? 

The short answer? Yes. Research shows campaigns using intent-based targeting were 2.5x more efficient than campaigns using standard targeting dimensions. 

The experiment 

We tested intent-based ad audiences across three clients in technology and software spaces to compare standard firmographic and intent-based targeting. The goal was to replicate how ads are typically run, compared to only targeting in-market buyers, to see if intent really does make a difference in campaign performance. 

Control and exposed groups were established to test our hypothesis: focusing ad targeting on audiences that have shown intent improves campaign efficiency. 

Control group: a randomized group based on the clients’ ICP using standard firmographic targeting dimensions such as job title, company size, and industry.  

Exposed (intent-based) group: identified using intent signals such as competitor engagements, content interactions, current job posts, and tech installs across first-, second-, and third-party intent sources, then filtered that audience by the clients’ ICP.  

For the intent-based audiences, it was important to capture prospective buyers across the buying journey, so using data from the multiple sources Foundry collects helped us capture a fuller picture of who’s in-market.

The results 

Compared to the control group campaigns, intent-based ads were 2.5x more efficient. 

• 83.5% more impressions 
• 220% higher click-through rate
• 59.6% lower cost-per-conversion

Ad platforms like Google prefer to show ads to people likely to click them, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy with intent-based audiences. Since you’re reaching audiences looking for what you’re selling, they’re more likely to engage. And since they’re more likely to engage, Google’s more likely to serve them your ads, increasing impressions and clicks at a lower cost. 

Taking a leap towards intent-based targeting gives marketers the opportunity to drastically improve campaign engagement while keeping costs low.  

The next steps 

The research shows that intent works. But what does it take to put it into practice?  

Step 1: Define what intent means for your business. 

What actions could someone take that would hint they’re in-market to buy or could get value from what you’re offering? It could be visits to your website, reading solution-based content, expanding a certain team, attending relevant events, hiring new leadership, or chatting with peers on public forums. 

Keep in mind most of these signals aren’t happening in a single, standardized place. Make sure you capture intent behavior across the channels they take place: your website, social media, publisher sites, job boards, press releases, and the list goes on. Gaining access to as much of the buyer’s journey as you can means you aren’t just building a bigger audience, but you’re understanding what resonates with who, where, and when it needs to. 

Step 2: Run ads that enable intent-based targeting. 

Select ad vendors and channels that have the ability to meaningfully reach your intent-based audience. It could be built into the platform or managed by the vendor. Meaningfully here means they aren’t simply ingesting the audience but are allowing you to tailor messaging to buying behavior as it ebbs and flows through the funnel. 

The place to start 

Ideally, you run ads on channels that not only use intent data as a targeting dimension, but that also serve ads to your buyers in the places they’re making decisions. Because ultimately, all most people want is to scroll the internet, only seeing what’s interesting and relevant to them in their feeds. 

Foundry Ads opens the door to your audience across the sites they’ve used to make decisions for decades, with intent data built-in. It enables marketers like you to engage buyers with ad placements and messaging that take real-time intent into account. So, you meet your buyers where they’re at, with efficiency that makes your team, stakeholders, and, most importantly, audience happy.

Get started with intent-based ads

Still unsure about how to use your intent data? Try our Definitive Guide to Activating Intent Data. 

Intent-based targeting

Dynamic audiences

One of the biggest challenges marketers face every day (besides overwhelming expectations with limited budget and resources) is knowing what accounts should be nurtured at what time. Intent-based targeting fills that gap. Marketing teams now have the power to create dynamic audiences based on intent-data that can fuel orchestrated campaigns. Intent scores can change daily, and utilizing dynamic audiences ensures you’re never missing out on accounts with high propensity to buy. 

While it is common to see intent-based audiences in regular ABM campaigns, it’s not as often found in ABM orchestrated/multichannel campaigns. This is a missed opportunity because the value of intent is that it tells you who is interested in your product now. If you rely on a human to manually upload accounts/contacts and push them through stages, you will likely be a few steps behind where the prospect is in their purchase journey.  can map accounts based on intent topics and then move them through a personalized buying experience, without the constant involvement from marketing.

Create and enrich actual leads

While creating dynamic audiences based on intent is a great way to begin targeting personas quickly within an account, getting to the individual decision-makers or contacts demonstrating intent to buy is the next piece of the puzzle. Knowing what accounts are looking to make a purchase can only take you so far – using intent to identify the actual buying group is what builds pipeline with a higher chance of revenue.

While you may already have an intent data provider that gives you visibility into what accounts are in a buying cycle, you will need to determine the people you need to reach. You’ve found the building, but now you need to find the people inside. 

Intent based personalization

Website overlays + pop-ups

One of the best ways to start using intent data is by personalizing your website with overlays and pop-ups based on known topics of interest. If an account is showing intent on one of the many offerings you have, segment the account and personalize the site so the next time they come to your website they are met with relevant messaging that guides them to the next step in their purchase journey. Intent is also a great way to choose who sees what type of pop-up CTA based on topics of interest. 

Onsite messaging

Similarly to the website overlays and pop-ups, onsite messaging can and should be adjusted for prospects showing intent. Account behavior can be flagged before the account ever comes to your website. Based on their behavior, accounts can be categorized into different audiences based on topics or solutions of interest. Then when the accounts do come to your website the website content is altered to fit their needs and goals. Pro tip: even without intent you can use this tactic to change out content and imagery based on industry.

Intent-based sales actions

Custom landing pages

Knowing the best time to reach out is one thing, but knowing what to say when you reach out is the second piece of the puzzle. With intent-based orchestrations, you can see those signals and automatically trigger custom outreach resources. Sales and Business Development teams can use those materials, customize them and reach out with information that is relevant to the prospect’s goals. Another thing to remember is as the intent signals change, it’s important to respond by adjusting content to the new needs of the prospects.

Trigger next best action for sales reps

Intent-based orchestrations can support your sales team by flagging when accounts are researching your product and service (or your competitors). When intent signals come in, it can send notifications to your sales team via email or CRM. So your sales team is getting a fuller picture of where prospects are in their buyer’s journey, even if they are not sharing that information. For example, sometimes prospects go cold and ghost your sales team. It may seem like the deal is lost, but other times intent signals show that they are still interacting with content on your website. That is when an intent-based orchestration would identify that signal and push the prospect to another set of messaging that is aligned with where they are in their buyer’s journey.

Go beyond identifying new accounts

Intent data is only powerful if you know how to utilize it throughout the entire funnel, beyond just identifying new accounts. It plays a key part in taking that a step further in ABM orchestrated campaigns by revealing what topics and solutions are of interest and should be prioritized with personalized content, and actions by the sales team. Intent data paired with ABM orchestration can be the foundation for a successful demand generation strategy. While both intent data and ABM orchestration are important on their own, together is where you see the multiplier effect. 

[Originally published on leadsift.com]