The beginners’ guide to Intent data
Working with current, high-potential Intent data is essential for B2B marketers to execute effective and ROI-positive campaigns. Having a window into the digital media decision-makers are searching for and consuming while they consider investment in products and services can give sales and marketing teams a considerable advantage.
What is Intent data?
B2B Intent data is the trail of digital breadcrumbs your potential buyers leave as they traverse the web as they conduct research for their next purchase. It tells you when buyers are actively researching online for a solution and which products and services they are interested in based on the web content they consume.
Consider the research you might do before investing in a new car. Before going to a dealership to test-drive different models, you’re likely to search online for the best options. You might read user reviews, watch product videos, ask for advice on Reddit, or search by brand name. These online activities reflect your intent.
Intent data and B2B buyers
The same research that we do as consumers is also conducted by businesses on a larger scale. For example, if a business is looking for new software, they’re likely to start reading applicable industry articles, comparing solutions,, and researching their options. In fact, 70% of B2B buyers fully define their needs before ever reaching out to a salesperson.*
Intent data is a structured collection of all these digital signals your potential buyers leave behind as they consume content across different sites on their research journeys.
The two types of buyer Intent data: first-party and third-party
First-party Intent data comes directly from your marketing efforts and digital properties
If someone clicks on your ad, taps a link in one of your emails, or visits your website and you track it, this is first-party data.
First-party data is what you collect directly from user interactions with your social campaigns, email campaigns, and website. It’s useful because you can collect significant details about each visitor and the actions they’ve performed in real-time.
What first-party data doesn’t tell you is what your prospect is doing when they’re not interacting with your digital properties.
Third-party Intent data is information about your prospects collected from properties you don’t own
Third-party data expands your reach by providing a more holistic view of your target accounts during the buying process. You can identify prospects who are interested in a solution, but may not have heard of your brand.
Customer intelligence informed by third-party data will tell you if a potential customer is downloading eBooks, watching webinars, or reading relevant articles on other websites and platforms.
These two types of Intent data work together to support effective B2B marketing campaigns.. Third-party data is usually your first indicator that an account is in-market, as it will catch all the account’s early research activity before they reach your site.
After you use this data to bring the customer to your platform, you can use your own first-party data to understand what content they’re engaging with and what might convince them to buy.
Why should marketing and sales teams use Intent data?
B2B marketing teams should use Intent data in their advertising campaigns for improved ROI and acceleration of sales. Intent data is more effective than keyword targeting or lookalike audiences alone. Ideally, a strategic marketing plan will combine all three methods. Sales teams can use Intent data to narrow down which accounts in their overall target list they should reach out to.
Improving marketing ROI with Intent data
Organizations that use a combination of first- and third-party Intent data have a competitive advantage in the marketplace.Their sales reps can access lists of prioritized leads and can see which topics each lead is interested in. Sales teams can then focus their time and attention on crafting more personalized outreach to the accounts with the highest propensity to buy.
Similarly, marketers can take a true, data-backed, account-based approach, working with sales and serving relevant ads to the most interested accounts.
All this means spending less time and money contacting and serving advertising campaigns to uninterested accounts and more time closing business with engaged prospects. This sustainable approach allows marketers and sellers to improve sales–especially when combined with actionable insights from a robust lead scoring model and program.
Is Bombora data consent-driven?
Bombora’s data solutions are derived from our one-of-a-kind B2B premium Data Co-op governed by persistent privacy-first, consent-driven data collection protocols.
This means our data meets current and is likely to comply with potential future privacy standards. Bombora data is built for longevity with sustainability at the core.
How to use Intent data in B2B marketing
Intent data can power effective account-based marketing (ABM) strategies, allow for intelligent personalization of promotional content, and target in-market decision-makers with precision.
Build intuitive and dynamic ABM strategies
Bombora’s Company Surge® Intent data is perfect for ABM. As individual prospects traverse the web on their personal research journeys, this engagement data is collected, aggregated, and mapped to target accounts. And this correlates to more meaningful data, as it delivers the account-level activity more indicative of an account that’s ready to buy.
With this list of accounts in hand, ranked by activity level and paired with topics of interest, SDRs, and marketers alike can instantly be more productive — focusing on the accounts with the highest likelihood of buying, and serving them the content that will be most helpful on their buying journey.
Personalize the buying process for greater impact
In addition to using third-party Intent data to gauge an account’s general level of interest, you can also determine which topics each account is currently interested in.
Keep in mind that each individual persona within accounts is evaluating your solution from a different angle:
- Sales wants to understand how your solution can make their jobs easier, increase conversions, and shorten sales cycles
- IT wants to understand how it will integrate into their current systems without causing any security risks
- Finance wants to understand the ROI, and how soon the investment will be recouped
Each of these roles has different concerns and motivations, so it’s best not to serve them all the same ads or treat them all identically in your outreach.
By identifying which Intent data topics your accounts are looking into, you can speak directly to each individual decision-maker’s priorities. This increases your chances of winning over the entire buying committee.
What are “Intent topics” and how are they different from keywords?
Intent topics are determined based on natural language processing (NLP) analysis of the actual content and context of a webpage.
They give broader yet more accurate results than solely determining Intent from keywords, which may be present in an article but not relevant to the actual topic.
Target with precision
Used properly, Intent data sourced from a trustworthy provider can help increase ad potency without necessarily increasing ad spend. Company Surge® data enables brands to engage more effectively with prospects because it provides deeper insights into buyer behavior.
To increase your ad effectiveness, make sure you’re using your first-party data to build audiences that match your ideal customer profile (ICP) or existing customers, and take advantage of Bombora’s integrations to manage your prospect and customer insights without having to move your team to an entirely new platform.
Provide personalized content marketing at scale
As your prospects progress along their buying journey, they’re looking for different content at each stage. The beginning of the journey calls for top-of-funnel content, but as prospects get closer to making a decision, they want more specific, technical content.
Find content gaps
Digging deeper into your prospects’ content consumption trends may also help you uncover any gaps in your own asset library. For example, if your prospects are searching for relevant topics which you don’t currently have content for, it may be a sign you could benefit from broadening your B2B content marketing strategy and/or creating new content to cover those relevant topics.
Improve email marketing engagement
Email is a powerful tool driving nearly half of early-stage buyer engagement, but current B2B email open rates average between 15% and 21% with CTRs much lower.This means even small improvements in opens and clicks can result in growth for your business.
By uncovering your prospects’ level of activity and the topics they’re currently researching, you can:
- Re-invigorate leads that have gone cold by sending them new resources on the topics they’re researching
- Provide new, relevant content to prospects right when they’re looking for it (eBooks, blogs, event invitations, etc.)
- Build personalized email sequences for accounts that are actively researching your competition
- Cross-sell and upsell by sending emails to existing customers highlighting new products they’re showing interest in
- Increase your open rates and CTRs by providing highly relevant messaging
Using Intent data not only helps ensure your outreach is relevant, but it also helps your team be more creative in their outreach by giving them a head start with topics to build from.
Without third-party Intent data, you’re reliant on interactions with your specific outreach and digital properties to understand your prospects’ level of interest. But this approach can leave you with some major blindspots.
What about those accounts that are actively researching but haven’t seen or responded to your advertising? Or those that are conducting a competitive analysis but just haven’t come across your brand?
Based on first-party data alone, you’d be completely blind to these potential leads.Quality third-party Intent data helps uncover these accounts by tracking all their research activity, regardless of where the research is taking place (a publisher’s site, competitor’s site, etc.), and bringing it to light via an internal report or dashboard.
This gives sales visibility into highly motivated accounts that would have otherwise been missed without the help of third-party Intent data, and they’ll also have insight into what topics these accounts are interested in.
With this additional knowledge from third-party data in hand, sales will not only know which accounts to prioritize — but they’ll also know which topics and solutions to reach out with to help increase their cold prospecting conversions and even identify opportunities for upselling.
Intent topic tips
- Increase cold prospecting conversions: So, you need to reach out to a new prospect. What can you say that will cut through the clutter and get their attention? With access to Intent topics, you’ll know just what your prospect is interested in and be able to reach out with exactly what they’re looking for at the right time. Read how Turtl used this strategy to get a 300% increase in meeting creation rate.
- Find new opportunities for upselling: With Intent topics, you can see if your customer is researching another product you offer (from you or a competitor) and present them your solution. It’s an easier upsell for you because you know they’re already looking for a solution, and it’s easier for your customer because they’re already working with you.
- Prevent customer churn: Intent topics don’t only have to be related to the product you sell. You can also set up Intent topics focused on your competitors. By looking for activity on competitive topics, you’ll be able to discover new accounts that are actively researching your competition—and even find out if any of your current customers are considering switching over, so you can reach out and proactively prevent them from churning.
Interested in getting started with Intent data? Connect with an Intent data expert.
FAQs about Intent data
- What is Intent data in marketing?
Intent data in marketing is the digital trail that prospects leave as they research products and solutions online. By analyzing the online activities, including content people read, the searches they perform, and the topics they engage with, Intent data reveals when buyers are actively in-market and what products or services they’re interested in.
- How does Intent data help marketers?
Intent data helps marketers identify which accounts are researching relevant topics so they can target in-market buyers with timely, personalized campaigns. This leads to more efficient ad spend, stronger ABM programs, and higher ROI because teams focus their efforts on prospects with the highest likelihood to buy.
- What is the difference between Intent data and keywords in marketing?
Intent data is derived from analyzing the full content and context of a webpage using natural language processing (NLP), which reveals the actual topics buyers are researching. Keywords, by contrast, only track specific terms that may appear on a page—even if they’re not truly relevant to the article’s main topic. Intent topics provide a broader, more accurate picture of a buyer’s research behavior than keywords alone.
- What are the types of Intent data?
There are two types of Intent data: first-party and third-party. First-party Intent data comes directly from your own digital properties—such as clicks on your ads, engagement with your emails, or visits to your website. This shows how prospects interact with your brand in real time. Third-party Intent data is collected from external websites you don’t own. This data provides a wider view of an account’s research activity, including topics they’re reading about and the solutions they’re evaluating elsewhere. Together, they give marketers a more complete picture of where buyers are in their journey and which accounts are most likely in-market.
- How does Bombora collect Intent data?
Intent data is collected from the digital signals buyers leave as they research online—such as reading articles, downloading resources, or watching webinars. This activity is aggregated and analyzed across different websites to reveal which topics accounts are actively engaging with. Bombora collects this data through its privacy-first, consent-driven B2B Data Co-op, ensuring the signals are gathered responsibly and mapped back to account-level insights.