Matt Oakley
Global Head of Data & Analytics
As more technology solutions enter the marketplace, the need to produce a relevant, personalized, and well-timed proposition to potential customers is vital to withstand competition. The challenge of sales and marketing teams is to work out the best way to call and sustain consumer attention.
Marketers have utilized a few best practices to increase consumer activity and drive subsequent revenue. One in particular is to begin crafting a unique go-to market strategy developed around consumer pain points that have been identified using intent data. This strategy enables sales teams to deliver personalized solutions and marketers tailor advertisements that best appeal to those pre-determined audiences.
The next step is to create dynamic content that “hooks” audience members and increase chances they will interact and purchase your offering (Psst..we have some more thoughts on this here).
Pain points and challenges can vary greatly across audiences – what one organisation faces will differ from another, and those faced by a CIO are likely to be very different than that of a CMO. Furthermore, organisations must be thorough and as accurate as possible when gathering information to increase their likelihood to succeed in the midst of competition. Here are several ways to identify pain points and move ahead of potential hurdles:
- Primary research – Utilize surveys designed to obtain insights on what challenges a business is facing, and the solutions they require to solve these issues
- Account profiling – Creating in-depth account profiles using martech and make use of desk research to identify business priorities
- Sales outreach – Implement qualitative insights from past conversations with your target audience to unearth gaps
Although these options are all valuable tools in your arsenal, each is limited – either due to requiring information to already be in the public domain to collect or being overly reliant on direct engagement from potential customers.
Making the best use of intent data
As potential buyers consume online content on a topic they leave a digital footprint that is picked up by intent signals that beam a light for organisations who are researching specific keywords and topics on the web. The insights derived from topics/keywords consumption can provide real value – for instance, if you offer a cloud networking solution and you see topics such as “cloud computing”, “cloud infrastructure”, “cloud services”, and “cloud providers” that could not only indicate a challenge that the prospect would like to solve but also help predict how far along they are in their buying journey. Alternatively, if an organisation is researching content focused on finding solutions or related to specific vendors, this can be a sign that they are further along in their research.
In all, intent data is a true game-changer for crafting personalized content that resonates with your target audience(s) and offer valuable technological solutions to transform their problems.
Better still, these insights are otherwise hidden from view putting you ahead of your competition. So next time you are wondering what is top of mind for your target audience and strategizing how best to engage and win new business, turn to intent data.
For more detail on how intent data works, read our recent whitepaper The Age of Intent.
You can also feel around and check out more of our insights and client case studies!