Buyer Intent Data for Sales: Everything You Want to Know

You don’t need that crystal ball or a psychic on speed dial. What you do need, however, is the power of buyer intent data.

These intent signals are the closest thing us salespeople have to reading our prospects’ minds, and do you know what? We’re happy with that. They tell us everything we need to make sure our sales process runs smoothly and efficiently, helping get all your prospects down that funnel. ⬇️

Here’s everything you want to know about buyer intent and buyer intent data:

What is buyer intent (and why is it important)?

Buyer intent is the level of interest that someone has when it comes to buying a product or service from a company. This is formed by combining thousands of buying signals.

Buyer or purchase intent can be split up into four different categories:

• Informational
• Investigational
• Navigational
• Transactional

Sales and marketing professionals use buyer intent data to track intent and optimize their sales funnel, ensuring a streamlined prospecting pipeline and an efficient lead nurture process.

With this data, you get a good idea of where customers are in the sales funnel or in the user journey. You can make sure time and resources are not wasted on those that are unlikely to convert or spend money, and also encourage a content strategy to encourage those higher up the funnel to move down to conversion.

The more data you have, the less time your sales team wastes on low quality leads. That means more time spent on nurturing leads that are ready to spend. Hello, high conversion rate.

3 types of buyer intent data

There are three types of buyer intent data, which are differentiated by where you get the data from, as well as what you’re able to do with the data itself.

1) First-party intent

In other words: Your own data

First-party intent data is the information that you gain through interactions between your website and its visitors. These visitors might be customers, prospects, or just people that have stumbled across your brand via search engines, email or social media.

Examples of first-party intent data sources:

• Email tracking and engagement
• Website cookies
• Webinar registrations
• Downloaded assets
• Support calls or communications
• Purchase history
• Social listening

2) Second-party intent

In other words: Data from another company

Second-party intent data is information or insights collected by another company, a trusted partner, or a ‘second party’. Ideally, you’ll know the provider and trust the data quality and accuracy, but either way you want to make sure they’re being entirely compliant with permission to share or sell user contact details and other behavioral data.

Examples of second-party intent data sources:

• Customer feedback and surveys
• Publishing networks
• Social media profiles
• Review sites (eg. G2 and TechTarget)

3) Third-party intent

In other words: Aggregated data from all over the shop

Third-party intent data goes beyond what’s happening on your own site or your partnered sites, and into the realms of ‘the internet’. Third party data is collected by data providers that use various sources (eg. platforms, apps and websites), and package it all up into data sets.

Examples of third-party intent data sources:

• Behavioral data platforms
• Demographic data platforms
• Data exchange platforms
• IP address lookup tools

How do you use buyer intent data?

We’ve listed examples of different sources you can get first-party, second-party, and third-party intent data, but how do you leverage the buyer intent data to drive more business.

Quick answer: Making the most of a little bit – or a ‘lottle’ bit – of each of them.

But you want that data to be relevant to your business, your target audience, and your goals. Here’s how:

1) Build targeted lists

Use your buyer intent data to build targeted lists to categorize each type of buyer or visitor to your website in terms of their readiness to buy, whether they’re on your website for information, investigation, navigation or transaction.

2) Personalize your outreach

Take the information you have on the customer, buyer behavior, general demographic and whatever else you’ve conjured up to personalize the customer experience for each category or for wherever they are in the funnel. This is where that sales and marketing alignment (otherwise known as ‘smarketing’) comes into play…

3) Lead scoring and prioritization

Lead scoring with intent signals and buyer intent data (as opposed to traditional lead scoring) will help you prioritize leads to know where your sales team should focus their time, and – ideally – bring those prospects over the line. It may also highlight focus areas for your marketing team to inform and retain these prospects in the sales funnel, giving them the right content they need to move down the funnel.

How to use buyer intent data with Similarweb and Bombora’s Company Surge®?

Similarweb has partnered with Bombora, who describe themselves as the de facto standard in B2B marketing for third-party behavioral data to indicate intent. Bombora’s data comes from the only fully consent-based data cooperative of B2B publishers in existence.

Combining what you know as a ‘traditional sales intelligence platform’ with the best traffic and engagement data in the market, Similarweb Sales Intelligence is a non-negotiable for those selling to online businesses and for those who want to sell more efficiently.

With Similarweb, you can:

1) Focus on accounts that convert

Picture this: It’s the end of the quarter, you need a quick conversion to take you over-the-line on your target. You’re working hard, you’re saying all the right things… but the prospect just isn’t ready to purchase. They’ve got to speak to their boss, who needs to speak to their boss before coming close to making a decision.

☝️ This right here, this is not what you want.

But it doesn’t need to be this way. Making the most of third-party intent data platforms, you can make informed decisions about who to target next.

With Company Surge® and Similarweb, you can focus on buyers that are giving off signals that the timing is right, for example. Similarweb Sales Signals alerts you to traffic changes, news, and technology changes, so you have full insight into what moves to make and when to do it.

2) Spot opportunities before your competitors do

It’s not only the ready-to-convert prospects you want to keep an eye on. There’s the up-and-coming prospects that can be moving quickly down the funnel, and you want to catch them before your competitors do.

Yet again, buyer intent data is your guy to make sure you have full visibility of customer journeys going on around you, so you can keep your pipeline thriving. Company Surge® allows you to monitor users for spikes in intent, meaning you can act fast because – like we said – timing is everything.

3) Improve your outbound response rates

When you know what your prospects are looking for, or where their heads are at, you can cater your outbound emails to match.

Whether you’re taking the time to individually personalize each email (account-based marketers, we’re looking at you) or segmenting your emails between different purchase intents, personalization in your emails can see a 32.7% better response rate than those that aren’t.

Similarweb makes outreach personalization easy for you, as you can look into website performance and data for every single website, including a company’s weaknesses and pain points… to which you can provide a solution.

4) Develop a flawless ‘smarketing’ plan

Focusing too hard on the prospects that are ready to convert can (/will) shoot you in the foot further down the line, but it doesn’t need to be this way.

Enter: Smarketing, the sales and marketing alignment.

Align with your marketing team to make sure you’ve got a flawless lead nurture process; one that provides value to users wherever they are in the funnel. Everyone should feel like a priority if you want to win their trust and their $$$.

There’s no party like multi-party intent data

Enhance your data with third-party intent data sources like Similarweb Sales Intelligence to entice and convert prospects, and make the most of its other amazing tools too.

There to streamline your sales process, Similarweb has everything you need to perform effective (and competitive) lead generation, lead nurture, and closed deals. Your competitors won’t know what hit ‘em.

Try Similarweb for free or speak with one of our experts to find out how Similarweb Sales Intelligence will send your revenue soaring.

FAQs

What is buyer intent data?

Buyer intent data refers to the information that gives insights into the intention of potential buyers. This could include actions they take online like downloading a white paper, visiting specific product pages, or even searching for particular keywords relevant to a product or services.

How can buyer intent data help my sales process?

By understanding buyer intent, sales teams can prioritize leads that are more likely to convert, personalize outreach strategies, and engage potential customers at the right time in their buying journey.

What’s the difference between traditional lead scoring and using buyer intent data?

Traditional lead scoring often relies on demographic information and basic behavioral cues. Buyer intent data, on the other hand, focuses on specific actions that indicate a lead’s readiness to purchase, making it a more direct and often more accurate measure of sales potential.

How can I ensure my team effectively uses the buyer intent data?

Regular training and integration of the data into your sales processes are essential. It’s also beneficial to frequently review the insights and adjust strategies based on the findings.

What about data privacy? How does Similarweb ensure the data is ethically sourced and used?

Similarweb prioritizes data privacy and operates in compliance with global data protection regulations. The platform aggregates data and makes it anonymous, ensuring individual user privacy is maintained.