Today’s content-driven marketing requires a lot of research. Being a digital marketer, you need to develop a content strategy with the help of data and analysis instead of instincts. Any content strategy that you think might work will not be as effective as you think.
Your digital marketing strategy should effectively nurture high-value prospects for brand awareness. This can be done with the help of intent data. It provides you better chances of reaching and engaging with your target audience by using data-driven marketing.
We’ll highlight the most efficient ways to leverage intent signals in developing your content marketing strategy.
What is intent data?
Intent data is an individual’s behavioral data regarding their online activities, combining both topic and context data. For example, this data can help you identify whether an individual has expressed the intent to invest in your solutions and products or any similar ones based on their search behaviors and what they view online. If they have, then you can educate your prospects about the value you have to offer them with your products.
Sales and marketing teams collect the intent data from research topics that are pertinent to their business based on prospects’ online consumption of:
- Infographics and blogs
- Articles and news
- Product reviews
- Message boards
- Product comparisons
Organizations and marketers that collect and use online intent data have the capacity to reach buyers much earlier than those who don’t. The data can guide the decision-making process before a competitor even recognizes their potential customer’s interest.
In contrast, web tracking data is more narrow in scope than intent data. However, web track data allows you to track the activities of potential buyers when they visit your platform and boost lead scores. Ads and email campaigns can help nurture leads who fill out forms and submit them on your website.
But that data doesn’t account for the individuals researching topics related to your solution or product. There is a possibility that prospects are visiting other websites that are relevant to your product or solution. You will have no awareness of their activity off of your site without intent data.
How to collect intent data?
Buyer intent can be gleaned through content consumption data. This plays a vital role in developing an intriguing content marketing strategy that will convince visitors to become buyers.
You can buy and access this data from a third-party vendor. These platforms gather online research activity and aggregate it using a data-sharing co-op, a collection of thousands of media publishers, B2B websites, and other sources.
The aggregate of these activities each week sets a precedent for each individual’s average content consumption. They look for topic searches that spike above normal levels. Moreover, they analyze billions of online browsing events where potential customers have researched solutions and products.
You can’t rely on raw data, so the data vendors use several indicators to generate a “spike,” including:
- Amount of content consumed
- Types of content consumed
- Number of consumers
- Scroll speed
- Time on page
The spike data enables providers to send unobstructed relevant information at the right time in the buyer journey. It also directs salespeople to focus and channel their efforts in the right place at the right time so they can seize the opportunities when they arise. You can make use of coding bootcamps for learning how to analyze data and apply these analytical skills to succeed as an efficient content marketer.
5 ways to leverage intent data
A 2020 Demand Generation Benchmark Study declares that intent data is already helping 51% of marketers to guide their campaigns. However, this means half of them are still missing out on the use of this valuable data. If you are one of those marketers, here are five ways you can leverage intent data to develop successful content marketing strategies.
1. Monitor your prospects’ content consumption
It is essential to understand the behavior of your buyers and what type of content they wish to consume. Serving the same content to every type of buyer is inefficient because you won’t be able to intrigue buyers with different personas.
Intent data can help you to spend time creating the type of content that your prospects are looking for. Whether you should go for long-form pieces or short, incorporate video content, or focus on snappy blogs, all of it should depend on your buyers’ preference.
2. Target relevant topics
Intent data will help you develop a thorough understanding of what content topics your prospects are currently consuming. You can use this data to target relevant content topics for your business and your prospects. What is the specific topic that they’re searching for the most? Can any of those topics serve as a follow-up guide to your product or service?
When you specifically know the concerns of your target audience instead of just a broad understanding, it will increase the effectiveness of your content and help you rise in the SERPs. After all, the top result in Google’s search engine will get clicked 30% of the time, with 15% for the second result and 10% for the third.
3. Discover content gaps
Knowing the gaps you’re not filling will boost your content team’s efficiency, as they’ll be able to determine and concentrate on the type of content they need to produce in the future. In some cases, they can even recycle older content to appeal to prospects based on intent signals. There may be limits to content resources, but intent data can be your ultimate resource to fill in the content gaps your marketing is sustaining currently.
4. Determine sales funnel placement
You can prioritize your efforts and determine sales funnel placement with the help of intent data. In addition, since it gives you insight into your target audience, it will allow you to better understand the buyer’s journey and lead to more robust sales.
For example, if your prospects are searching awareness-level topics, it means that your sales and marketing teams should prepare content for the next level. However, if they are already in the evaluation stage, you can let them be and move on to the next target.
5. Prioritize personalized content
According to one study, 90% of U.S. consumers consider marketing personalization appealing. With intent marketing, you can personalize the content of landing pages, articles, and case studies by segmenting your audience. If you know the topics and content types these prospects are interested in, you can prioritize and customize your content tailored to their needs.
Conclusion
There is nearly endless potential for intent data to tailor your content marketing strategy. If you aim to increase brand awareness and demand for your product, reduce sales cycles, and increase conversion rates, an account-based marketing strategy is the way to go.
This post was written by Nahla Davies, a software developer and tech writer. Before devoting her work full time to technical writing, she managed—among other intriguing things—to serve as a lead programmer at an Inc. 5,000 experiential branding organization whose clients include Samsung, Time Warner, Netflix, and Sony.
