What is it and how can you use intent data for agency new business development? Well, simply put, ‘intent data’ is information about a company that indicates that there is likely to be a higher level of interest in your services at a given time than usual. There is ‘intent’ to purchase (or at least to investigate further).
WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF INTENT DATA?
Intent can be gleaned in many different ways, through first, second or third party data – here are some typical examples:
- A prospect has filled in a form on your website.
- Someone at a company has visited your website and you have captured their IP address through an SaaS such as Snitcher, LeadForensics or HubSpot.
- Various people at a company are consuming more online content about a subject that indicates they are in the market for your services than usual – companies such as Bombora can be used to access this information.
- Someone has looked that you or your company’s LinkedIn profile.
- A company uses a specific piece of technology (an example here could be Drupal 7, which has now come to end of life, so anyone using this is likely to be looking at their website design).
- A new CEO or CMO has recently joined.
- The company has undertaken a successful funding round.
The list goes on …
HOW TO USE INTENT DATA.
You can either use intent data for agency new business in a strategic or tactical way – what do we mean by this?
Strategic – you research your ICP and then apply intent data. So for example, your ICP pool may be 2,000 companies, but if you then apply Bombora intent for (for example) PR, you would be left with 50 – so you have identified 50 companies who are currently consuming more content than usual (a “surge”) around the subject of public relations. These are the ONLY prospects you contact.
Tactical – again, you research your ICP, but you contact them ALL, but refine your approach to each individual company using all available intent sources available to you where they are applicable to the company (if present).
If you have a very large ICP pool then we would recommend you use intent strategically but if your pool is shallower (you may specialise 100% in a market with only 200 players) then you are better off using it tactically.
A word of advice though; in our experience you will get a better conversion rate if you don’t mention the intent signal you have used to either target the company or refine the approach. It just seems to put people off, you’re better off talking around the subject so the prospect can ‘discover’ you offer JUST what they have been looking for.
