• Higher conversion rates: A Forrester report found that almost 60% of B2B marketers using intent data experienced a substantial increase in lead conversion rates. The boost was attributed to the technology’s ability to create more personalized marketing strategies.
• Improved customer retention: According to the Aberdeen Group, companies leveraging intent data have enjoyed a 74% higher customer retention rate compared to non-users.
• Greater revenue growth: A Gartner study indicated that businesses actively employing intent data have experienced a 15% to 20% revenue increase. This performance is due to the enhanced targeting that makes marketing campaigns more effective.

Brian Law at ZoomInfo segregates intent data into three types: champion moves (tracking changing job roles), known intent (gathering data via surveys), and inferred intent (deduced from broader web behavior). He says that synthesizing these types of intent data can be a gold mine when it comes to identifying companies that are likely to make a near-term purchase. Law also stressed the importance of data quality and validation for marketers to make educated decisions that support revenue growth.

But many marketers are unaware of how CTV works.

CTV is accessed through video advertising platforms that specialize in this channel. The major CTV platforms, such as MNTN, Amazon, and Brid.TV, serve as the middlepersons in the CTV marketplace. The advertisers upload their ads to the platform, set a budget, and select their desired audience targets. Similar to Google Ads, the advertiser bids on available space across a range of streaming networks and channels, and the ad is automatically placed by the advertising platform when the space is secured.

When an ad is delivered to a CTV device, that device’s IP address is logged and stored. Each device that connects to that IP address within that household is also stored. This enables all household viewers to be tracked when someone uses their mobile phone to download an app or make a purchase that they saw advertised on their CTV channel.

CTV advertising platforms have automated media buying technology that optimizes campaigns multiple times a day based on the marketer’s goals. It continuously adjusts ad delivery, targeting, and bids in ways that are designed to achieve the advertiser’s objectives.

Figure 1: CTV advertising workflow

Targeting Audiences

When advertisers target viewers with CTV marketing, they can define relevant audience segments. They typically use first- and third-party data to target specific CTV audiences ─ the same way they would for any digital advertising campaign.

Most CTV advertising platforms employ first-party audience targeting tools that permit audience segmentation on their insightful actions or behaviors taken on your website. These demographics, behaviors, and actions include location, age, gender, interests, or site visits. In addition, advertisers can target their ideal customer profiles by matching them with third-party audience segments integrated in the advertising platform.

A recent American Marketing Association survey reported that 65% of B2B buyers are now younger than 40. Plus, they are facing difficult internal issues such as staff and budget reductions and evolving artificial intelligence-fueled technologies that are altering the ways they engage with marketers and sales reps.

When asked about the top 4 influencing decision they would make before accepting a B2B sales meeting, the buyers’ responses were as follows:

• 60% – go to the supplier’s website
• 55% – attend a webinar hosted by the supplier
• 52% – conduct online research on the supplier
• 50% – evaluate the supplier on peer review sites

It’s evident that B2B and life science buyers are consuming large quantities of content before speaking with a sales rep. And the sales reps will have no idea what the prospect has seen, or about the stage of their buying journey.

In a DemandGen study, B2B marketers were asked which tactics proved most successful in engaging top-of-funnel sales leads.

The respondents cited the following:

• Webinars (48%)
• Email campaigns (43%)
• Industry events/trade shows (41%)
• Case studies (34%)
• Videos (30%)

When asked about the best practices for engaging middle- and late-stage leads, the top four tactics were as follows:

• Webinars (39%)
• Lead nurturing content (39%)
• Personal events/dinners/meetings (39%)
• Videos (31%)

Wait a minute!

Connected television (CTV) is here. Over 160 million Americans watch CTV content on streaming channels such as Hulu, Netflix, YouTube TV, Apple TV, Roku, and Prime.

These channels are now permitting viewers to watch shows for free, as long as they watch ads paid for by brands. That means your company can place advertisements on streaming channels that offer premium content.

Even better ─ B2B and life science companies can target the specific, niche audiences that purchase their products and services. Plus, marketers can track those viewers who watch their ads and take a desired action.

The CTV cost model is similar to Google pay-per-click advertising. The advertiser bids on available space across a broad range of streaming networks and channels, and the ad is automatically placed by a CTV advertising platform when the space is secured. The advertiser then pays each time a viewer watches the ad.

Video has been proven to be a very effective communication channel. CTV advertising is an attractive awareness tool for a top-of-funnel B2B or life science marketing campaign.

Preparation involves great detail — and a concerted and continuing effort — including knowing the risks, nurturing the playing field, being vigilant, and being ready to respond.

The report defines misinformation as “false or inaccurate information that can spread and mislead audiences and consumers.” It can include clickbait (designed to draw engagements), conspiracy theories (grand but evidence-lacking explanations), deep fakes and AI (fake-generated images, videos, audio, etc.), and fake news (intentional misleading or hoax information).

Of interest: 56% of a Reuters Institute/University of Oxford study said, “They were worried about identifying the difference between what is real and fake on the internet when it comes to news.”

More chilling: False news can spread up to six times faster than accurate news, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

Who’s at risk? Companies and brands of all sizes, business leaders, and private individuals. No one is immune to the risk and impact of misinformation.

Cision advises a four-step program to “battle” misinformation, beginning with building and maintaining a solid and trusted brand image. Such a program not only provides direct and immediate benefits for a company’s reputation and messaging but also provides a foundation to help shore up against the effects of possible damaging misinformation.

Consistent (always-on) attentive monitoring/listening, storytelling, and engagement strengthen audience relationships. Then, if (when) a crisis does strike, use authenticity to combat the misinformation messaged by internal leaders, employees, and trusted third-party resources.

Step 4 is readiness, the creation, and ongoing to-keep-current management of a formal crisis communications plan, including team, channels, and resources.

According to Google, “The March 2024 core update is a more complex update than our usual core updates, involving changes to multiple core systems. It also marks an evolution in how we identify the helpfulness of content.”

The March update primarily targets low-quality content and spammy SEO techniques to provide users with genuinely helpful results that align with search intent. It focuses on filtering out poor-quality, inaccurate, or unoriginal content, especially pages that are generated by AI or those with poor Experience-Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) scores. The goal is to reduce low-quality and unoriginal content in search results by 40%.

Google’s efforts to promote higher-quality content is causing a shakeup in the rankings. Brands that enjoyed unassailable top spots have lost positions, while new, more relevant content have climbed up the search engine results pages.

1. Gaining a head start on the competition. You can get in front of potential client companies earlier in their buying journeys — intercepting them before they start investigating competitors.
2. Matching purchasers with the content they need during each stage of their buying process. Intent data shows the topics a company’s buyers are researching, enabling better education and nurturing of prospects.
3. Creating prioritized lists of company leads based on their research activity levels. Now sales development representatives (SDRs) and field sales managers can get prioritized lists of companies conducting active research on specific topics. This enables a more focused sales approach and personalized outreach to the accounts most likely to buy.
4. Employing a targeted advertising strategy based on data. Using intent data, topically relevant advertising campaigns can be focused on the most interested accounts — increasing efficiency and effectiveness.
5. Supporting channel partner’s sales efforts: With intent data, a supplier can focus distributors’ and channel partners’ sales representatives on accounts most likely to purchase.

Overall, third-party intent data helps focus marketing resources on active buyers. It can increase numbers of qualified leads, shorten sales cycles, and boost close rates.

For a more detailed review of intent data use, download our eGuide, Intent Data: An Exciting Step Forward in Active Buyer Identification.

References

• The Outlook on Intent Data, Ascend2, April 2022.
• What’s Working in Intent-Based Strategies, DemandGen, March 2022.

• Publishers will sell the data to help advertisers target specific companies that indicate buying intent
• Providers will offer dashboards to marketers that show company and topic intent data scores in real time. This data can help marketers create more effective advertising and lead nurturing campaigns. Plus, companies that show buying intent can be handed off to sales reps and SDRs for account contact.
• Historic intent data can be purchased that presents a company’s research activity by topic over a 12-month period. This data is helpful in planning and deploying marketing and sales resources more effectively across different vertical markets, applications, and target accounts.

At present, marketers are applying intent data in three areas:  

1. To deliver more targeted ad content
2. To enhance email marketing campaigns
3. To create more personalized customer experiences

But intent data offers far more opportunity to enhance B2B and life science marketing effectiveness.

Optimize account-based marketing (ABM) strategies.

As individual prospects traverse the web on their personal research journeys, intent data providers collect, aggregate, and map their activity by topic, industry, and company. This enables marketers to focus ABM initiatives on accounts that appear more likely to buy. With this list of accounts ranked by activity level and aligned with topics of interest, marketers can more easily adopt an ABM strategy and build highly targeted prospect lists. That knowledge permits the serving of content that will be most helpful for the prospect company’s buying journey. In addition to scoring a company’s overall level of buying interest, the individual topics each account is currently researching also can be determined ꟷ making the targeting of lead nurturing content more effective.

Prioritize personalized outbound sales lists at scale.

Inside, field, and industry sales representatives can create prioritized and more personalized outbound account lists at scale with intent data that signals more intense buying interest.

Enable remarketing to competitors’ prospects.

Intent data provides early warning signals that permit remarketing tactics to competitive companies’ customers and prospects when they show signs of active buying research.  

Conduct events and conferences with greater attendee interest and engagement.

Companies showing active buying signals can be targeted for events, conferences, and webinars ꟷ ensuring their attendance and attention amidst their purchasing journey.

Reduce account churn by providing early warning of customers and clients seeking other suppliers.

Intent data can alert companies when their customer and clients are engaged in buying research and considering other suppliers.

In our next blog post, we will explore additional ways marketers can benefit from intent data. For a more detailed review of intent data use, download our eguide, Intent Data: An Exciting Step Forward in Active Buyer Identification.

Reference

• Using Data to Drive Demand, Act On, February 2022.