Businesses cannot risk missing their revenue moments; hence, many use intent data to uncover buyer intent. However, intent data alone is not helpful in certain instances. Latané Conant, chief market officer, 6sense, shares how a combination of intent and pre-intent data helps companies to do their best marketing and selling.

In business, we never want to miss a revenue moment — those points in time when the stars align and buyers are at their most likely to purchase from us. 

Recognizing these revenue moments requires knowing what your potential buyers are up to and understanding which activities are linked to buying behavior for your company. For instance, when someone is researching your competitors, searching relevant keywords, or spending a lot of time on your website, you may be looking at a revenue moment. And you don’t want to let it pass without taking action.

However, capitalizing on every revenue moment is a lofty goal because they’re happening all the time. Depending on your business, you may have hundreds of thousands of companies in your total addressable market, each with a buying team of 8 to 10 people. And each of those people is constantly putting out signals that might indicate a revenue moment. 

That’s why many companies invest in intent data — the data that allows you to see behaviors that may indicate intent to buy. This data is crucial to marketing and selling today. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. For instance, if you’re creating a new category or launching a first-of-its-kind product, there are no competitors to research and, thus, no associated intent data to glean. 

Even for those in more established categories, intent data alone doesn’t give you as much of an edge as it used to since more and more companies have it in their arsenal.

So how do you stay ahead of the curve in this environment? This can be done with a combination of intent data and pre-intent data, which lets you see when someone has an unmet need, even before they start to show intent. 

Whereas intent data allows you to capture existing demand, pre-intent data makes it possible to shape and create demand. Both of those approaches are important pieces of the puzzle for sellers and marketers. When you’re capturing all the demand out there, you’re operating efficiently and ensuring you’re not leaving any opportunities on the table. And when you shape and create demand, you have additional control over the opportunities available. 

In this article, we’ll talk about intent data, pre-intent data and why, to do your best selling and marketing, you really need both.

See More: Swapping MQLs for Intent Data Could Ease Your Marketing Troubles

What Is Intent Data?

Customers today want to remain anonymous until late in the buying journey. That means they conduct their own research instead of raising their hands and identifying themselves to ask for guidance from sellers and marketers. By the time they make themselves known to you, it’s too late to influence their decision meaningfully. 

Intent data makes it possible to understand customers in an anonymous buying world. This is because it lets you know what your potential buyers are interested in and where they are in their buying journey, even if they’re not coming right out and telling you. Intent data can come from several sources, including: 

• First-party intent data comes from properties that belong to you, like your website. Website data is essential for understanding who’s on your site — if you’re relying on form fills to identify visitors, you’re missing out on 97%Opens a new window of the traffic on your site. First-party data can also come from your CRM and MAP in the form of data about buyers interacting with marketing campaigns, opening emails from sales reps, and attending meetings. 
• Second-party intent data comes from sites you don’t own but whose content and conversations are about your company. This can include review sites such as TrustRadius, Capterra, and G2. 
• Third-party intent data encompasses research being done elsewhere on the web that signals a prospect could be in the market for a solution like yours.

All of this data provides a snapshot of your buyers’ intent at a moment in time. When you have access to intent data from various sources, you can understand what your potential customers are interested in now. And that can help you capture all the opportunities that currently exist for your company, including many that you wouldn’t have known about without intent data. 

What Is Pre-intent Data?

With pre-intent data, you can see that a buyer may be entering the market in the future. By tying together historical data and the following three types of pre-intent data, AI can make predictions about what companies will buy and when:

• • Technographic data: If you understand a company’s tech ecosystem, including its current tech stack, what integrates with it, and when contract renewals are coming up, you can predict not only what types of technology a company will be in the market for but also when they’ll start looking. In addition, knowing that a company just made a tech purchase in your space could be an indicator that they could benefit from your solution as well. This type of data allows sellers and marketers to start cultivating a relationship early, long before the company is ready to close a deal.  

• Psychographic data: Buyers have conversations across the web that can give you insights into their pain points and their plans for fixing them. Vast amounts of data from annual reports, web pages, social media, and more can give you signals that a company may be looking to solve a particular problem in the near future. AI can sort through all that chatter to pick up on important psychographic data that can inform your marketing and selling. For instance, psychographic data can help shape interactions between prospects and revenue teams and allow sellers and marketers to engage prospects more effectively with more personalized and relevant outreach. 

• Market updates: Certain market changes can be significant revenue moments because we know that even if buyers are not in the market yet, they might be in the market when a big change occurs. Events such as new product launches, leadership changes, relevant hires, funding updates, acquisitions, and events can be incredibly informative for sellers and marketers who want to get into accounts before the competition. 

In modern B2B marketing and sales, the ability to take advantage of every revenue moment is critical to success. And to do that effectively in today’s competitive environment, you need to have first-, second-, and third-party intent data, as well as pre-intent data. 

You never want to miss a signal of intent or unmet need. The more data points you have, the more you can capture, create, and shape opportunities to capitalize on every revenue moment.

Have you used a combination of pre-intent and intent data? How has it helped you? Share with us on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .

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