How to Use Intent Data to Identify Sales-Qualified Leads

Identifying sales-qualified leads (SQLs) is crucial to effective sales outreach. The more accurate the qualification process, the greater the likelihood of converting the lead into a sale, so it’s understandable why this is such a priority for businesses. 

Intent data can help sales teams identify leads based on online behavior, which provides valuable clues to buying intent. In this guide, we’ll explain what intent data is and how you can use it to find and target SQLs ready to purchase.  

What is Intent Data?

Intent data is any information a business collects about a prospect’s likelihood to purchase. It can tell you how far the prospect is into their buying journey, their needs, interests, and pain points, and whether they’re ready to buy.

Intent data is gathered by tracking a prospect’s online behavior to better understand their purchasing mindset. By looking at the prospect’s online footprint — including what content they’ve viewed, emails they’ve engaged with and other interactions they’ve had with your business — you can discover valuable insights about their interests and intentions.

First-Party vs Third-Party Intent Data

There are a few different types of intent data, but the most important ones are first-party data and second-party data. 

First-party intent data is data that’s gathered from your digital properties. This can include your website, social media, CRM platform, and any analytics or marketing automation tools you use.

First-party intent data is beneficial for identifying sales-qualified leads because it specifically relates to a prospect’s interactions with your business. Rather than telling you how ready they are to make a purchase, it can indicate the likelihood of that purchase being from your business.

Third-party intent data, on the other hand, is gathered from external sources. It tells you more about a prospect’s broader behavior online, including what solutions they’re researching and what other websites they might be looking at. 

Using third-party intent data as a supplement to first-party data is often most effective. By understanding your prospect’s interactions with the wider market compared to with your own business, you can better identify how well-placed you are to meet their needs.

Key Indicators of Intent Data

There are several key behaviors that intent data can track to help you understand whether a lead is ready for sales contact. Some of the commonly used ones are:

• Product page visits
• Content downloads
• Form submissions
• Engagement with competitors

When a lead is displaying these behaviors, it indicates that they are actively researching solutions. You can then leverage this data to prioritize high-intent leads and focus on personalized outreach.

How to Use Intent Data to Identify Sales-Qualified Leads

Intent data can enhance lead-scoring processes for marketing and sales teams looking to identify sales-qualified leads. Here’s how you can use it to prioritize high-intent prospects and tailor outreach efforts around specific needs.

Lead Scoring with Intent Data

Integrating intent data with existing lead-scoring models can help identify SQLs more accurately and improve outcomes. This can include assigning higher scores to prospects who have:

• visited pricing pages multiple times
• attended webinars and product demonstrations
• downloaded e-books and whitepapers
• searched your website for product-related terms

By assigning higher scores to prospects exhibiting strong purchase signals, sales teams can focus on nurturing the leads most likely to convert. Marketing automation tools can also dynamically update lead scoring models as prospect behavior changes, as with the ON24 Intelligent Engagement platform’s seamless integration capabilities.

Intent data can also assign negative scores to leads who lack genuine interest in purchasing. For example, suppose a prospect explicitly states in a survey that they have no intention to buy and are only using your content for educational purposes. In that case, their score can be downgraded to avoid wasting resources.

Prioritizing High-Intent Prospects

Sales teams can improve conversion rates by prioritizing leads displaying high-intent behavior. Everything from the type of content leads engage with to the frequency of their interactions with your business can indicate how serious they are about making a purchase. 

High-intent prospects can be separated from low and medium-intent prospects by analyzing the following behavior:

• viewing product pages and case studies, as opposed to just blog content
• an increased rate of interaction with your business
• increased engagement spanning multiple channels
• submitting forms and requests for information 

Personalizing Outreach with Intent Data

Personalized sales outreach demonstrates to leads that you understand their unique needs and preferences, leading to more effective communication and a higher likelihood of making the sale.

Intent data is one of the most beneficial tools for this. It can tell you what problem the lead is facing, which solutions they’re researching, the products they’ve expressed interest in, and how they like to communicate. 

Equipped with this information, it’s easy to tailor outreach efforts to the specific needs of high-intent prospects. You can time your outreach to suit their engagement patterns, highlight product features that match their interests, and create personalized pitches that showcase how you can meet their needs.

Conclusion

Intent data is a powerful tool for sales teams wanting to understand their leads better and use their resources more effectively. It can enhance lead scoring accuracy, help identify and prioritize prospects ready for sales, and improve outreach efforts to sales-qualified leads.

Adopting intent data strategies can improve lead qualification and sales conversion processes. In the ever-competitive B2B landscape, leveraging this data is vital for optimizing your sales pipeline and driving revenue growth.