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Harnessing Intent-Based Marketing For Business Success

What is the driving force behind your customers’ actions? It’s important to know their intent. Intent-based marketing helps you target customers who are ready to engage or make a purchase, offering valuable data to improve future advertising and promotions.

As a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), you understand the vital role of data-driven marketing strategies for business growth. But are you leveraging that data to turn prospects into customers faster?

This blog will examine how to maximize impact with intent-based marketing. You’ll get insights to refine your advertising strategy and learn how to level up your targeted marketing.

What is Intent-Based Marketing?

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Intent-based marketing focuses on identifying and targeting customers who are actively searching for what your business provides.

The core idea of intent-based marketing is to target consumers precisely when they’re most likely to take a desired action, like making a purchase. This approach uses data to identify key “micro-moments” and then deliver highly relevant, personalized messages. This leads to higher conversion rates and a better return on marketing investments.

Intent to Win: What are the Benefits of Intent-Based Marketing?
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Precision in Practice? A Closer Look at Why Targeted Marketing isn’t Intent-Based

Google Ads:  Google’s search-based or pay-per-click (PPC) ads can be considered a form of intent-based marketing, but they primarily capture expressed desires at a specific moment rather than covering the customer’s overall intent journey.

Facebook Ads: These infer user intent from broader characteristics, profile information, and behaviors using Meta’s advanced algorithms and extensive datasets. However, the ads aren’t always based on immediate search intent.

SEO-optimized content: SEO boosts rankings through keyword-optimized content that’s aligned with search intent but focuses on visibility and traffic over time, not an individual user’s specific, immediate interest.

Trigger-Based Email Marketing: Sending automated emails based on a prospect’s profile information and actions is about engagement and relationship-building over time. In contrast, intent-based marketing focuses on immediate user needs and intentions, offering relevant solutions at the right moment in their journey. 

Targeted vs. Intent-Based Marketing

Master the moment and build a bond.

Whether you’re going for instant clicks or enduring connections, intent-based marketing is a strategic approach beyond targeted advertising.

Your typical audience-based targeting uses demographics (like age, gender, location) and inferences from past behaviors over a period (such as pages liked, content interacted with, purchase history). The focus is on creating a general customer profile, which may not necessarily indicate their current needs or intentions.

Intent-based marketing zeroes in on a customer’s immediate interests through actions like search queries, page visits, and downloads, aiming for timely engagement.

Here are five distinctive aspects of intent-based marketing.

Search Query Analysis: Tailoring content and ads based on the analysis of search engine queries. For instance, if a user searches for “best wireless headphones for running,” marketers can display ads or content for sports headphones.

Social Media Listening and Engagement: Monitoring social media for mentions of specific keywords or topics and engaging with users who demonstrate interest in those areas. For example, a travel company might look for users asking for vacation recommendations and respond with personalized travel packages.

Predictive Lead Scoring: Using AI and machine learning to score leads based on their likelihood to convert, focusing on those who show strong purchase intent through their online behavior or engagement with previous campaigns.

Content Personalization: Displaying personalized website content based on the visitor’s previous interactions or engagements. A visitor who frequently reads articles about organic gardening on a site might be shown content or product recommendations related to organic seeds and fertilizers.

Why is Intent-Based Advertising Invaluable in B2B Markets?

With the average B2B sales cycle of upward of 2 months, intent-based marketing is key to identifying and nurturing high-value leads.

The ability to see intent data can drastically shift how you connect with customers during every phase of the purchase process, ensuring meaningful engagement from discovery to post-sale support.

What's cool about customer intent data? It keeps razor-sharp focus on meeting the needs of top-tier accounts. #DataDriven #CSuiteStrategy Click To Tweet

Understanding user behaviors through their digital footprints, such as website visits and content interactions, equips leaders with insights to customize communications and prioritize the prospects who are more likely to convert.

This culminates in better service and a stronger ROI.

Blueprint for Effective Intent-Based Campaigns: 6 Proven Steps

Intent-based strategies connect you with customers at critical decision-making moments, using data-driven insights for timely, resonant messaging. Follow this roadmap to boost your campaign’s impact.

effective steps for intent based campaigns

Our world is flooded with generic marketing messages. Sophisticated audience targeting techniques utilize big data, AI, behavioral insights, and psychographic profiling to create personal relevance. These techniques enable us to craft messages that resonate deeply with our ideal customers.

Sophisticated Audience Targeting Techniques

Retargeting

Retargeting allows you to reach users who have already shown interest in your brand or products, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

This type of targeted advertising can increase brand awareness, drive sales, and lead generation.

It works by planting a cookie or pixel on a visitor’s device and then using that information to target them with ads on other websites or social media platforms. With solutions like Adroll, you can leverage customer data, behavioral insights, and dynamic creative optimization to deliver personalized and compelling retargeting ads across various digital channels.

You can also create particular target audiences based on demographics, interests, browsing behavior, and other data segmentation.

Lookalike Audiences

Simply put, you take an audience group that’s been successful for you and then use campaign platforms like Facebook to find users with similar interests and behaviors. This is a powerful way to find new audiences and grow your company beyond familiar data.

You can reach a larger, highly-targeted audience with ads tailored to their interests using lookalike ads.

Suppression Targeting

Also known as exclusion targeting, suppression targeting prevents ads from being shown to irrelevant audiences based on age, behavior, location, device type, and other factors. This maximizes the efficiency of your campaigns.

It also helps you save money. Eliminating potential ads that may not be relevant to your target audience reduces the cost of your campaigns.

Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting involves placing ads on websites based on their content. By zeroing in on users searching for or browsing information related to your product or service, your ads will appear beside content relevant to your offering. This means that your target audience is already engaged with the content on the site, making them more likely to take action when they see your ad.

An example of this would be an ad for keyboards on a custom PC builder’s site.

Geofencing

Geofencing is a location-based targeting strategy that uses GPS or RFID technology to create a virtual boundary around a specific area. When a mobile device enters or exits this boundary, the software is triggered to respond.

It’s perfect for B2B campaigns because it allows you to reach potential customers near your business. With geofencing marketing, you can create targeted campaigns and personalize ads for specific locations – a great way to connect with the right audience.

Advanced Measurement and Attribution

Cross-Channel Engagement

In the B2B space, understanding the intent of potential buyers is crucial for effective lead generation. These buyers are active across multiple channels and devices. It’s crucial to engage with them wherever they are.

An omnichannel approach creates multiple touchpoints and ensures that your message reaches your audience, regardless of platform, accelerating conversions.

Platforms like Clearbit, Bombora, and 6sense offer powerful B2B intent data solutions that enable you to identify prospects with active buying signals. AdRoll’s cross-channel engagement solutions enable you to deliver consistent brand experiences across display, paid social media advertising, email, and even SMS marketing.

How to Measure and Predict Customer Intent

Customer intent can be measured and predicted by analyzing search queries and online behavior.

This analysis reveals what customers seek as well as their interests, preferences, and buying patterns.

Purchasing history can also provide insights into a customer’s buying patterns.

How to Leverage Customer Intent Signals to Create Effective Campaigns

Here are some best practices for leveraging customer intent signals to create effective, personalized marketing campaigns:

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  • Real-time analytics: This provides timely insights into customer intent and enables businesses to adjust their marketing campaigns accordingly. 
  • Segmentation based on intent: Helps businesses target the right people with the right message at the right time. 
  • AI: Analyzes customer intent signals and creates more intelligent campaigns.
  • Personalized content and interactions: Helps businesses create more meaningful and customized experiences. 
  • Feedback loops: Shows businesses’ cause and effect helping them to refine and improve their customer intent analysis continually.

Measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns is essential to optimizing your strategies and allocating resources wisely. Advanced measurement and attribution solutions provide comprehensive insights into the customer journey, allowing you to understand which touchpoints and channels contribute most to conversions. 

When you can accurately attribute revenue to specific marketing activities, you can make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns and drive better results.

Beyond The Click

How Intent Data Can Empower CMOs to Dominate the Marketing Game

CMOs need sophisticated audience targeting, advanced measurement, and B2B intent data for marketing success.

At Reactionpower, we develop tools to enhance campaigns, optimize budgets, and boost customer acquisition. These technologies keep you ahead, connect effectively, and deliver remarkable marketing results.

Ready to accelerate your lead gen? Let’s talk.

We work as an extension of your team, going above and beyond to ensure you reach your target audience and drive results. With our expertise, you can rest easy knowing that your campaigns are in good hands.

Over the last 18+ years, Wandia has designed a career that combines an ardent interest in global markets with enthusiasm for adventure, fascination with science, and passion for people. She has worked at Fortune 500 companies like Google, Johnson & Johnson, and Eli Lilly. At Samsung, Wandia led ecosystem marketing including developer outreach, awareness, and engagement. A results-driven, growth-focused, data-centric senior marketing leader with both corporate and startup experience, she is passionate about connecting with creators, makers, and visionaries. She loves to dance for fun and fitness.

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