ABM Intent Data Demystified

Another core capability of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is intent data. ABM "intent" is the digital signals collected that indicate a company's interest in your products and services. Intent data shows which companies have employees viewing content with specific keywords. This intent signal helps focus limited advertising, marketing, and sales resources on the most interested companies.

Intent, A Fish Story

Think of ABM intent data as a fish finder on a sweet bass boat, with top-notch marketing and sales fishermen aboard. They use these signals and blips to locate the best spots to start casting. A signal or hit doesn’t guarantee a bite, a hooked fish, or a successful catch. However, knowing where the fish are and focusing their efforts there is a better use of time and resources than casting into open water. Similarly, ABM intent data focuses and optimizes your marketing and sales team efforts. The team will be hitting the most promising companies but they still have to do the work of enticing the buying group contacts out of them, secure the meeting, set the hook, and then reel in the opportunity.

Top ABM Intent Misconceptions

There’s a lot of ambiguity and misinformation about ABM intent. Intent is a broad term that can refer to any behavior indicating an account’s interest in your products or services. This article focuses on various packaged intent data products collected from the web. Here are some common misconceptions:

1. ABM Intent Is Internet Search Data ABM intent data does not include a company’s web searches (e.g., Google or Bing). Search data is only available for targeting when advertising directly through the search providers.

2. ABM Intent Is Engagement Data Intent data products are sourced from external digital sources and resold. Your own website analytics, marketing responses, and sales interactions should be classified as engagement. While engagement is a valuable indicator of buying intent and interest, it should be kept separate from intent data products for clarity.

3. ABM Intent Reveals Contacts ABM intent data matches behavior to a company, not to individual contacts. Due to privacy regulations, a third party cannot disclose a named person’s web behavior without explicit consent and stringent privacy controls. Intent data is linked to a company, location, and possibly a buying group—a set of contact roles involved in the buying decision. In contrast, your own first-party engagement data can reveal specific individuals.

Intent Types

Understanding ABM intent data and how well it fits your marketing and sales needs requires understanding the types of intent, its sources, and the collection methods. No one intent product can capture all web behavior, each one captures a snapshot of company interest. Below are the most common types of intent with background on each.

Bid Stream Intent

What it is: Bid stream intent data is collected from real-time bidding (RTB) traffic, sourced from website publishers who accept programmatic display advertising (e.g., Washington Post, WSJ, NYT, Finance Asia, The Guardian). ABM platforms utilizing bid stream data can identify audience views of each published article as well as the keywords present. This intent signal is then cleansed, scored for context, and aggregated to the company to generate high-quality intent matches based on the content of the published pages.

Pros:

• Keywords: Ability to track the largest library of keywords even newly added keywords specific to your company and track the intent strength of views by company
• Scale: Collect hundreds of millions of intent signals across millions of companies

Cons:

• Sources: Keyword intent is primarily collected from general interest web publishers supported by display advertising with fewer specialized trade and industry sites represented
• Sensitivity: The high volume of processed intent data can overwhelm signals from smaller companies or those with limited keyword activity

Bid stream intent data provides the widest coverage, the largest scale, and the greatest flexibility in keyword selection, capturing the most intent data from more companies. However, bid stream intent can be too detailed and granular for new users of intent data. Additionally, if your products or services target a niche industry or small companies, bid stream intent may not be the best fit.

Co-Op Intent

What it is: Co-op intent data is collected from a network of partner websites that host content and blogs. This network includes several thousand partner sites where both the page content and company views are tracked. Intent is monitored against a predefined list of topics rather than individual keywords.

Pros:

• Ease of Use: Intent is categorized into a predefined list of topics with a score, making it easy to deploy and use.
• Sources: Intent data is sourced from a co-op of B2B content publishers, including blogs and trade publications that do not show ads and are not part of the bid stream.

Cons:

• Topics: The intent is limited to a predetermined set of topics, which might not offer the specificity or granularity necessary, and adding new topics is not easy.
• Scale: The number of websites is restricted to the traffic from the few thousand co-op partner sites, which limits the amount of intent data collected and the companies identified.

Co-op intent provides high-quality, scored intent data for its tracked topics, making it easy for marketing and sales teams to understand and use for company targeting. However, if you need more granularity beyond the predefined topic list to match your industry, or if you require visibility at the keyword level, co-op data may not be the best fit.

Syndicated Content and Review Site Intent

What it is: Syndicated content and review sites publish content across various industry categories and host reviews of products. These publishers track user behavior and content consumption to capture intent. They offer insights into company-level behavior, showing what content is being read and which companies are being researched. Review site intent data is the strongest indicator of "buying" intent because readers are often performing research and comparisons ahead of product purchases.

Pros:

• Quality: The content of these sites, and the generated intent, is focused on business and technology topics and readers

Cons:

• Sources: Content is often limited to specific technology products or industries, so the intent data generated may not apply to your specific products and services
• Scale: Intent data is collected from a single site or a small family of websites, limiting the amount of data and the number of companies identified

Syndicated content and review site intent deliver the clearest B2B buying signals when your products and services align with the content. However, if your products do not align with the site's focus, it may not be beneficial for your sales and marketing teams.

Sharing Tool Intent

What it is: Sharing tool intent data is collected from third-party applications or extensions that enable the rapid sharing of content, such as blog posts and articles. These tools allow users to easily share content with friends, co-workers, and professional networks. They track who shares the content, the recipient, metadata including the article title and description, and viewing statistics. This data is aggregated at the company level, stripping out individual contact information, and used to create intent data based on content views.

Pros:

• Keywords: You can select and dynamically add keywords, tracking "hits" for each keyword to understand specific interests.
• Low Signal: Each relevant keyword match is counted as a hit, making it easier to identify and act on intent signals from smaller companies or those with very low activity.

Cons:

• Scale: The volume of intent data and the number of companies identified will be lower, as these sharing tools are not universally distributed or used.
• Ease of Use: Interpreting what threshold of "hits" per company is actionable intent can be challenging

Summary: Sharing tool intent data supports tracking intent based on user-defined keywords and delivers "hits" that will show even the slightest activity. This makes sharing tool intent valuable for targeting highly specialized industries and smaller companies. However, the overall volume and variety of intent data collected will be lower than most other ABM intent providers with a higher volume of low intent, few hit, signals.

Intent Selection

When evaluating ABM intent providers, follow these steps:

1. Understand: Learn how intent data is collected, the sources of the intent, keyword/topic flexibility, and scoring methods.
2. Test: Request a trial with your keywords and target accounts. Review the usability of the intent along with both keyword and account coverage (i.e. percent coverage).
3. Consider: Focus on alignment with your products/services and the availability of intent tracking for your company list and keywords. Avoid evaluating intent by hits, views, users; each vendor will track and define these differently.
4. Select: Choose one or multiple intent products that together offer a comprehensive view of a company's interest. Multiple sources of intent can provide more coverage and a richer intent profile and data set.

Intent Use Cases

ABM intent data is a powerful tool that can be applied across various marketing and sales activities to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Here are some key use cases that demonstrate how intent data can drive better results:

Finding In-Market Accounts: Identify accounts actively researching your products or services to focus marketing and sales efforts on those accounts.

Advertising Optimization: Target and optimize ad placement on companies showing intent, ensuring higher engagement and better Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS).

Prioritizing Accounts: Rank and prioritize accounts based on their level of intent to focus sales efforts on the most promising leads

Identifying Cross-Sell and Upsell Opportunities: Uncover opportunities for cross-selling and upselling by analyzing intent data from current customers researching additional features or products.

Conclusion

ABM intent data is a transformative tool for modern marketing and sales teams, providing insights into which companies are interested in your products and services. By leveraging the most appropriate set of ABM intent data—such as bid stream, co-op, syndicated content, review site intent, and sharing tool intent—businesses can allocate resources more effectively, personalize outreach, and enhance overall efficiency. Evaluating intent data providers critically by understanding, testing, and selecting the best-fit intent ensures you choose the most effective data to drive better business results. Ultimately, intent data helps focus limited marketing and sales resources on the right companies at the right time, optimizing your ABM strategy for superior outcomes.