Purchase Intent Data: How to Use Data to Identify Quality Leads

What is Purchase Intent??

Purchase intent, or buyer intent, is a measurement and analysis of how likely customers are to purchase your service or product within a given timeframe. It specifies which of your customers are most likely to buy from you.?

To illustrate with an example, let’s imagine that a customer is considering buying an MLOps solution . When does that idea turn into a more certain intent to buy? Well, that depends on where along their customer journey the customer finds themself.?

There are a few behavioral indicators that can show an intent to purchase:

• How engaged someone is with your social media posts
• Visits to your website product and pricing pages
• Visits to your customer reviews page (if you have one)
• Whether they read particular blog articles on your website
• How often they visit and what they do?
• Whether they download a template, an eBook, or other content from your site

Basically, purchase intent data is a series of behavioral indicators that show you when a customer is genuinely considering purchasing a product or service that you offer.

Exploring the Elements of the Customer Journey

It’s crucial to grasp the customer journey to leverage purchase intent data effectively. This journey can be distilled into four key steps:

Step 1: Becoming aware of their needs

In this first step of the customer journey, the customer realizes that they need to acquire some product or other. Perhaps they come to the conclusion that their online phone systems need to be updated. Or perhaps they feel cold and realize that the dog has chewed up their existing wool sweater. This stage is that first inkling of a hint at a sale.?

Step 2: Doing some research

Now that the customer is aware of what they need, the next step in their customer journey is to do some research. Who offers the best value for money? Which company has the best reputation and customer service??

Coding software customers might peruse different websites and catalogs, ask the advice of friends and family, Google things like “what is PySpark used for ” to find out more about how this product can be useful to them, or see what reviewers on YouTube advise. The point here is to inform the customer’s decision-making process through research.?

At this point, the purchase intent is still in the weaker, earlier stages. The customer has not yet decided which company to buy from. This is a crucial point where your marketing skills can make the difference between a sale and a pass.?

Step 3: Evaluating the products or services available

At the point where the customer has researched enough for their purposes, they reach the intent step, which is when they can evaluate the products available to them. This means that they are able to make a choice from the options in front of them. Purchase intent is solidified, and your data can show you whether the customer is considering choosing one of your products or services.

Step 4: Turning intent into action (aka purchasing)

The final step of your customer journey is when the customer decides to buy your service or product. This might be quick, or it might take a while, and there is always the chance that they’ll change their mind at the very last minute. This is when you need information about things like how much the customer intends to spend so that you can meet their needs.

If your customer hits a pain point, they might jump ship, or delay their purchase. It’s a complex process. Knowing where they are and how likely they are to buy from you at any given point will help you to manage your interactions with your customers.

Understanding Purchase Intent with Surveys

Along with monitoring online activity, you can also be more proactive in your endeavors to understand your customers and how likely they are to buy from you in the coming months. You can create and distribute surveys in order to hone in on where the customers are along their journey. You can also see what’s bringing people to a purchase.?

Here are a few survey ideas:?

• Ad surveys: With the costs of advertising being what they are, it’s vital to spend your marketing budget wisely. By gathering data about your ads (their impact on your customers), you can figure out which ads are nudging customers towards a purchase, and why.?You can test different messages with a pilot group to see which ones are the most effective, and figure out how to create advertising campaigns with the power to generate purchasing intent.??

• Product surveys. These surveys can help you to gather insights from customers about purchase intent. You could offer your customers a free trial of a product, for example, a unique branded .io domain name, in exchange for feedback about what they did and didn’t like about it.?A product testing survey can help you on multiple levels – first, you get feedback about pain points for the customer . Secondly, you get an idea of how likely they are to purchase the product or pay for a subscription.?
• Satisfaction surveys. Customer satisfaction surveys hone in on the loyalty aspect of sales. Since loyal customers tend to spend more money than new customers, you can use surveys to determine your customers’ purchase intent. Customer satisfaction surveys can help you gauge how satisfied people are with your brand and/or product and/or service.?This can then inform you of the chances of those customers making another purchase in the near future.?
• Brand tracking. Last but not least, brand tracking surveys simultaneously monitor various aspects of your brand’s strengths. It monitors brand usage, consumption, reputation, awareness, and image. If your customers have a positive perception of your brand, this increases the likelihood that they’ll make a purchase from you.?As brand image and perception can fluctuate a lot, you want to keep your finger on the pulse to monitor your brand’s health.?

Using First and Third-Party Purchase Intent Data

While surveys are a very direct and active way to collect data, you can also get information more passively using first and third-party streaming data collected continuously. We’ll delve into this a little more deeply here.

First-party data is collected directly by analyzing your website’s traffic, engagement activities, sales, and responses to your marketing efforts. You can use tools like customer relationship management systems, tracking tools, email marketing software, and website analytics to gather your internal purchase intent data.

An invaluable tool is Google Analytics. This allows you to check your website traffic and is full of intent data that can assist you when it comes to generating leads and developing marketing strategies. You can see how a customer’s journey progresses from the moment they land on your homepage. Where do they go next? What path leads to a sale? Where are the pain points??

First-party purchase intent data lets you see how your customers interact with your brand online and via email. This data helps you see your marketing campaigns’ success and why.?

Another option is to use third-party purchase intent data. Various companies use third-party software to collect data and run analytics while adhering to rules and regulations surrounding data sharing and processing.

You can use third-party data if you don’t have the resources, time, or skills in-house to work through bronze-silver-gold data layers. This allows your team to focus on analyzing purchase intent data rather than trying to collect it. You can focus on generating leads by already having the information about which customers intend to purchase from your brand.

You can pool your efforts towards responding to the behaviors and signals of your customers.?

Putting Your Purchase Intent Data to Work?

Once you have collected your purchase intent data, it’s time to use it to your advantage. Here are a few ideas on how to do just that:?

1. Personalized marketing strategies

You can use your purchase intent data for personalized marketing campaigns to improve your customer engagement and retention rates and speed up the sales cycle. If you can, applying a personalized, individual accounts-based approach to your marketing strategies will allow for greater customization to meet your specific customers’ needs.?

You can also improve your retention rates since offering the specific angle and solution that resonates with your customer is another way to offer great service.?

2. Purchase intent keywords

You can narrow down some keywords related to purchase intent that your target audience uses. You can then integrate these keywords into your SEO (search engine optimization) strategies.

When your potential customers use purchase intent keywords, you know that they are likely close to buying a specific product or service. Used correctly, these keywords can help your SEO and marketing campaigns lead to quick sales and boost your return on investment.?

3. Targeted advertising

If you know your customers’ purchase intent, you can then develop intent-based marketing strategies. Intent-based ads are a great cost-efficient choice since you know that they are likely to reach your customers–they’re already on the brink of a purchase!?

Intent-based ads, whether sent via email or shared through social media, are likely to increase engagement and response rates and resonate with your audience. Additionally, consider leveraging a social media kit to streamline your social media advertising efforts and reach potential customers who are on the verge of making a purchase.

You can determine the right customers to target by looking at their online behavior and buying intent and delivering content relevant to them. This will encourage them to move along their customer journey.?

4. Look at your sales funnel

You also want to look at your sales funnel to see which of your leads look most likely to purchase. Some may be more geared towards information gathering, others more towards transactions. Transactional intent is when the customer wants to purchase but is still investigating their options.?

They might be putting things in and out of their basket, double-checking prices, or looking at reviews. People exhibiting purchase intent are closer to the point of purchase. If you can ascertain the stage people are at in their buying process, you can implement more efficient marketing techniques in order to generate revenue in the immediate and longer term.?

5. Develop a lead scoring system

When you have your leads sorted, you can then develop a lead scoring system to assess them in terms of where they are on their customer journey. This can include various factors, such as engagement, price points, whether someone is a returning customer, and anything else that you think is relevant to your business.?

You can use purchase intent data to analyze and understand your customers’ behavior on your company website. You can then use this information to compare historical behavior with current behavior to determine which leads are most likely to make a purchase choice soon.?

Wrap Up

Purchase intent data can be collected directly by your company through the likes of Google Analytics and processes in-house, or by a third party. Once you have your purchase intent data, you can use it to choose the best SEO keywords for your customers, categorize your audience by most to least likely to purchase, and personalize marketing efforts.?

Learning about the customer journey is vital, as is occasionally asking customers directly how they feel about different aspects of your service via good old-fashioned surveys.?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pohan Lin, Senior Web Marketing and Localizations Manager

Pohan Lin is the Senior Web Marketing and Localizations Manager at Databricks , a global Data and AI provider connecting the features of data warehouses and data lakes to create lakehouse architecture. With over 18 years of experience in web marketing, online SaaS business, and eCommerce growth, Pohan is passionate about innovation and is dedicated to communicating the significant impact data has in marketing. Pohan Lin has also written for domains such as BigCommerce .