The early 2020s saw many businesses defaulting to the "spray and pray" approach—mass outreach without personalization. Back then, this method was widely adopted, but as inboxes became flooded with generic emails, it led to diminishing returns. Prospects were overwhelmed, and engagement rates dropped as businesses struggled to cut through the noise.
In response, the rise of more targeted sales strategies like Demand Generation, Account-Based Marketing (ABM), and Enterprise Lead Generation marked a shift. Rather than relying on broad, static data like company size or industry, these strategies began using intent data to gain insights into real-time buyer behavior. Instead of just knowing who a prospect is, intent data reveals what they’re doing—whether they’re engaging with content, researching competitors, or attending industry webinars.
By integrating intent data, companies can now open conversations at the right moment, transforming outreach from spammy to relevant. Intent data helps sales teams know when a buyer is ready to engage, allowing them to craft messaging that resonates with where the prospect is in their journey. This creates a more human, dynamic interaction—a crucial shift from previous methods.
Key Intent Categories:
Behavioral signals focus on the actions a prospect takes that show potential interest. These could include:
What types of articles, whitepapers, or videos are they engaging with?
Typically on LinkedIn, these cover actions such as liking, commenting, following, or even sharing posts. For example, if a prospect likes a post about your competitor's service, it could indicate interest in that solution.
These signals include changes in employment status, job promotions, and new hires. Tracking job signals helps identify when a decision-maker has changed roles, giving a timely opportunity to engage with prospects. Key examples include: When a prospect switches companies or roles, when a company is actively hiring for specific roles relevant to your product, etc.
Are they frequently using certain keywords or searching for specific topics that align with your offerings?
These insights provide a window into what matters most to the buyer and allow teams to target specific pain points and areas of interest.
Competitive signals come from prospects researching or engaging with competitors. Examples include:
Prospects visiting comparison or product review pages (e.g., G2, Trustpilot) to assess your solution against others.
Monitoring interactions, such as following or commenting on competitor posts, can give an early indication of interest.
For example, when a company posts a job offer requiring skills related to a competitor’s product, it could signal a transition or interest in a particular solution.
These signals can be used to adjust outreach strategies, offering alternative solutions and highlighting your unique value.
Web traffic signals cover more than just visits to your website. They include:
What specific product or pricing pages are prospects viewing on your website?
Are they visiting third-party review sites or engaging with content across industry blogs?
As web browsing merges with social engagement, interactions on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, or even forums can reveal buyer intent.
By tracking these signals, businesses can see when prospects are moving from initial research to the decision phase, enabling timely and relevant outreach.
These categories of intent data give sales teams powerful tools to shift from traditional broad-stroke outreach to highly focused, human-centered interactions. As you can see, integrating intent data helps businesses refine their messaging and approach, dramatically improving the effectiveness of sales and marketing efforts.
As we’ve seen, intent data opens doors that traditional sales strategies couldn’t unlock—timely, personalized engagement based on real buyer actions. But intent data is more than just a new trend in sales tech; it’s rapidly becoming the competitive edge businesses need to truly understand their prospects.
Unlike traditional data, which often lacks context and is quickly outdated, intent data captures live, human interactions, providing sales teams with actionable insights that are deeply connected to the buyer’s real-time behavior. In the next section, we’ll explore how leveraging intent data gives companies a unique advantage, allowing them to outpace competitors and meet prospects at the exact moment of interest.
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