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The state of intent data in 2023 and beyond

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The state of intent data in 2023 and beyond

In B2B sales and marketing, intent has become an essential ingredient as salt and pepper are in cooking. You wholeheartedly believe it is required in every recipe, but you’re not always sure of the right amount or when to apply it.

With our increasing reliance on intent data and its broadening definition, now is a good time to assess the state of intent and plan on what might be ahead.

I tapped into a group of trusted B2B marketers to gain perspective on all things intent. In this article, we will: 

  • Sprinkle in knowledge gained from a recent roundtable with B2B marketing leaders on the data, tools and processes used in sales and marketing account-based go-to-market (GTM) motions. 
  • Get a broad view from three savvy data and intent executives who have seen a few things in building Michelin-rated worthy GTM strategies

Together, we can capture a snapshot of intent’s current state, understand the challenges and opportunities and preview what should be on the menu going forward. 

What is the number one value proposition of intent in today’s GTM efforts? 

Marketing is playing a larger, more proactive role in the buying-selling process. With B2B buyers and buying teams spending more time doing their research online and through peer networks, sales has less access to buyers. 

This big shift has thrust intent into the spotlight to identify and prioritize the right accounts to reach out to based on account and buyer behavior and, in turn, catapulting outbound sales and outreach as today’s number one intent use case. 

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Mike Burton, co-founder and head of commercial sales at intent industry pioneer Bombora, puts it this way:

“Because sales sit so close to revenue, intent data can galvanize action and increase sales productivity. This sales use case has a compound effect making other GTM functions more impactful including demand gen, SDRs and field marketers.”

Orchestrated timing between sales and marketing still remains a significant challenge, largely because of the data, tech and process silos that exist across departments.

Intent data is being relied on to integrate GTM motions and define roles across functions helping sales and marketing stay in sync and to identify the best opportunity accounts at the right time. 

Kerry Cunningham, director of research at revenue technology leader 6Sense, shares:

“Most buyers are researching your solution and don’t know your company or solution exists. Here’s the reality — you lose 100% of the deals you don’t compete for. The goal is to never miss an opportunity when your solution can solve a customer problem or fill a need.

Intent plays an essential role in exposing account timing and need to prioritize account and buyer engagement.”

Dig deeper: How to leverage intent and engagement in the buying cycle

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What can GTM leaders do now to get more value from intent signals?

Sales and marketing teams are not leveraging intent to its full value or potential yet. 

Beyond account identification and prioritization (timing), more GTM teams are starting to apply intent to identify and align buyer and account needs with contextual content and messaging. 

David Crane, VP of portfolio marketing and marketing chief of staff at intent aggregator Intentsify, says:

“If we boil down all the use cases across all the GTM functions that leverage intent data, the common denominator is efficiency.

“Rather than marketers, BDRs, sales pros and customer success reps having to spend valuable time and effort to understand buyers’ specific needs and pains, they can gain insights directly from intent signals.

“Done right, GTM teams can quickly supply buyers with the information they want (e.g., content, creative assets, talk tracks) when they need it.”

As more GTM teams adopt account-based tools and more effectively use their websites to implement and manage ABM programs, intent’s value is increasing. 

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More than a quarter of an ABM platform’s value is the intent data it generates to use in sales and marketing activities, according to Gartner.

When intent powers ABM tools and an organization’s webpages and these components are used together, marketers highlight the increased intelligence they can put to work resulting in higher conversions to sales opportunity and revenue. 

Cunningham emphatically states:

“The most valuable signals we don’t pay attention to are on your website. Only 3% of visitors fill out forms, so relying on this tactic is futile. Rather, deanonymizing traffic and using intent is the key to unlocking immediate opportunity. GTM teams need to harvest this info otherwise, you will waste all that marketing and sales time and effort.”

Dig deeper: Using intent as a unit of B2B campaign measurement

With the changing B2B buying-selling landscape, experts highlight that to get more value out of intent data investment, we must:

  • Focus on where and how to apply intent during the GTM process.
  • Collapse data and functional silos that leave big gaps. 

Bombora’s Burton cites two areas in his work across more than 650 customers: 

“The first is using intent for strategic planning. This means understanding what is happening across different cohorts of your total available market (TAM) and where your target accounts are in their buying stages.

The second is augmentation of first-party anonymous data, especially as third-party data becomes scarcer. We see leading organizations creating a first-party data mart and augmenting it with intent data. Having this info appended allows for precision targeting at scale.”

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Crane weighs in on what he is seeing across a rapidly growing Intentsify customer base: 

“First, GTM teams and the data science and ops teams that support them, need to get better about baking intent data into their GTM strategies from the start. Today, intent data is treated more like an after-market component that individual roles use but don’t always share across functions.

Secondly, GTM teams need to improve how they convert intent signals into actionable insights as well as their processes for quickly acting on those insights while the data is still relevant. These challenges are likely a consequence of difficulty in effectively leveraging multiple intent data sources, which we see more and more B2B teams focused on solving.”

Intent as marketing’s essential ingredient in GTM strategy

Intent data is seeing an unprecedented rate of adoption as B2B GTM teams focus on:

  • Efficiency and productivity internally.
  • Customer experience and engagement with buyers and accounts externally.

While outbound sales are the top use case today for intent as noted by our experts, we’re seeing marketing teams be the driver of activation. As Cunningham succinctly summarizes:

“Marketing’s job is to ensure organizations never miss out on an opportunity to compete for a deal; this is how marketing becomes indispensable!”


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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.



About The Author

Scott VaughanScott Vaughan

Scott Vaughan is a B2B CMO and go-to-market leader. After several CMO and business leadership roles, Scott is now an active advisor and consultant working with CMO, CXOs, Founders, and investors on business, marketing, product, and GTM strategies. He thrives in the B2B SaaS, tech, marketing, and revenue world.

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His passion is fueled by working in-market to create new levels of business and customer value for B2B organizations. His approach is influenced and driven by his diverse experience as a marketing leader, revenue driver, executive, market evangelist, speaker, and writer on all things marketing, technology, and business. He is drawn to disruptive solutions and to dynamic companies that need to transform.

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MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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MARKETING

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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MARKETING

More promotions and more layoffs

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More promotions and more layoffs

For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.

The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.

Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes

Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643. 

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Here are the median salaries by role:

  • Senior management $199,653
  • Director $157,776
  • Manager $99,510
  • Staff $89,126

Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.

One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%). 

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Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.

Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams

Employee turnover 

In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”

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Men and Women

Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540Screenshot 2024 03 21 124540

This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.

In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.

Methodology

The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents. 

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Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.

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