Recognize When Your Customers are Ready to Buy, Long Before They Ever Tell You (Part 2)

Customer buying or “intent” signals have been around for a long time. With an abundance of online information available to potential buyers, it has become seemingly harder for sellers to know when a buyer is interested in their product – and often they find out too late. Fortunately potential buyers leave behind a number of clues across multiple channels and these data points have become the foundation for B2B marketers and sales teams to keep abreast of prospects’ intentions.

While this type of data is already being captured by marketing and sales organizations, it remains an under-utilized asset. It may be an increase in service calls or an uptick in visits to a particular product landing page. Both of these are “first-party” data points that are either actively being captured or interpreted as changes in customer behavior that may indicate that an existing customer could be considering a new purchase, or possibly switching to a competitor’s offering. By mining this data wisely, you can ensure that you are meeting your customers’ needs and addressing any concerns before it’s too late.

Beyond just internal sources, there is additional information you can collect from traditional data compilers that indicate when a customer or prospect is growing. This can include the addition of new offices, postings of new jobs, or simply the reporting of an increase in revenues via earnings reports. Add this to your internal data and you’ve got a great starting place to pinpoint which customers should be labeled as “high priority” or even which ones may be considering a competitive offering.

There is another new frontier to consider: third party content consumption. Now marketers can get a view into what topics customers are reading about and searching for as they consider purchase options. This information adds another dimension to prospect prioritization and content alignment—knowing what topics a prospect is searching for, and when they’re searching for it, can re-shape how marketing and sales teams focus their resources and deliver their messaging.

Combining these data sources and intent signals with customer profiling and segmentation activities is key to keeping up with your customers, getting ahead of your competitors, and winning the next deal. If you want to see it in action, take a tour of our Stringer platform which shows sales and marketing teams what content and messaging moves contacts across the buying journey, and provides visibility into sales activities across the customer lifecycle.

Follow along with part 3 of the series!