Sell with LinkedIn / Resources / Sales terms / Buyer intent
What is Buyer Intent?
How to Use Data to Identify More Target Customers and Boost Sales
In an ideal world, sales professionals could target customers who are researching their products or services at the moment when they intend to buy them. In reality, roughly 95% of a business’s target market is not looking to buy right away. Sales teams need the right tools and strategies to move those prospects from “out-market” to “in-market.”
Technology is already helping account teams identify and build relationships with prospective customers and accounts with high buyer intent. It’s achieved through using behavioral data analysis and insights.
In this post, we’ll explain what buyer intent is, how to use buyer intent data to boost sales, and which tools can help sales teams identify purchase behaviors.
Learn more about Buyer Intent:
What is buyer intent?
Buyer intent involves a set of actions that a prospective customer takes to research and decide which product or service they would like to purchase. Throughout the purchase funnel, B2B buyer intent behaviors can include:
Searching buyer intent keywords related to challenges and pain points
Clicking on an advertisement for a specific product, service
Downloading an ebook or report that answers buyer intent questions
Posting questions on social media to get recommendations from friends and colleagues
Visiting a website or company page to learn about a product or service
Viewing a sales rep’s social media page to learn about their industry expertise
Accepting an InMail request to learn more about a company, product, or service
Why is it important to understand buyer intent?
No one likes to be approached by a sales professional before they are ready or even thinking about buying something.
Thankfully, sales teams have behavioral data and insights to help them quickly identify a customer’s purchasing intent for a new product or service online.
They can then qualify and nurture that lead, using information about that customer’s specific needs or questions to offer the right solutions that eventually close a deal.
2 types of buyer intent
Active buyer intent
Next, they might research information related to that product or service using a search engine, follow a company page on social media, visit a branded website to learn more, and post questions to colleagues on social media to provide feedback about whether the product or service has worked well for them.
Sales teams must identify where a prospective customer is in their buyer’s journey, so they can provide the right information and resources to start a conversation and nurture the lead all the way through the purchase funnel.
For example, sales reps could send a personalized InMail message after a prospect has downloaded an ebook or followed their company page. Or ask a colleague to make a warm introduction to a social media connection.
Passive buyer intent
Passive buyers are customers who might already be using a competitive product or service but are unsatisfied with its features or customer support.
For example, they may complain about the product on social media or review sites. Or reach out to peers when shopping around for competitive solutions.
These customers may not intend to buy another option right away. However, having this information can help sales teams to approach passive-intent customers with an alternate solution.
It’s also an opportunity for sales teams to identify customers who might cancel their usage of a product or service and offer new solutions to avoid customer churn.
Strategies to identify B2B buyer intent
Sales organizations and individual professionals can profile and identify targeted customers using effective buyer-intent marketing strategies.
1. Create a buyer profile or persona
Start by creating a buyer profile or persona which outlines who an ideal customer is for a particular product or service. Common questions sales pros can ask to help build these personas include:
What industries and size of businesses will buy their specific product or service?
Are the buyers of that business CEOs, CFOs, directors, or middle managers?
Who at that organization can also influence decisions?
What are the common customer challenges and pain points that lead them to intend to buy a new product or service?
How can those challenges be translated into buyer intent keywords that a prospect might use to search for solutions?
How can a business address those pain points through lead generation content or brand awareness campaigns?
What are some reasons why a customer might be reluctant to buy?
What types of sales solutions and resources will help to ease their minds?
To understand a buyer persona better and discover what kinds of professionals are already visiting a brand’s website, businesses can use LinkedIn’s Website Demographics.
2. Analyze search engine queries
Next, account teams can analyze search engine queries to learn what types of questions those personas or customers might search for online.
Early in their buying journey, prospects will conduct generic queries about “best practices” or look for a “how-to guide” to help them with their challenges before researching specific brands that offer the right solutions.
For example, a customer may use the buyer intent search keywords: “Compliance training best practices” to learn more about onboarding new employees at their organization.
The top articles and web pages related to that keyword phrase, that are displayed on the first search engine results page (SERP), might inspire a sales organization to create custom, downloadable ebooks or blog posts to help address the questions “People also ask.” This content and advertising strategy will help to capture qualified leads for account teams to reach out to later.
Sales and marketing teams can also dig deeper by looking at the bottom of a search engine results page to discover other searches related to the original query.
These related search terms might help account teams create content that captures leads through ad campaigns. Likewise, they can identify customers with buyer intent through search terms used on social media, which we’ll look at next.
3. Monitor online conversations
A quick search on social media can help sales and marketing professionals identify prospective customers who are starting conversations related to buyer intent.
For example, a leader at an organization may post a comment on LinkedIn about how difficult it is to get employees to engage in compliance training. That comment is an excellent indication of buyer intent for the right solution provider.
Reading about customer challenges on social media can also help account teams develop resources to engage in a conversation about how a product or service might solve their pain points.
It’s also useful for account teams and sales pros to join industry-related groups on social media to see what kinds of conversations customers engage in around topics or keywords related to their specific industry.
4. Use buyer intent data software
Finally, businesses can use buyer intent data tools and software to uncover insights about specific buyer behaviors online.
Finally, businesses can use buyer intent data tools and software to uncover insights about specific buyer behaviors online.
Buyer intent data consists of online behavioral insights that help sellers identify and reach out to the right people, in the right accounts or at the right organizations, at the right time.
How can buyer intent data providers help sellers?
Buyer intent data software helps sellers identify buyers expressing interest in a product or service at each stage of their purchase journey.
For example, Sales Navigator is a real-time, first-party buyer intent data tool that helps sales professionals to create buyer personas of the target customers they care about most. It also identifies important actionable behaviors of those prospects such as:
- Following and frequently visiting a LinkedIn company page or website
Following or visiting a seller’s LinkedIn profile
- Completing a lead generation form through an ad
Accepting an InMail request
This information helps salespeople to quickly find the right customers when they are in-market to purchase a new product or service.
The table below further outlines what buyer intent data is accessible using Sales Navigator.
Company engagement
Following a company
Identity visible
LinkedIn Company page visits
Buyer profile visible
Employee interactions
Profile visits to self
Identity visible
New connection to self
Identity visible
New connection
in the company
Identity visible
Profile visits to sellers on contract, or visits to leadership
Buyer profile visible
Ads engagement
Lead generation form completion
Identity visible
LinkedIn ads engagement
Buyer profile visible
Outreach response
Accept InMail request to colleagues on contract
Identity visible for InMails from contact
Website visit
Company official website visits
Buyer profile visible
Three ways to use buyer intent data to boost sales
Sales professionals don’t like to waste time making spammy cold calls and sending impersonal emails. With buyer intent data, they can skip those steps and locate highly targeted individuals actively seeking and talking about their products and services online. Below are three ways to do so effectively.
1. Use buyer intent data for personalized marketing
By using quality buyer intent data, sales professionals can deliver customized, situational messaging – via ads, social media, and email – that resonates with the right buyers at the right moment in their buying cycle.
These buyers can be CEOs, executives, and key decision-makers actively sharing content, researching options, and expressing genuine product or service interests online.
2. Integrate buyer intent into social and solution-based content creation
As a sales professional learns more about key customer questions or pain points identified through buyer intent data, their marketing teams can integrate that information into their workstreams. This partnership between sales and marketing helps generate more qualified leads for inbound sales reps to work with.
Creating solution-based guides or ebooks tailored to a common buyer intent challenge will enable B2B sellers to offer a more tailored and valuable experience for prospects who are learning about the company for the first time.
It also showcases the company’s industry expertise, which increases a customer’s likelihood of buying from the brand.
3. Enhance customer service with buyer intent data
Finally, sales pros and account teams can use buyer intent data to tailor their customer service strategy to the needs of specific buyers who are showing interest in their products or services.
For example, they may discover decision-making buyers who have complained on social media that their current solution doesn’t offer 24/7 customer support. This knowledge can help them either improve their current service offering to help similar customers or promote the fact that their product already offers this support.
Watch the video to learn how Sales Navigator’s buyer intent data helps organizations deliver targeted and personalized outreach, integrated content, and enhanced customer service.
Identify more leads and close deals with buyer intent data
Technology is helping to change the purchase funnel process for B2B sales individuals and organizations.
Using buyer intent data tools and software like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, sales pros are empowered with deeper knowledge about their target customers’ pain points, product or service questions, and needs.
Intent data also helps to capture the right leads faster than ever – through personalized outreach and custom content – to nurture and close more deals and deliver better customer support.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help sales teams identify buyer intent using real-time, first-party data
Want to learn more about
Sales Navigator? Let us help:
Want to learn more about
Sales Navigator? Let us help:
