This article was updated 4th December 2024
Read time: 5 minutes
41% of B2B marketers expect to see an increase in their 2025 marketing budgets, according to data from SafeFrog. While this is welcome news, it comes with one important caveat: marketers must be prepared to continually prove a return on investment to C-Suite executives.
One way to prove this is through the use of intent data. In fact, almost half of B2B leaders believe intent data is vital to their revenue strategy. Moreover, 55% of organisations have seen positive results after using it.
But (and here’s the important part), intent data is only valuable if it’s high in quality.
For 56% of marketers, data quality is the biggest challenge when it comes to leveraging intent data. And yet, 67% believe it’s their most important marketing attribute.
Here’s how you can use high-quality intent data to make the most of your marketing budget.
What's the cost of low-quality intent data?
Using low-quality intent data is like using a broken compass to hike a trail. It’s unreliable, it’ll lead you astray and it’ll cost you time and money to get back on track.
A few tried and true ways to identify low-quality data include:
- Data from third-party sources: Third-party intent data can’t be trusted. It can be riddled with inaccuracies and often lacks the compliance required to deem it usable for lead targeting.
- Data based on signals, not intent: There's a stark difference between intent signals and actual high-intent data. Google Search activity, for example, is often misconstrued as “intent” when, in reality, it’s only a small signal that contributes to the larger story.
- Unverified information: Mistyped email addresses and personal information are useless. Without verifying the data you’re collecting, how can you determine if it's high quality?
Relying on low-quality intent data for your lead nurturing efforts is a quick way to make little progress. Ultimately, you’ll struggle to generate demand, convert leads and create more paying customers.
How data accuracy improves your marketing ROI
High-quality intent data contains detailed, actionable, lower-funnel signals from an audience of actual buyers. And it’s by targeting these buyers that you can begin to maximise your marketing ROI.
Here are a few ways data accuracy can do this:
1. Accurate data lets you nurture the right leads
Quite simply, accurate and reliable intent data lets you nurture targeted leads who are intentionally looking for the product or service you offer, rather than prospects who still have some way to go before they're ready to purchase from you.
This kind of high-quality data empowers you to market the right messages to the right audience at the right time. As a result, you can increase your chances of engaging prospects and drive more conversions.
2. High-quality data helps you minimise wasted resources
With high-quality, accurate intent data, you can not only tailor your messages to the specific needs and preferences of your audience, but also save valuable time on prospects that simply aren't interested in your products or services.
By understanding the intent behind your audience's actions and analysing the right metrics, you and your sales team can focus your efforts on the potential customers that are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. This means you can allocate your resources more efficiently and optimise the performance of your marketing strategies.
3. Quality intent data fuels personalisation
Personalisation isn't just required to win over customers - it's expected in today's B2B marketplace across multiple channels. According to research, almost three-quarters (72%) of B2B customers want personalised communications when using a brand's products and services.
Intent data can deliver the insights and analytics you need to provide relevant, timely messages that resonate with customers and have a meaningful impact. In fact, according to our research, 38% of B2B marketers are already making use of intent data to fuel their personalisation efforts.
4. Accurate intent data can identify trends and behaviours
High-quality intent data is a great way to learn about each individual prospect that comes into contact with your business. On a larger scale, however, it also provides you with a window into long-term trends and behaviours.
Understanding these trends is powerful for one important reason: forecasting. With intent data, you can accurately forecast your marketing return prior to spending any money. If, for example, you see visible declines in engagement between mid-December and mid-January due to seasonality, you can proactively adjust your budgets to ensure as little wastage as possible.
5. Data accuracy helps you reduce bounce rates
Finally, the best high-quality intent data is always verified by both machine and human experts. This means that you can spend money targeting an audience and rest assured that each person’s contact details are completely correct.
Having this kind of confidence in your data not only limits the impact on things like email bounce rates, it also allows you to get buy-in from the C-Suite and, if needed, secure further investment.
High-quality data guarantees a healthy lead funnel
To maximise your marketing budget and prove your ROI to your C-Suite, you need to know everything about who you intend to target. To achieve this, you and your team must rely exclusively on high-quality intent data that’s intended for your business (see what we did there?).
Our proprietary intent data platform, Pelago, is exactly the kind of tool that helps you with this. We equip your team with a pool of high-intent leads so you can confidently go to market and make the most out of your budget. Oh, and did we mention we do this with a 95%+ degree of accuracy?
