Seventy-four percent of B2B marketers expect to see an increase in their 2024 marketing budgets, according to data from Forrester. 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 percent 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 percent of marketers, data quality is the biggest challenge when it comes to leveraging intent data. And yet, 67 percent 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 is the cost of low-quality intent data?
Using low-quality intent data is like using a broken compass to hike the Appalachian 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 is 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.
This kind of high-quality data empowers you to market the right messages, to the right audience, and at the right time. As a result, you can increase your chances for engagement and drive more conversions.
2. High-quality intent data helps you 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 a window into long-term trends and behaviours.
Understanding these trends is powerful for one important reason: It allows you to 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.
3. 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 “sell in” your campaign to 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?
