How to Use Intent Data to Build Lead Lists

In today’s competitive B2B landscape, building high-quality lead lists is crucial for sales and marketing success. Traditional list building methods often result in generic, low-quality leads that waste time and resources. However, by leveraging intent data, businesses can create targeted, high-converting lead lists that support outreach efforts and drive results. This article will explore strategies for using intent data effectively to build powerful lead lists that fuel your sales and marketing efforts.

Fundamentals of List Building

List building is a cornerstone of successful B2B sales and marketing strategies. Typically, list building involves buying leads — but that’s not necessarily considered a best practice anymore. In the last decade or so, building lists has become a much more comprehensive process that involves identifying and compiling information about potential customers who fit within your target audience and are likely to be interested in your products or services. A well-crafted lead list is the foundation for targeted outreach, personalized marketing campaigns, and efficient sales processes.

What Makes a Solid Lead List

A solid lead list goes beyond basic contact information that can be purchased. A quality lead list should include:

1. Accurate and up-to-date contact details
2. Relevant firmographic data (company size, industry, location)
3. In-depth technographic data
4. Information on key decision-makers
5. Indicators of buying intent or potential interest

Quality lead lists enable sales and marketing teams to focus their efforts on prospects with the highest likelihood of conversion, ultimately improving ROI and accelerating the sales cycle.

Common Tactics for Creating Lists

Traditionally, sales teams have relied on mixed methods to build lead lists, with varying degrees of success. Though these tactics often produce abundant lists with basic contact information, they oftentimes encourage focusing on low-quality leads.

Some common tactics for creating lists can include:

• Purchasing pre-made lists. While convenient, companies that sell lead lists often focus more on volume than quality. It can be a major challenge to evaluate if purchasing leads will be fruitful or frustrating.
• Manual research. Many organizations comb through LinkedIn, directories, and professional websites to build their own lead list. This approach is time-consuming but can yield high-quality leads if done correctly.
• Website form submissions. Inbound marketing has created an entirely new method for mining existing customer data to build highly-targeted lead lists. By utilizing your own site and creating offers in exchange for information or helpful content, you can capture interested prospects. This is a long-term approach that’s typically supplemented by other lead generation efforts.
• Trade shows and events. In-person networking events provide a valuable opportunity to meet new leads, but this method is limited in scale.

While these methods can certainly be effective, they often fall short in providing the depth and accuracy needed for truly impactful lead generation. That said, each of these strategies can be substantially more successful when you have another tool in your arsenal — and that’s intent data.

How Intent Data Helps You Pinpoint Quality Leads

Intent data has revolutionized the way businesses identify and target potential customers. By analyzing online behaviors and content consumption patterns, intent data provides valuable insights into a prospect’s interests, challenges, and buying intentions.

Intent data captures signals that indicate a prospect’s likelihood to make a purchase decision. These signals can include:

• Website visits to product pages or pricing information
• Engagement with specific content topics
• Attendance at relevant webinars or virtual events
• Downloads of white papers or case studies
• Searches for industry-specific keywords

Depending on the solution you use to source intent data, you can dive even deeper into buying insights. By aggregating and analyzing these signals, intent data platforms like Predictiv Data can identify companies and individuals actively researching solutions similar to yours.

Benefits of Using Intent Data for Lead Lists

Intent data allows businesses to move beyond traditional list-building methods that often yield generic leads. Instead of pursuing leads blindly, with intent insights, organizations can focus on prospects actively researching and showing interest in solutions similar to theirs. This targeted approach increases engagement over time, leading to higher conversion rates in the future.

Below are some key benefits of using intent data points to build your lead lists:

1. Improved targeting. Focus on prospects who have demonstrated genuine interest in your offerings.
2. Higher conversion rates. Reach out to leads when they are most likely to be receptive to your message.
3. Efficient resource allocation. Prioritize efforts on high-potential leads, saving time and budget.
4. Personalized outreach. Tailor your messaging based on the specific topics and pain points prospects are researching.
5. Competitive advantage. Identify opportunities to engage prospects who are evaluating your competitors.

Tips for Using Intent Data to Build a Lead List

So you’re all in on using intent data to build your next lead list and accelerate your pipeline — but how do you get started? To maximize the effectiveness of intent data in your lead list building efforts, consider the following tips:

1. Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Before leveraging intent data, it’s crucial to clearly define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This foundational step ensures that you’re targeting the right prospects and maximizing the value of your intent data. Your ICP should be a detailed description of the type of company that would benefit most from your products or services and is most likely to become a high-value, long-term customer.

Start by analyzing your current best customers. Look for common characteristics such as:

• Company size (employee count and revenue)
• Industry or vertical
• Geographic location
• Technological infrastructure
• Business model (B2B, B2C, hybrid)
• Growth stage
• Common pain points or challenges

If you’re looking for a place to start, consider these essential B2B data points.

Once you’ve compiled this information, create a comprehensive ICP document that outlines these key attributes. This profile will serve as a filter for your intent data, allowing you to focus on signals from companies and individuals that closely match your ideal customer.

2. Select Your Intent Data Provider

The intent data platform you choose can make a huge difference in how successful you are in reaching the right buyers at the right time. When selecting an intent provider, consider factors like what kind of signals you can analyze, accuracy of lead information, and sourcing of lead data.

Predictiv Data is an intuitive platform that offers unparalleled insights into business leads’ buying behavior. With Predictiv, you can rest easy knowing:

• All the data you can access within our platform is routinely cleaned to ensure you always have quality, accurate lead information.
• We source data ourselves and deepen our intelligence through partnerships with LeadSift and Bombora.
• You can access hundreds of other data points to paint a better picture of each lead before adding them to a list.

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3. Identify Key Intent Signals

Determine which intent signals strongly indicate buying behavior for your specific products or services. This may include searches for industry-specific keywords, engagement with content related to your solutions, or even visits to competitor websites or comparison pages. Different platforms will grant you access to different intent signals, and different buyers will demonstrate different behaviors to indicate their interest.

4. Combine Intent Data with Other Data Sources

Intent data is hugely beneficial for understanding buying impulses, but alone, it won’t get you very far. Enhance the power of intent data by integrating it with other B2B data sources such as:

• Demographics (Contact info, job titles, etc.)
• Firmographic information (Size of company, industry, etc.)
• Technographic data (Network infrastructure, software used, etc.)
• Historical engagement data (Interactions on website, social media engagement, etc.)

This holistic approach provides a more comprehensive view of potential leads and their likelihood to convert.

5. Prioritize Leads Based on Intent Strength

Not all intent signals are created equal. Develop a scoring system that weighs different signals based on their relevance and strength. For example:

Use this scoring system to prioritize leads and allocate resources accordingly. At Predictiv, we implement a unified intent scoring system that synthesizes first and third party data to give you unparalleled insights into your ideal buyers. It might be difficult at first to know which signals should be worth more, but over time, you can analyze which signals translated to most closed deals, and you can refine your scoring system.

5. Implement a Timely Follow-up Process

Intent data is time-sensitive. Establish a process for quickly acting on high-intent signals to engage prospects while their interest is at its peak. This is when a CRM integration can be your best friend so you can configure custom workflows that alert you when you should reach out to a prospect.

6. Continuously Refine Your Approach

Like all sales and marketing efforts, list building isn’t static — you have to keep your lead list fresh. Regularly analyze the performance of your intent-based lead lists and refine your criteria and processes. This iterative approach will help you improve the quality and effectiveness of your lists over time.

Build the Best Lead Lists with Predictiv Data

Predictiv Data offers a cutting-edge intent data solution that empowers businesses to build high-quality, targeted lead lists. Our platform aggregates and analyzes billions of intent signals across the web, providing unparalleled insights into buyer behavior and purchase intent. And that’s not all. Within our platform, you can access hundreds of demographics, firmographics, and technographics to deepen your research and create lists that are highly tailored to your ICPs.

With Predictiv Data, you can:

• Access real-time intent data from millions of companies
• Identify in-market buyers across various industries and segments
• Customize intent models to align with your specific offerings
• Integrate intent data seamlessly into your existing sales and marketing workflows

Try our sales and lead intelligence platform free today!