LinkedIn Intent Data: The Missing Ingredient in Your B2B Sales Strategy?

LinkedIn Intent Data: The Missing Ingredient in Your B2B Sales Strategy?

With over 900 million members across 200 countries and 4 out of 5 members driving business decisions, LinkedIn is a crucial platform for B2B sales and marketing teams. 97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation. But how can you ensure that your LinkedIn ads and marketing efforts are influencing conversions? 

Enter LinkedIn intent data.

LinkedIn intent data shows if a prospect has interacted with or shown interest in your LinkedIn ads, allowing you to gauge their likelihood of converting. In this article, we'll discuss how this data can benefit both marketing and sales teams, and how Factors can help you make the most of this valuable information.

TL;DR

• LinkedIn intent data reveal prospects' level of interest and engagement with ads.
• It helps illuminate the "dark funnel" of hidden interactions and potential leads.
• Benefits include audience segmentation, ad optimization, retargeting, and lead scoring.
• Marketers can use intent data to optimize campaigns and improve targeting.
• Sales teams can use intent data to prioritize high-intent accounts and personalize outreach.
• Factors is a tool that integrates LinkedIn intent data with CRM data for deeper insights.

What Is LinkedIn Intent Data?

LinkedIn intent data is a crucial piece of information that reveals the level of interest and engagement prospects have with your LinkedIn ads. By analyzing this data, you can gain valuable insights into the buyer's journey and identify potential leads who are more likely to convert. 

This information is vital in today's competitive B2B landscape, where understanding the preferences and needs of your target audience can significantly improve your sales and marketing efforts. 

Why Is LinkedIn Intent Data Important?

In B2B, the buyer's journey is often complex and multifaceted. Prospects interact with various touchpoints before making a purchase decision. Unfortunately, not all of these interactions are visible or easily tracked, leading to the existence of a "dark funnel."

What is the dark funnel?

The dark funnel is part of the buyer's journey where prospects have been exposed to your LinkedIn ads, content, or other marketing materials but haven't directly engaged with them or converted immediately. 

These “hidden” interactions can make it challenging to assess the true impact of your marketing efforts and identify valuable leads who may convert later in their journey.

How does Linkedin intent data help?

LinkedIn intent data illuminates the dark funnel by providing insights into prospects' level of interest and engagement with your ads, even if they haven't directly interacted with them. Here are a few ways in which it can help you gain a deeper understanding of the dark funnel:

• Segment your audience based on their intent data: By analyzing LinkedIn intent data, you can segment your audience into different categories based on their level of engagement and interest in your ads. This will help you create tailored account-based marketing campaigns that address the unique needs and preferences of each segment, increasing the chances of converting these prospects. For instance, if you run an e-learning platform, you can segment users who have engaged with your ads about coding courses and target them differently than users who’ve shown interest in a writing course.

• Optimize your ad creatives and targeting: Understanding the preferences of prospects within the dark funnel can help you optimize your LinkedIn ad creatives and targeting strategies to better resonate with your audience. Then, fine-tuning your ads based on intent data insights can improve the overall effectiveness of your marketing efforts. For example, if you find that prospects in the dark funnel are engaging more with video ads than image-based ads, you can allocate more budget to video ad campaigns and optimize targeting to reach more people likely to be interested in your product.

• Retarget potential leads: With this data at hand, you can retarget prospects with tailored content and offers. If a prospect has engaged with content about a particular product or service on your website, but didn't complete a purchase, you can retarget them with a special discount or offer, encouraging them to revisit your site and complete the transaction. 

• Enhance lead scoring and prioritization: By incorporating intent data, you may find that a group of people have engaged heavily with your ads and content, but haven't reached out directly yet. For instance, if you're a B2B software company, your sales team can reach out to prospects who've shown a high level of engagement with specific features of the software. They can demo the tool while keeping the focus of the conversation on the feature of interest.

LinkedIn Intent Data For Marketers: Unlock The Potential Of Your Ads

As marketers, we aim to reach the right audience, deliver a message that resonates with them, and ultimately drive conversions. Linkedin buyer intent data is highly valuable in achieving these objectives and gaining valuable insights into audience engagement. With this, you can optimize your LinkedIn marketing strategy in several ways:

• Know if ads are reaching the intended audience: Linkedin’s intent data gives you insights into who is interacting with your ads. This information is then curated in an account-level format so your ABM teams can filter accounts with the highest interest in buying your product or service.

• Optimize LinkedIn ads based on engagement: Analyzing LinkedIn intent data can tell which ad formats, visuals, and copy resonate most with your audience. You can then make data-driven decisions to optimize your ads, boosting engagement and conversion rates.

• Know which kind of ad copy resonates with the audience: By examining the intent data from different ad variations, you can identify the messaging that best captures your audience's attention. This empowers you to tailor your ad copy and creatives to better appeal to your target audience, leading to more clicks, higher engagement, and ultimately, more conversions.

• Combine LinkedIn intent data with third-party intent data for a holistic approach: By integrating this data with third-party intent data (from sources like G2, TrustRadius, etc.), you can create a more comprehensive understanding of your prospects' needs throughout their buying journey. This enables you to deliver targeted, relevant content and ads that address their pain points and move them closer to conversion.

How To Use LinkedIn Buyer Intent To Improve Pipeline Velocity

Pipeline velocity is a key performance indicator (KPI) for sales teams, as it measures the speed at which leads move through the sales funnel and ultimately convert into customers. Leveraging LinkedIn buyer intent data can significantly improve pipeline velocity by helping you prioritize high-intent accounts, personalize outreach, and align sales and marketing efforts. Here's how:

• Prioritize high-intent accounts for account-based marketing (ABM): LinkedIn buyer intent data can help sales and account-based marketing (ABM) teams identify high-intent accounts, those that have shown significant interest in your LinkedIn ads, and are more likely to convert into customers. By prioritizing these high-intent accounts, your team can focus its efforts on the most promising leads, increasing the chances of closing deals and improving overall pipeline velocity.

• Use intent data and deanonymization to personalize outreach: Using LinkedIn buyer intent data, you can tailor your sales outreach to the specific needs and interests of your prospects. Adding Factors to the mix, you can also deanonymize website traffic and know about the company and industry that they work in. With this, you can gain deeper insights into their pain points, preferences, and points of friction. This allows your sales team to craft personalized messages that address these concerns and demonstrate the value of your product or service, helping to move prospects through the sales funnel more quickly.

• Align sales and marketing based on intent data: Regularly analyzing LinkedIn buyer intent data can help you identify trends and patterns in your prospects' behavior, allowing you to optimize your sales and marketing tactics accordingly. This is also good for reporting on the effectiveness of campaigns. For example, you may discover that certain types of content or ad formats resonate better with your target audience, leading to higher engagement and faster movement through the sales funnel.

• Add intent data into CRM and marketing automation platforms: Integrating LinkedIn buyer intent data into your CRM and marketing automation platforms can help automate lead scoring, segmentation, and nurturing efforts based on prospects' engagement and intent. This allows your sales and marketing teams to efficiently focus their efforts on high-intent leads, ultimately improving pipeline velocity.

• Enhance Account Scoring: Incorporating LinkedIn buyer intent data into your account scoring methodology can provide a more accurate assessment of a prospect's likelihood to convert. The combination of data from multiple sources allows your sales and marketing teams to better score leads. Add to that Factors’ account scoring features, and you can automate your prioritization process for the teams too. 

Make The Most Of Your LinkedIn Intent Data with Factors

Leveraging buyer intent data from LinkedIn effectively can help you identify the users with the highest interest and modify your approach to better target the accounts. Factors enables you to maximize the potential of this data to drive results. Here's how:

1. Integrated data analysis

Factors helps combine Linkedin intent data with data from other sources, such as CRM platforms, ads, website, and more. This integrated approach enables you to gain a holistic understanding of your prospects' buyer journey, helping you identify high-intent accounts and optimize your marketing and sales strategies accordingly.

2. Visual user timelines for enhanced attribution

Factors offers a visual user timeline that lets you track and analyze your prospects' interactions with your LinkedIn ads over time. You can also view if the same user has interacted with your brand over other platforms or campaigns that you already track. This gives you a holistic view of an individual user's journey and engagement with your brand across multiple touchpoints.

3. Account intelligence

Factors' account intelligence capability allows users to identify anonymous companies visiting your website, along with their intent and firmographics. Your ABM teams can then personalize outreach by understanding their interactions with your content and ads to improve conversions. 

4. Optimize ad engagement and performance

Factors uses Linkedin ad engagement data and audience insights to help you optimize your Linkedin ad campaigns. Knowing which ads resonate with your target audience and generate the most engagement can help you refine your campaigns to maximize returns and drive conversions. You can also uncover the ad formats, content types, and messaging that resonate best with your target audience and increase the likelihood of conversions.

5. Account scoring

Factors' account scoring feature helps prioritize prospects based on their engagement and intent, enabling sales teams to focus their efforts on high-value targets. By combining intent data with firmographics, technographics, and engagement history, you can create a comprehensive account score that helps your sales team prioritize their efforts and focus on the most promising opportunities.

FAQs

1. How does LinkedIn calculate buyer intent?

LinkedIn calculates buyer intent by analyzing user engagement with your company's ads, content, and other interactions on the platform. This includes factors such as clicks, likes, comments, shares, and time spent viewing your content. By tracking these interactions, LinkedIn can identify which users are genuinely interested in your products or services, signaling potential buyer intent.

2. How can you use intent data for sales?

Intent data can be used by sales teams to prioritize high-intent accounts, personalize outreach efforts, align sales and marketing initiatives, optimize sales tactics, and enhance account scoring. By leveraging intent data, sales teams can focus their resources on the most promising leads, creating more targeted and effective sales strategies that drive revenue growth and improve pipeline velocity.

Bring the Power of LinkedIn Buyer Intent Data to B2B Sales

Leveraging LinkedIn buyer intent data can revolutionize your sales and marketing efforts, enabling you to prioritize high-intent accounts, personalize outreach, and align your teams for maximum impact. 

By using powerful tools like Factors, you can gain a comprehensive view of buyer journeys and make data-driven decisions to boost pipeline velocity and drive revenue growth. Don't miss out on valuable opportunities – uncover the potential of LinkedIn buyer intent data and elevate your B2B sales strategy today.