Why Buyer Intent is Bullsh*t
And so are all of the tools that sell it. 🫢
I previously wrote about this on LinkedIn but in case you didn’t see it, here’s what’s important to know.
True intent is first party or zero party data.
Zero party data is data customers intentionally and proactively share with a company, for example: filling out a survey or profile information
First party data is data customers share when it is collected through direct interactions such as download of an ebook or a form fill of any kind.
The rest of it is “implied intent” and it’s far from accurate because it’s usually third party data, which is around 50-60% accurate on average.
👉First party intent data is when someone downloads a Buyer’s Guide from your site.
👉It’s when they’ve visited multiple high-intent pages in a single session (like pricing, ToS, product/solution pages/ROI calculators).
👉It’s when multiple decision makers from the same company visit your site’s high intent pages
👉It’s when they’ve raised their hand and tell you they are interested in a demo. (which can be demo form/AI agent/chatbot convo)
👉It’s when they’ve signed up for a free trial.
❌It’s not when they’ve searched for supposed keywords.
❌It’s not when they’ve downloaded 5 ebooks.
❌It’s not when they came to your webinar and it’s not when they came to your event.
❌It’s definitely not when they commented or liked your social posts.
All of those ❌s are data points but they don’t mean anything.
Even collectively, they do not mean anything unless they are paired with a first party intent signal.
This is why lead scoring gets such a bad rap. If we marketers scored on things that mattered then the leads would be higher quality and sales would trust marketing more.
You don’t need intent data to outbound.
You need a focused ICP and first/zero party intent data.
Hand-Raiser MQL to SQL Conversion: ~40% to 60%
Lead-Scored MQL to SQL Conversion: ~10% to 25%
Hand-raisers outperform lead scored MQLs by 2-4x, which is why sales is always wanting to talk to those leads first.