Modern go-to-market teams have the tools, data, and tactics their predecessors could only dream of. But if their timing isn't right, all of those advantages can quickly go out the window.
Prospects who love your product may not be ready to buy. Buyers who are in the market today probably haven't asked for a meeting. And those somewhere in the middle could be swayed, if you can reach them.
Intent data is the key that helps B2B sales and marketing leaders separate the ready from the rest. Intent shines a light on the digital signals that businesses generate as they move through the buyer's journey, giving GTM professionals a hyper-efficient way to target accounts that are getting ready to purchase.
Here's how to make the most of the intent data advantage, and how to distinguish the best B2B intent data provider for your business.
What Is Intent Data?
Intent data is market intelligence that identifies which accounts are actively researching solutions in your category right now. It captures digital signals like website visits, content downloads, search behavior, and product research activity to reveal who's in-market before they fill out a form or request a demo.
Common intent signals include:
Website visits: Pages viewed, time spent on site, and frequency of visits
Content downloads: Whitepapers, case studies, and guides accessed
Social media interactions: Engagement with relevant topics and industry discussions
Keyword searches: Terms used in search engines that signal buying intent
Types of Intent Data
Intent data falls into distinct categories, each revealing different aspects of buyer behavior. Understanding these types helps you build a complete picture of which accounts are in-market and ready to engage.
First-Party Intent Data
First-party intent data comes from your own digital properties: your website, CRM, and marketing automation platform. This data shows what specific pages a known prospect views, which content they download, and how they engage with your emails.
Examples of first-party intent signals include:
Pricing page visits: Direct signal of purchase consideration
Demo requests: High-intent action indicating active evaluation
Content downloads: Engagement with product-specific materials on your site
Email engagement: Opens, clicks, and responses to your outreach
First-party data only tracks known visitors already on your site. You miss accounts researching solutions elsewhere before they ever engage with your brand.
Third-Party Intent Data
Third-party intent data is gathered from external sources across the web: publisher networks, review sites like G2 and TrustRadius, and content syndication platforms. This data monitors browsing behavior elsewhere to reveal when a company is researching topics relevant to your business.
Third-party intent signals come from:
Review sites: Companies comparing solutions and reading user feedback
Publisher networks: Content consumption across industry publications
Content syndication: Whitepaper downloads and webinar attendance on third-party sites
Research platforms: Activity on analyst sites and industry forums
Third-party data catches accounts before they visit your site. You can engage earlier in the buying journey when they're still researching options.
Derived and Guided Intent
We think of intent data across a continuum of signal strength:
Derived intent signals are a mix of first-party and third-party signals. These offer insights into behaviors that indicate interest in a company, such as ad engagement, web activity, topic engagement, and technology use.
Known intent is what we like to think of as zero-party intent. ZoomInfo surveys millions of business professionals who are incentivized to share the key priorities, projects, and pain points at their companies. This zero-party intent is part of what makes our Scoops so powerful.
Guided intent looks at past performance to predict future conversions. ZoomInfo's guided intent identifies the intent topics that spiked for an account before they became an opportunity, giving you insights into topics to follow as you seek out new business.
Champion moves are one of the most actionable forms of intent data. ZoomInfo identifies buyers and power users who have moved and can influence future sales.
Each type of intent data brings a unique perspective to your go-to-market strategy. Use them in tandem to reach more buyers at the right time.
How Is Intent Data Collected?
Intent data is collected by tracking online behavior across publisher networks, review sites, and content platforms when prospects research products and solutions. Providers aggregate this activity to establish a baseline for each company's normal content consumption, then flag when engagement with specific topics spikes above that baseline.
To identify a spike, data vendors' algorithms typically factor in several indicators, including:
Amount of content consumed
Number of consumers
Types of content consumed
Time on page
Scroll speed
Intent data is often paired with firmographic and technographic data, along with other data which narrow the list of accounts to just those that are high-fit.
Why Intent Data Matters for B2B Sales and Marketing
Most prospective buyers aren't in-market at any given time. Intent data identifies the subset that's actively researching, allowing GTM teams to prioritize accounts showing buying signals over equally qualified accounts with no activity.
Sales and marketing teams can use intent data to:
Identify interest: Spot companies actively researching your solution before they fill out a form or engage with your team.
Build targeted lists: Dynamically filter outreach lists for accounts showing active buying signals.
Personalize outreach: Coordinate messaging across the entire buying journey based on real-time intent signals.
Streamline lead scoring: Weight your model with intent data to prioritize accounts demonstrating purchase interest.
Protect revenue: Monitor existing customer activity to identify pain points before renewal conversations.
Engage confidently: Use guided intent to target audiences with topics proven to drive conversion.
How to Activate Intent Data
Intent data becomes most valuable when it's embedded in every step of your go-to-market strategy. Here are key ways ZoomInfo can help your business incorporate intent data into your broader strategy:
Build a Strong Data Foundation
Intent data works best when combined with firmographic, demographic, and technographic data in a unified platform. This combination shows you which accounts in your TAM are high-fit and in-market right now.
Automate Workflows with Intent Signals
ZoomInfo Workflows automate repetitive tasks like CRM updates and sequence enrollment based on real-time intent triggers. When a target account spikes on relevant topics, your team can respond immediately without manual monitoring.
Launch GTM Plays at Scale
GTM Plays orchestrate coordinated sales and marketing campaigns triggered by intent signals. When an account shows buying interest, both teams engage automatically with the right message at the right time.
Leverage AI Sales Assistants
ZoomInfo Copilotsynthesizes intent data, buying signals, and account research to automatically prioritize accounts and recommend next actions. Sellers instantly see why an account is in-market and how to engage.
Challenges of Using Intent Data
Intent data delivers clear advantages, but it's not without obstacles. Teams often struggle to turn signals into action. Here are the most common challenges:
Signal noise: Not all intent signals carry equal weight. Low-quality data creates false positives, wasting time on accounts that aren't actually in-market.
Data freshness: Intent signals decay quickly. Stale data means you're reaching out to accounts that have already moved past their research phase or chosen a competitor.
Integration friction: Intent data that lives in a separate system from your CRM or marketing automation platform creates manual work and slows response time.
Actionability gaps: Raw intent signals don't tell you what to do next. Without clear guidance on messaging, timing, and channel, teams struggle to convert signals into pipeline.
The fix: choose an intent data provider that prioritizes data quality, delivers real-time signals, integrates directly with your existing tech stack, and provides activation capabilities that turn insights into orchestrated plays.
How to Choose an Intent Data Provider
Access to high-quality intent data can make or break any modern go-to-market strategy. When it comes to evaluating intent data providers, there are four priorities to consider:
Data Quality: Make sure that the intent data provider you choose has broad coverage and granular insights. Low-quality or inaccurate intent data will create more headaches for your business in the long term.
Available topics:When choosing an intent provider, make sure that the intent topics available to you out of the box are relevant to your business. Even better: the ability to create custom topics to track. Combine standard and custom intent topics to gain maximum visibility into the accounts most likely to convert, whether they're spiking in well-known industry themes or niche pain points only you solve.
Functionality: You'll want to be sure the intent data is updated regularly and can be customized over time as priorities change. Review your internal processes and identify the gaps that you'd like to close with intent data.
Platform: Intent data becomes much more valuable for your business when it's part of a go-to-market intelligence platform. This ensures the data integrates with every piece of your tech stack and can be used across the entire customer journey.
ZoomInfo offers both standard and custom intent topics. Subscribe to pre-defined topics to start monitoring buyer activity immediately, or build custom topics around the keywords and themes specific to your business.
ZoomInfo Intent is ranked number one on G2 and was named a Leader in B2B intent by Forrester.
Talk to our team to learn how ZoomInfo can help you operationalize intent data and take control of the conversation when your buyers are ready.