How Intent Data Works
Intent data comes in two primary forms: first-party intent (behavioral signals collected on your own digital properties — pages visited, pricing page views, content downloads, repeat website visits) and third-party intent (off-site research signals aggregated by data cooperative networks). Bombora is the dominant third-party intent provider, aggregating content consumption data from over 5,000 B2B publisher sites. When an account's employees consume significantly more content on a given topic than their historical baseline, Bombora flags a "surge" — a statistically significant in-market signal. G2 Buyer Intent and TechTarget Priority Engine add review-site and editorial network signals respectively. Because of privacy constraints, intent data is almost always delivered at the account level rather than the individual level.
Why Intent Data Matters for B2B Marketing
The strategic value of intent data is timing: it surfaces accounts during their research phase, before competitors earn their first demo meeting. SiriusDecisions research established that 67% of the B2B buyer journey is complete before a prospect contacts a vendor. Intent data lets marketers intervene in that silent majority of the journey. For ABM programs, intent surge scores are the primary trigger for escalating an account from passive awareness nurture to active SDR outreach — eliminating wasted effort on non-in-market accounts and concentrating sales energy where it will have the most impact.
Intent Data: Best Practices & Strategic Application
Activating intent data across three channels simultaneously maximizes pipeline lift. First, upload surging account lists to LinkedIn as company-targeted Matched Audiences for sponsored content. Second, push the same lists to your DSP or programmatic platform (StackAdapt, The Trade Desk, or your ABM platform) to serve personalized display ads. Third, automatically enrich surging accounts in your CRM and trigger SDR outreach sequences via Outreach or Salesloft. Refresh intent lists weekly to add newly surging accounts and remove accounts whose surge scores have decayed. Combining Bombora topic scores with first-party engagement scores produces a composite in-market signal that outperforms either source alone.
Agency Perspective: Intent Data in Practice
Intent data subscriptions typically run $2,000-$15,000 per month depending on coverage depth and account universe size. At those price points, the investment pays for itself when even a single accelerated deal closes one quarter earlier than it otherwise would have. The key insight we share with clients is that intent data does not replace outbound sales activity — it sequences it. Cold outreach to a non-surging account is 5-10x less likely to generate a reply than outreach triggered by a fresh surge signal for the same account.
