What Demandbase Intent Data Gets Right (And Where it Falls Short)

You’ve got a secret admirer. Someone who thinks you’re really cool, and wants to get to know you better. 

They keep checking your website, researching keywords related to your brand, and even reading your content.

But all those little hints? They’re signed “anonymous.”

An ABM platform like Demandbase is a tool you can use to unmask your secret admirers and talk to them.

Aside from being an overall account intelligence and GTM tool, Demandbase gives you intent data based on the web activity of your target accounts.

Of course, knowing about an account is great—but it’s only a first step. You still need to discover who within that account is interested.

Let’s talk about what you can get from using Demandbase intent data, and how you can complement this with an even deeper understanding of your target audience.

Demandbase collects intent signals from three primary places:

• First-party behavior on your own website and in your CRM. This could include page views, form fills, content downloads, and other activity.
• Third-party intent data from its data partners and bidstream data from B2B publications (including Forbes, Fortune, Fast Company, and others).
• Integrated intent data from other tools, such as Bombora, G2, TrustRadius, and more.

This means you can see which accounts are engaging on your site, while also seeing what keywords they’re researching, where they’re looking for information, and what they’re interested in across the web.

To use it, add your relevant keywords and Demandbase’s mix of AI and natural language processing will look for the right context, find the highest-quality keywords with strong intent, and show you which accounts are engaging with those keywords.

Once that’s done, you can see a list of accounts with high engagement activity in your relevant keywords, or look at a list of keywords to see which accounts were researching the highest-intent terms.

Most users love Demandbase’s tool as a whole, but here are three things people consistently complain about when it comes to their intent data.

The biggest gap? Intent data only goes as deep as the account. It doesn’t show each prospect’s name and title, so you don’t get intent data at the contact level.

While Demandbase gives you a lot of information, there’s very little direction out of the box on how to use this data in your workflows, which can be overwhelming for some users.

Also, remember that a tool as big as Demandbase takes a long time to learn and get value from. In fact, data from real user reviews shows that it takes about two months to implement the tool into your workflow, plus the time it takes for your team to start using it regularly.

From setting up campaigns to creating lists and setting up dashboards, it’s not a tool you can get started with right away without Demandbase’s support team.

In some cases, you may need external help to get the tool set up.

Let’s talk about three ways ABM teams typically put Demandbase intent data to work—and where a contact-level layer (like Influ2) can help close the gaps:

Teams use Demandbase to:

• Build account lists using ICP criteria (like firmographics and technographics) combined with relevant keyword searches.
• Overlay that third-party data with first-party data to identify the accounts that are searching your website.
• Get a consistent stream of new accounts that may be showing some signs of intent.

Once you have a list of new accounts, you can also use Demandbase to collect contact information for all the roles and titles that match your ideal customer within those accounts.

Here’s the opportunity: Use Demandbase to uncover target accounts, and use Influ2 ads to engage specific contacts in those accounts.

To see intent data in Demandbase, you need to wait until someone researches your category or industry. And even though Demandbase can give you a list of contacts inside those engaged accounts, your sales team will still need to reach out to every contact to find out who’s actually interested.

But once you have that list, you can pass it through your CRM into Influ2, and serve contact-level ads to the buying group members at your target accounts.

With contact-level ad campaigns, you can get direct, first-party intent signals from the people you’re actively trying to convert. This tells Sales exactly who the intent signal came from, what they engaged with, and when, meaning their outreach can be even more relevant and timely.

Best of all, you don’t need to wait until an account is researching your company: you can also use contact-level ads to build awareness within target accounts that may not have heard of you yet.

Teams using Demandbase can:

• Use the intent data lists to see companies with high engagement on certain keywords.
• Set up a predictive model with Demandbase’s machine learning tools to automate account selection.
• Push top accounts into sales sequences or target them with IP-based ads.

Here’s the opportunity: IP-based ads hit everyone at the account, not just the buying group. Influ2 lets you layer in contact-level intent, meaning you specify who you want to reach, and those people will be marked as priority when they click your ads. That way, your reps spend time on warm prospects, not noise.

Customer Success teams using Demandbase can:

• Monitor customer accounts for drop-offs in engagement or search intent for competitors.
• Flag customers actively searching for competitive keywords, and restart the conversation.

Here’s the opportunity: Knowing an account’s usage has dipped or that they’re researching a competitor is useful. But once you have that information, you can use Influ2 to re-engage specific champions or power users within at-risk accounts. Use ads that help them see your product’s value, or invite them to a training session with their CSM. Then, you can surface individuals who engage so your CS team knows exactly who might be at risk or ready to expand.

At its core, Demandbase is an enterprise-level ABM platform. But it’s built to give you account-level intent signals—flagging which companies are researching your keywords, visiting your site, or consuming relevant content across the internet.

Influ2 isn’t a replacement for Demandbase: it’s the perfect complement. 

With Influ2, you can create ad campaigns that are hyper-relevant to specific roles, and then push those ads to the individuals in your target account list who are part of buying committees. The intent signals you get as a result are based on first-party, contact-level data.

Here’s a quick list of the biggest differences between Demandbase and Influ2’s intent data:

Here’s the key takeaway:

• Demandbase works when you need broad visibility into which accounts are in-market across the B2B web.
• Influ2 excels when you want to target specific contacts, know exactly who within those accounts is showing interest, and turn that insight into personal, high-precision outreach for the Sales team.

Use them together to move from knowing which company is interested to knowing which person you should call first—without waiting on form fills or unreliable cookies.

Using intent data doesn’t mean slapping another tool into your ABM stack and hoping for the best. 

As Cameron Harvey said on LinkedIn: “Many have the expectation it’s a true fish finder: toss it over to sales, and they’ll book meetings with ease. This isn’t the case. You really have to work at it.”

No matter what tool you use, you need to determine how both Marketing and Sales will use intent data together. You need to decide which keywords signal intent, and continually analyze the process to make sure you’re getting a return on investment.

“Also note,” Cameron continues, “not all intent is created equally. Some of it is much higher quality, but a lot of it is poor.”

In our opinion, the highest-quality intent data is the data you generate yourself.

With Influ2, you can proactively target individuals and build your own first-party, contact-level intent data—something your sales team can act on.

Want to see how it works? Sign up for a demo today.