How Intent Data Can Supercharge Your Content Syndication Initiatives

Published: November 20, 2018

Kay Kienast252c CMO True InfluenceIf you are responsible for lead generation activities, website content, white papers, blogs, links, articles, tweets, E-books, videos and more, chances are you’re a true believer that content is king. The ability to push your content out to publishers and third-party sites, while you retain full copyright, helps you reach potential prospects who may never have been introduced to your products or services otherwise. In essence, you’ll have the distinct advantage of reaching a much broader audience in a much shorter period of time.

Content syndication networks operate by hosting your digital assets such as white papers, E-books and data product sheets on their own site. This enables them to leverage their existing network to drive people to those assets. The content is typically gated so website visitors have to fill out contact information in order to gain access to information treasure troves. Content syndication is also an excellent tool for your demand generation campaigns, as it will generate inbound leads.

To supercharge your content syndication, you need to successfully integrate intent data. Think of intent data as having a peek into the wants and needs of customers and potential prospects alike. Quite simply, intent data can help identify higher quality leads by giving you the insight and understanding of when, where and what topics your prospects are exploring.

Intent data goes way beyond basic demographic, geographic and firmographic information by helping you target customers when they are searching for products and services that your business (or your competitor’s business) offers. Intent data virtually eliminates the guesswork in lead generation campaigns by articulating the buyer’s journey as they explore topics, products or services.

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Intent data comes in two different flavors: internal and external.

Internal Intent Data: This is considered first-party data as the lead is generated by your website, contact forms and landing pages — anywhere that requires the prospect to provide their contact information. Marketers use this gated content to generate leads by providing prospects with valuable information in exchange for their contact information. In fact, it’s estimated that as much as 80% of B2B content marketing assets are gated. Gated contact is a valuable marketing tool. However, if it is more important for your digital assets to reach a broader audience, you may choose to have ungated content that allows visitors to access the content without filling out any forms.

External Intent Data: This type of data is only available through third-party providers. Large publishing companies collect the data at the IP level or via shared cookies curated from millions of website visits. You’ll be able to see how many times your white paper was downloaded, a video viewed, an infographic shared or a search was initiated for specific content, products or services.

To achieve a huge competitive advantage, it’s important to derive a direct correlation between your buyer’s purchasing strategy and your content syndication process. You will also be able to maximize intent data by correlating it with other information, such as demographic, firmographic and geographic data. This will assist in matching prospect behavioral patterns with target customer profiles.

Once you understand the intent behind your buyer persona research, you are in a better position to develop content that matches prospect intent, while achieving optimum value from it through your syndicated distribution strategy.


Kay Kienast is the CMO of True Influence. She has more than 15 years of experience in building end-to-end, data-driven campaigns. Prior to True Influence, Kay served as Head of Marketing Operations for GE Digital and Seagate/EVault.

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