How to (Actually) Use Intent Data Effectively - Real Use Cases

SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone, welcome back to Demand Decoded. Dan here with you, joined by Phil in the studio today. And in today's episode, we're going to be talking about intent data in B2B GoToMarket. And in particular, I suppose we'll touch a little bit on actually what intent data is, where it comes from, but I want to focus most of the time on the practical use cases and how you actually apply intent data to B2B Go to Market because a lot of people promise a lot of things when it comes to intent data, and it does seem to be reaching some sort of consensus that the future go to market will be largely dominated by what you can do with intent data and you know how you can use intent data in your marketing and sales motions.

But I haven't seen tons of like real life applications of intent data showing us what it can do rather than the just the classic, oh well, you can prospect with some of this stuff. Like, how is like marketing orgs as well, and even sales orgs, how can we think outside the box to use intent data and how do we apply it effectively to get the maximum value out of these pretty expensive tools? SPEAKER_01: Right. It's one of those areas where you don't indeed you don't see many going deep on how they've operationalized it, and it's one of the marketing topics that tends to be dominated by the software vendor choice paradigm, which is who's the best vendor to do this for me and what and what should I use?

Um and and not a lot on I applied it in this way, and it delivered this result for me. So it would be good to lift the lid on that and hopefully you know encourage others to do the same. SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Just a quick one before we get into the episode because I've got an offer that I'm sure all of you will be interested in.

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We will drop a note in the uh description of this episode in the show notes, and you can go over there, request your free AEO audit, and we will deliver that to you. I think just quickly defining what intent data actually is, because really we've got we've got a couple of different buckets here when it comes to intent intent data, and this might be teaching some people how to suck eggs, but um, you know, first party intent data is very different to the intent data tools and platforms out there which are capturing third-party intent.

So, first party intent data is everything your own system, your CRM, is capturing around, you know, like uh email submissions on forms, and then you know, the activity from those based on cookies that have been applied to your website and track activity in your ecosystem of control. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you've got third-party intent, which is like behavioural data captured outside of your own ecosystem of things. So you've got providers, um, like review sites and like aggregated data that will share that data with third-party um intent data platforms to kind of like aggregate information about your company and other companies and like share this data.

And you know, this is all small print stuff, like when you sign up for tools, and there's probably tons and tons of tools that I definitely don't know about that are sharing data about you know research topics and things with intent data platforms that that none of us know about because when we just click like agreed to terms and conditions, we're uh we're agreeing to the sharing of this information. Quite. Um, I suppose reverse IP intent uh is kind of like a bit of a separate platform because it's not third-party intent data necessarily.

SPEAKER_01: That's like first party data at the anonymous level, sort of thing, in terms of knowing which IPs have been on your domain. Um, most of us can track that through the tools that we have available to us, but it doesn't quite cross over into what the third-party platforms are able to aggregate and present as one. Um, so I think you're right about the distinction there. SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

So, you know, we've got is there any? I'm not missing any there, am I? SPEAKER_01: Um no, you know, I think that first party is fantastic because it's where you have the ability to de-anonymise the data, so so you know more or less exactly who is doing what. But of course, the limitation there is how much of that you can possibly know, and it will only get you so far.

It's it's the end of the food chain, not the beginning. The third-party uh platforms provide uh something that's very, very different in the form of aggregated behavioural data across many, many sources, yeah. But any attempt to de-anonymise it or you know bring it down to the personal level will be to some extent inferred. Yeah.

You know, that that there's going to be some assumptions being made there because they won't know for the most part, I think, who the individuals are that are performing the actions. SPEAKER_00: Yeah. That yeah, so like when you come to third party and reverse IP intent data, this is pretty much there are there are a couple of tools out there like RB2B, which I haven't tried out to be fair, which might be amazing, but I'm talking from you know experience here because that's all we can do.

Um third party and reverse IP lookup is at an account level. Yeah, yeah. For the like 90% of the time, it's gonna be at an account level. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.

And I think one of the most important things um, you know, when when it comes to uh you know using intent data is understanding what it is, you know, and and what underpins it. And for the most part, we all have a right to privacy, yeah, which is why we're not in these data sets, you know, until we give up that right to privacy, you know, for certain applications. And so, you know, technologically the providers can't overcome that. Uh it's a it's a it's a barrier that they can't cross.

Um, you know, there are and there are technologies which make it all possible, uh, you know, and the static IP addresses of companies with known domain names and DNS settings is the sort of like foundational level of technology. It it all tracks back to those sorts of like fundamental principles, and when you when you know that and when you think about it like that, you understand what you can get out of them and what you can't get out of them, and that helps you to use it. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it so yeah, it helps you to use it, but it also creates some potential problems around how we frame and think about intent data because I I almost think about it in like the traditional lead generation sense where you know we might capture somebody's email address and then send them content thinking that if they're looking at this content, it means they want to buy from us.

Right. I mean, that's even at a first party level. Intent data at the third party level gets even further away from that. When we think about a primary use case of third-party intent um data is topical and I can't remember what most of them call it.

I think it's like topic data. So if somebody's searching research interest, you know, that kind of thing. If somebody's searching for a particular category or topic, um then you can collate those accounts that are searching for those things. But you don't know who is searching.

You know, if you think of a company with 5,000 employees, and if somebody's searching for email marketing tool, that could be an intern, it could be the CMO, very unlikely. Like it it could be somebody in sales or customer success that are trying to like launch an email, or in I don't know, the service department. It could be literally anyone. So we do have to be careful when trying to almost create this false confidence in intent data that, oh, if that company is researching for you know this particular topic in our category, they must be buying.

SPEAKER_01: It's not it's a signal, yeah, but it's not a signal of absolute confidence that that is the case. As you say, there are you know, there's a great many uh employees at these companies uh, you know, who are on the web you know stumbling across content in some respects. So you need to use other filters logically to uh minimize the false positives that you act on in hope that they are true positives. And like as you suggested, but that harks back, you know, to the to the days of lead scoring and uh and using some first party intent data, such as they downloaded this guide, yeah, as a as a strong signal of something that it wasn't.

And that's very, very true here um as well. It doesn't it doesn't correlation isn't causation, we need to use other methods of filtering and and activating that data to try and increase our confidence. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um not to say it doesn't work, not to say we can't use it, and we're gonna talk next about ways we can use it.

Absolutely, it's just um yeah, making sure that uh we understand the risks uh uh around how we position it like in the business and its true use case potentially. SPEAKER_01: You know, that that reality will explain why for most people you know the response rate, the return rate will be low digits, just as they are for cold email, because because there isn't a high degree of confidence and overlap in the sample set if you take a give me it all and I'll and I'll message everybody type of approach.

Yeah, some of them will be researching and in market and might respond to your message, but a great deal won't because it will be in sort of an erroneous signal about their intentions. SPEAKER_00: Uh one thing to touch on on third-party intent as well is the other angle, other than um you know the topical side of things, you've actually got all of the company and personnel information that comes along with like company news, scoops it's called in some platforms. Uh but if we just call it news and like company updates and information, within this bucket, you've got things like funding rounds, you've got like new C-suite executives, you've got changes to the I mean, there are so many, like the list goes on and on.

Yep. Um, like could be new technology added to the stack, um new product launched, like lots and lots of intent signals here. And the the thing to bear in mind here is how you can match your buying triggers and category entry points to the intent signals because that's going to bring you closer and more relevant with those things. So, for example, if you're marketing a um finance platform and you found that most customers come to you after they've raised funding, for example.

Well, we can find the intent trigger for companies just raised. It might even be very specific, like Series B funding or something. Like you that's very niche. Don't know why that would be, but you know, let's just say it is.

Well, that could be a really good intent trigger point for you to go after because it matches so nicely with your category entry point. SPEAKER_01: Yeah. A lot of businesses will find if they analyze their pipeline and revenue that the triggers, you know, some triggers reappear quite frequently, and they can often be in that news category. Yeah.

Um, you know, a new hire in the correct seat, a new event in the company's, you know, journey that very highly or highly correlates with your inquiries, pipeline, and revenue. And so if you're able to find that match, then you're able to, you know, lean into with a high degree of confidence that opportunity. It's a double-edged sword, however, because so are lots of other people. You know, it is it's it's true that there will be many other businesses using the very same intent signal to identify the potential opportunities.

Yeah, so you have got to think about how you can refine even further and how your message can be differentiated from those others because you will not be the only one triggering off funding round or new CFO, yeah, for example. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, even when I I um got promoted to director last year, I think I had like yeah, at least not loads, but like five emails across the next week or so that was like, congrats on the promotion type thing. Yeah, here's our product. Okay, yeah.

I knew that they had some sort of criteria there. SPEAKER_01: That's interesting, and five is a lot less than I expected. So maybe a sign that they're using the the news event, but also geographic targeting, size targeting, yeah, and being a bit more intelligent about it, which is a great thing, because you know, you're more likely to give some attention to five emails than five hundred. SPEAKER_00: It's probably the business size as well, right?

Like if we were exactly if I was a new CMO at Canva. Different stories, different stories probably get you know five hundred um emails the next day after that news is announced. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You were targeted in the in a you know by those that wanted to get in your inbox ultimately.

SPEAKER_00: So you know, a use case off of that, like even in our scenario, is that we found through our Ask Elephant workflows, which run on every single sales, discovery, and consultation call, that there is a key buying trigger and category entry point, which is new marketing leaders. Typically, new marketing leader comes in, they want to assess the landscape around them, they want to look at their current agency usage, they want to look at their website, their conversions, their pipeline, and in a lot of cases look for new vendors to support them in that.

And that is a core um moment where a lot of people engage us as a as a like marketing function that can help them drive pipeline, like execute their website properly, etc. Um, so that would be a key thing for us to then go and create, well, we have um, you know, sequences based off of that particular intent trigger. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly. SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, right, some more use cases to throw out there because I kind of like to break this down into two different sides.

Because I don't want to abandon inbound completely when we think about intent data, and typically the conversation does that because it doesn't touch on how you can use intent data for inbound, it's just how we use intent data to go outbound to people. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, very true. SPEAKER_00: But you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna use HubSpot's biointent uh tool here as an example because it's just in the tool, which is like really helpful. Um, but one thing that I think a lot of businesses could be doing and that we're doing, and I'll share some data on how effective that's been versus other um methods, is curating LinkedIn audience targeting lists based off of intent data.

Yeah. So rather than creating your cold list based on um, you know, your audience uh job titles and functions and size and things like that, or even like an account list that you just are just cold, but you think they're kind of in the right area, you can actually use intent data, which is still closer in terms of signals that somebody is buying, particularly at a reverse IP level as well. If you can tell an account has been on your website, then we can use like HubSpot's buyer intent tool, which is already in the platform, create lists for accounts that are, you know, in this size, like niche them down in in the ways we want, and actually look at accounts that have been on our website in the last 90 days or accounts that are researching these topics, pull them into a list in HubSpot, integrate that with LinkedIn, and then actually start advertising to accounts that are showing some form of intent, whether that even if it's low intent, right?

Like a research topic, it's still better than completely cold. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely. Um, what a great way to sort of operationalize intent data in a pragmatic way that is aligned to the inbound, you know, demand-gen marketing mindset. Yeah, that's not to say we exclude outbound, as you say, but you don't have to you don't have to go outbound to begin making use of intent signals, you know, construct your audience, target your advertising at them, and increase the likelihood that they will visit your site at some point in the future, and if you're doing inbound well, you know, convert, express their interest because you have an offering that's relevant and valuable.

And we know how effective that type of conversion journey can be. In one place, intent data signals in the platform, list generation, sync to LinkedIn, target your campaign and advertising at them, um, and then monitor what happens thereafter, who's seeing the ad, and then who's also coming to your website and converting later. SPEAKER_00: One way to measure this um effectively, because of course we want to know that if we're using intent data in our LinkedIn um campaigns, that is more effective or less effective.

Um Fibla ad uh, we had Adam Holmgren on the podcast a few episodes back now, obviously co-founder at Fibrill, like awesome, awesome product and big fans of it now. Um, you know, I can see in our Fibra account right now, literally have it open that um in the last 90 days, you know, we've spent just shy of 10 grand on LinkedIn ads and it's influenced 18 deals in the pipeline, given us an efficiency multiplier of 157x on that, um, with a 39x on deals that we've actually won, which is 10 out of that.

And you know, that that for us, because they are good sized deals as well, is a a very efficient use of that budget. And if we compare that to campaigns that were used without that, the efficiency was much less. Right. Our ability to actually generate pipeline and the multiplier on pipeline was much less than 157 and like converted into revenue less than like 39x.

So if you are able to connect your LinkedIn campaign performance with pipeline, with revenue, and of course, you know, this goes back to things we've touched on on the podcast in in the past about connecting like your pipeline and revenue because it's so important to have that connected view of your activity, like your LinkedIn campaigns, all the way through to your CRM because it enables you to to look at like variances like this. Like if we use intent data in our audience segmentation, does it make our LinkedIn ads more effective or less effective?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you're not you're not going to be look driving or looking for or see the result in the form of direct clicks and you know trackable conversions. That so you need that Fibrillar allows us to bridge that gap um, you know, and see the results or the effect of that campaign in pipeline, which enables uh enables us to you know optimise and ultimately defend that strategy to ourselves and and to and to the you know the the finances, um bearing in mind always that you know attribution information needs to be taken, you know, yeah with with uh awareness of its flaws, but it's it's it's a signal which is very valuable and way better than no signal as to what effect those intent-driven campaigns are having in terms of our you know most critical business APIs.

So that's a great story. The ability to see all the all of that all the way through and improve performance by using intent data um and targeting it whilst not um you know, in our case, requiring things we don't have in order to get that working. It's brilliant. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know what, it's made me think about our access to and like thinking outside the box with intent data as well and where we can access intent data.

Fibbler is a source of intent data because you can almost like layer on a higher intent engaged audience via your Fibr data now because you can see if you're running a LinkedIn campaign to like I don't know, uh low, medium, and high intent topics that HubSpot are flagging, you run those, but then you actually start to see that okay, 20% of that. Audience in our LinkedIn ads are highly engaged because you know they've clicked on our ads a lot or they've engaged with it, etc. etc.

Fibra's going to tell you that. Right. Well, we have that data in HubSpot. We can then create another list of highly engaged companies that have been um, you know, they that have seen our ads more view for impressions, they've been more engaged with our ads, so it's giving signals that they are more interested in in what we're saying in our message in our ads.

So, you know, then we have a higher intent layer, and you could go again if you really wanted to. SPEAKER_01: And um and what would you recommend? Would would that be you might go with a new message to those people? Yeah, because more bottom of the funnel.

Or yeah, uh, you know, more researched, more familiar with the topic. So, you know, most businesses have got at least an idea of what a sort of multi-layered campaign message might look like for cold versus retargeting, for example. You could take some inspiration from that and like lean into that intent, that that that engagement with a new message bottom of the funnel. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like this is we don't do that, for example, but I would do it if we had a larger audience required more volume than we currently need, which we don't, um, and yeah, like needed that layered approach.

We don't need that right now, but I would absolutely be doing something like that if we had the audience volume and the need for more like volume to come through the door. SPEAKER_01: And I like it because it's it's grounded in what intent data can really tell you and not something that we wish it could tell us. Yeah. You know, it it's based on the the facts that that you know that those tools enable us to see.

Um so it's got good, you know, it's got good rational justification for it. Um and I can see why that would drive a positive result, you know, rather than just spend money that we never saw back again. SPEAKER_00: Absolutely. Um another one that we could set up in marketing to I suppose this is like bridging the gap in the engagement territory between marketing and sales, is intent-triggered reactivation of accounts.

So if there is already an account or a uh a person, this is more account level though, in the CRM that's maybe gone quiet for you know three, six, twelve months, and then they start showing intent signals again. That could be third-party intent signals, like via topic research or new hires perhaps, or at a first-party intent signal basis. Basically, any intent that's showing us they are kind of re-engaging in our category or topics, that's a great opportunity to probably flag them to an SDR, or if you have come up with some like repeatable process that enrolls them in a particular sequence for um that.

I mean, I haven't seen that done particularly well because I think then we're getting in the the realms of like recycling leads in that in the old sense and never really saw that working. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I suppose what you're talking about there is that intent data doesn't have to exclusively produce net new records. You know, a lot of the time it will.

We'll use that system to identify new companies who are in market, but once that company's in your CRM, that that doesn't mean that they will never be in market again, never research that topic again. And so I think again, whilst you can take lead recycling too far and sort of basically never give up like a dog with a bone, you can also do it strategically. You can also say, well, we may have the record already, but we've got a reason to re-you engage, re-entertain this record around the block again.

Um, so I think that's just using the the right records at the right time, regardless of whether they are new in your CRM or existing. Yeah, um, as opposed to perhaps just never letting go and never giving up uh on somebody. Uh, I can think of a couple of companies that have done that to me over the years. Uh Relentless.

Relentless, yeah, even though there's no you know signal or reason to be hopeful about it. Yeah, I like it. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that that's um like account level um intent data, most platforms will call that, where you basically have like a list of companies on your watch list, and you can set up notifications to flag the owner of that account or contact if any of these your chosen intent signals show. Um that's probably the way to say.

SPEAKER_01: And I mean, presumably all of that can be driven by like uh you know ICP like targeting. So you your system will know which companies are you know theoretically attractive to you, so you that's automated. Yeah. And for some of those companies, you'll have named contacts in your CRM, you know, so you will know the person to go to, which might be one strategy.

And in other situations, you you won't have that contact, but you've got a play, you've got a method of going out to the account and trying to get those contacts. Yeah. So you've got a lot of options. SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

Last use case I have for marketing is any kind of event or webinar leads that you're trying to attract. Because, you know, if we can identify the right accounts at the right moment, inviting them to a like webinar or an event in your category on a particular topic that we know they might be researching is better than just cold. Again, it's like we are giving ourselves just a bit of an advantage, more probability that they will engage with us based on intent data might not work, it might work, like it might land on the right person.

Um, probabilistically, we are just giving ourselves a better opportunity to hit the right person at the right time with the right message. And yeah, driving event and webinar attendees can be tricky, but if you find the right moment to hit somebody with that message because they are interested in that particular problem that they're trying to solve, that can be a really good way to use it. SPEAKER_01: Yeah. If you try to invite your entire TAM to every single event you run, you're going to uh enjoy pretty poor results, um, you know, and they won't particularly love it either.

So being able to, you know, intelligently narrow down the pool increases the odds of success. Yeah. Yeah, you know, uh, I think that's a very, very sound strategy too. Um, like you say, give yourself every advantage.

It's a noisy world out there, yeah, right. Everybody's getting heaps of messages all the time. A key, a key factor in standing out isn't just content that stands out, it's being selective about who you send and who what you send and when and why into who. Those are all advantages to build around your campaign.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, and and those points go directly into the outbound sales side of this as well. Right. Knowing, you know, who you're targeting, what your message is, and why you're reaching out to them are all super important things. Otherwise, your outbound motion is no better than just like blasting thousands and thousands of people with a cold message.

It's yeah it's so, so important that we're using intent data in outbound to make our lists much, much smaller rather than larger because the intent signals should be able to curate a tighter list that are organized around buying triggers for our category and things of interest. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah. If uh you know, if you look at where your pipeline comes from, it is going to predominantly come from the small percentage of people for whom your offer is relevant at that moment in time.

Yeah. I.e., they're in market, they're in ICP, they've got a reason to be attracted to you, you know, com along with certain other competitors.

Yeah. You've got a you've got a disproportionate, you know, reason to win that business. That's where your energy needs to go. Be it just spraying and praying across, you know, your whole ICP category, yeah, you know, is is not what produces the results.

They're always going to be in that set of there's a reason why they're in our pipeline now. Yeah. Reason or reasons why they're in our pipeline. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and this is kind of what we've touched on before when it comes to like company news and uh updates that that give us a reason to reach out.

And you know, we kind of joked about having tons of emails based on these signals, so that this isn't a prospecting lesson. Like I'm not a prospecting expert anyway. Um, I'd much rather talk about the inbound side of like ways to use this because it's where I'm more comfortable. But I am starting to get to grips more with how we use intent data in an outbound motion.

Um, and yeah, in particular, like using these signals, drawing them in from Zoom Info or even um, you know, Apollo or HubSpot Bio Intent itself, and actually using those in outbound, or you know, we'll touch on agents, I suppose, at some point. SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I I for one would definitely like to see the issue that was raised by LinkedIn a couple of years back, you know, now resolved, whereby marketing and sales teams were largely targeting completely distinct cohorts. So they were targeting different people altogether.

Um a clear, well, both the seal both the sign and the reason that sort of go-to-market efficiency was low. Yeah. Because they need to be targeting the same people with the same level of finesse. Um, and intent data is an opportunity to be really, really aligned.

Yeah. Um, and so as you say, while marketing is our sort of wheelhouse to an extent, we're very aware of the need to bring, you know, for go to market to incorporate inbound and outbound that works effectively together. And you know, both teams can be run in a way that just again sprays, throws stuff at the wall, see what sticks, or you can be aligned with one another and targeted and intentional about it, um, and that'll produce great results. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I haven't looked at the latest report on the touch points required for a B2B bar journey.

I think last time I looked at, I'm sure it was somewhere in like the 20 regions, maybe even higher. SPEAKER_01: Okay, 20 exposures to for something. SPEAKER_00: There was a hockey stack report like ages ago, which is the last one I looked at, but it's a lot anyway. And we know that if you've seen a brand, like you can just tell this from personal experience as well.

If you've been exposed to a brand over and over again and you've started to resonate with the message that they have um applied, it doesn't matter where that is, it could be on a billboard walking down the street, it could be like on the back of your water bottle, it it could be a LinkedIn ad, it could be a connected TV ad, it could be a series of outbound messages to you. But we know that not just marketing, but go to market as a whole is a connected suite of actions and activity and a process that happens.

If we're running um intent data both in an inbound marketing way, those are two connected words, uh disconnected words, um, and a sales way, that we have more chance of that company engaging with us because they've seen our brand in multiple places over, you know, multiple weeks, um, in different formats, in different varieties with different messages, our outbound messages is gonna land better and have a higher chance of engagement because of the resonance with our brand. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.

But you know, brands are strange things in terms of how they do their work, right, uh conceptual uh at a theoretical level. But if you can be present, you know, in multiple places that your ideal customer sees, and there is a frequency of exposure that doesn't cross the line into you know assault, yeah, and there's relevance, like your brand can become quite uh positively viewed in their mind, even to a degree beyond what you've earned, right? Brett, like because we we we trust what we know and we know what we've seen a lot of, yeah.

So it's becomes a very strong angle to work these two things together around a very, very you know tightly defined audience, intent data being a great way to build a quality audience um to produce yeah, like mental availability, yeah, brand affinity, trust and preference, and of course pipeline. SPEAKER_00: Yeah. I think the last um thing on outbound, like there's lots of different ways you can execute outbound. You can flag tasks based on intent signals, you can run sequences automated that you've written yourself or that sales want to go ahead and write, or you can start to experiment with things like agents, and that can be like HubSpot's prospecting agent, clay, um, loads of other tools out there that enable you to use agents to research companies, research contacts, collate intent signals, and use those in um outbound sequences.

And I have been pretty impressed with the output that's possible from HubSpot's prospecting agent. Yeah. When it came out, had some flaws, but they've released a new version, updated version, that enables you to curate instructions at a level that it listens to a lot more effectively now. And yeah, um, I would encourage everybody that's thinking about how to use their intent data more effectively to check out these ways that might be a lower barrier barrier to entry to actually start to play around with how you create this kind of like a dual intent data um system between marketing and sales, like using advertising plus um some sort of prospecting as well, like layer in prospecting agent, um trigger it in a workflow based off of uh an account entering a list that meets you know this criteria, then then fire it into prospecting agent for the contacts that you have.

And yeah, it's it's actually quite insane. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I think we're turning a corner in this regard where we're gaining the ability to you know have control and governance over you know AI, uh over agents that can do this work for us in a way that means we're holding ourselves to account for the quality and the relevance of it. Everybody will have had you know fears of you know huge amounts of AI spam and AI slop, and it's it's definitely happening. But I think we're all agreeing that parts of our process for outbound and prospecting can be orchestrated and AI powered without losing all you know all of the things that made it successful, you know, when humans were operating every aspect of it.

It's a new way of doing it. It's a it's a new way that it takes some getting used to, but I think it's becoming it's becoming the norm, and there's no reason to fear it and not do it. Yeah, you you do just have to uh you know use these tools in ways that you you know feel confident are gonna add to your brand as opposed to detract from it and and erode it because you can easily go wrong. Yeah, normally that's gonna be a scale thing.

Um, because the tools have got good enough now to be able to create messages with the right prompting and the right architectural thinking about how they what they output and why. Yeah, you can get there. SPEAKER_00: I still haven't um enabled prospecting agent to go totally autonomous yet, though. I don't know when I'll get to that point.

Not yet. Um right now it's like I have to review every email. For the most part, I'm just clicking approve, but I don't know. It feels like a big leap to just have an agent then sending emails that we're not even seeing on behalf of the business.

SPEAKER_01: I think I think that's normal, and I think that's a perfectly like okay journey to go on. You know, we've never done it at scale the other way, yeah. So we're not coming from a world where there have been messages going out from our domain or organization at volume, and we and we've been conditioned to know that they're not all going to get a response. Yeah, we've got that, we've got to come to terms with that.

Yeah, I I wager that it will not be long before you flip that switch. Yeah. Um, and I would I would encourage it. Uh always keeping an eye, you know, we we need to we need to keep monitoring, but not being always in the loop when we're not, you know, when we're not adding anything.

And you know, it sounds like you've already got our prospecting agent to a level where for the most part you're happy to approve and pass it on through. So I think we're close to being long. We can become a we can become a monitoring function rather than a approving function in that chain. SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

I do think um, yeah, just on like prospecting messaging and things, um, because from what I've tried in the different variants, we still need to be mindful that there is like a mutual some some sort of like value exchange in our outbound approach. Just using intent signals to say, oh hey, like seeing you've been promoted to CMO, do you want to buy our product? Like, out of the box, a lot of these prospecting tools will do that. It will look for the signal, look for your product, and say, Hey, seeing the signal, check out our product.

Pretty like weak source. Still, you know, we've got to put our marketing brains behind what's the offer, what's the value we're adding here, why would anybody want to respond to us or want to engage with us in any meaningful way based off of this intent signal or and this thing they're receiving. SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah. And that becomes the the sort of that's the the essence of what it is to be a go-to-market professional in the AI era.

Yeah. You've got to put the effort goes into the setup, the the architecture, the prompting, and the creation of something that outputs a message that is, you know suitable for transmitting. You know, we we live in a society, thank goodness. And it, you know, if you want a response, you've got to be thoughtful about what the other person has going on and give value, though.

The the mantra to give value before you ask for it still carries a lot of a lot of weight. If you simply pitch slap everybody that you know even thinks about researching your topic, you're not going to get great results. It'll frustrate you, it'll frustrate those that pay the you know, pay the budget, um, and most likely end up in you know some something uh it getting terminated. Yeah.

Um, so better to yeah, plan, build, refine, and and then launch that sort of thing rather than switch it on and just let it do what it thinks you know it will is good enough. SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah. I think to kind of round us out on this one, intent data is full of data. There's more and more data, there's more and more signals added all the time, and it's not about the volume of data you can have.

More doesn't mean more effective. It's about acting on the right signals, identifying the right buying triggers, um, and prioritizing the data available to you rather than trying to act on all of it. It's not a magic list of buyers that are ready to buy from your business. Like, please don't be misleaded by that because it's really not, but it tells you at least the areas to focus um and yeah, gives you signals to act on.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think if at all possible, there's real merit in like staying practical about this and trying where possible to reduce hype and set expectations. Uh so much so that I think you know it would be even better if the use cases for intent were coming up through the organization from the people delivering demand that go to market, be it on the on the marketing side, the sales side, or the combined function, you know, and and being introduced by them to deliver a strategy that's got you know legs, uh rather than the top-down.

I've heard this platform's amazing and should get us 100 meetings, you know, by tomorrow, figure it out. Yeah, yeah. You know, if we can control and lead, we can put in place programs that have real you know merit and are not just spam, you know, spam on rails. Yeah.

Um, so try and be, yeah, try and be on the front foot there because there's a world of opportunity in this data, it's incredibly useful, incredibly powerful. Um, but you've got to harness it uh, you know, in ways that produce for the recipient the right the right experience in order for you to get back the the value that is possible. SPEAKER_00: For sure. All right, let's wrap it up there.

Hopefully you enjoyed this episode of Demand Decoded. Um, yeah, interest. We haven't dived into uh intent data yet, I don't think. So that was cool to do that, and yeah, thoroughly enjoyed that episode.

And um, yeah, we will catch you next time. Bye everyone. See you.