How to Identify Clients Who Have the Right Purchase Intent
Knowing your target audience is critical to campaign success, as every advertiser knows. Things like their age, gender, marital status, and income level are need to be known in order to target them with precision and effectiveness..
Nevertheless, if you are relying just on demographic information to identify your clients, research suggests that you may be losing out on up to 70% of mobile buyers.
In fact, although statistical data is very valuable, it doesn’t reveal the whole story, or even the most relevant portion of it. You must understand purchase intent in order to effectively target your consumers.
Definition of purchase intent
The thinking of your audience as it pertains to buying is referred to as audience purchase intent. How close are they to purchasing your project, based on what you know about them?
Purchase intent considers a variety of factors, including demographics, content consumption, behavioral information, and even channels and devices, to build a more complete picture of your audience as they go along the route to purchasing your products or services. You may then target them with material that will help to take them to the next logical level of your funnel, which is the point at which they will purchase your product.
Purchase intent and the marketing funnel are two important concepts to understand.
It is very important to understand how purchase intent and the marketing funnel are connected. During each level, your prospects and leads will demonstrate one of two types of intent, which you can use to decide how to best target them in the subsequent stages. You may find them as follows.
Informational intent: Informational intent is distinguished from other types of intent by the lead’s desire to learn more information. They are educating themselves on the possible remedies to the issue your product alleviates when they demonstrate informative purpose.
Transactional purpose is defined as behaving in a manner that suggests the possibility of making a transaction. Consider the following scenarios: you’re looking at a price page, searching for a very particular keyword term, or placing an item in your basket. They will, of course, differ from one company to the other.
A purchasing intention that is transacted
It’s probable that prospects are in the early phases of the marketing funnel if they’re engaging in activities that don’t seem to be related to purchase, such as reading blog articles. They are more likely to have transactional intent if they are visiting landing pages, though. Here’s what you can do to engage with consumers depending on their purchase intent as they go through the marketing funnel stage by stage:
and the marketing funnel are two terms that come to mind when thinking about purchase intent
Awareness
This stage of the sales process is marked by the realization that your prospect has become aware of an issue they need to address and has become aware of your brand as a potential solution to that problem. Many companies in your solution class, as well as those across classes, are still being investigated by them.
For example, a marketer who is experiencing difficulties with post-click optimization may consider investing in PCO software or engaging an independent expert to help them. In this level, the aim is mostly informational rather than action-oriented.
Consideration
Here, your prospect moves on from understanding their issue to determining how they want to resolve it. In this level, purpose is still considered to be informational rather than intentional.
Prospects and leads are attempting to obtain further information about potential solutions.. Having limited it down to a certain class, they’ve arrived at this phase. Let’s imagine they’ve chosen on software, to continue with our previous example:
Decision
The transition from marketing qualified leads to sales qualified leads occurs in the middle to the bottom of the funnel. It has taken at least a few solid signs of transactional intent on the part of leads in order to get us to this stage.
For example, requesting a demo, participating in a webinar, or conversing with a salesman are all examples of what we mean. They will differ from company to business, but they will always represent the transfer of leads from marketing to sales for further nurturing and development. Your company and one or two other rivals are the finalists for the lead’s business at this level of the funnel (the selection phase).
Purchase
This level in the funnel signifies that the lead has completed a purchase from your company. Customers are now a result of the transactional purpose being carried out successfully.
Now it’s time to start all over again with the probing for intent! Customer transactional intent may be shown if you send your customer an email with a product that is closely similar to the one they just purchased (to cross-sell or upsell), and they display interest in the product by reading reviews or adding it to their basket.
Customers’ wallets are out and they’re in “buy” mode, so it’s perhaps the perfect moment to entice them to make another purchase shortly after their first.
The desire to study the ins and outs of the product takes precedence over the desire to complete a purchase at other times, and transactional intent is replaced with informative intent. In order to learn how to utilize their new software product, new software customers, for example, will almost certainly find themselves knee-deep in educational tutorials.
Loyalty
A client’s loyalty may be more easily and profitably maintained than it is to acquire a new customer. Even if your consumer purchases the product that you cross-sold them or up-sold them to, their aim will surely shift back to one of information gathering.
Provide your clients with all the knowledge they need to gain the advantages of your product, whether it’s via helpdesk articles and tutorials, or through customer care support. Increased advantages result in a pleased consumer who is more likely to purchase an add-on, an upgrade, or another product from your company in the future.
Observational methods of assessing audience buying intent
Purchase intent measurement is very difficult to do accurately. When it comes to understanding complicated data relationships and linking one to the other, marketers are notoriously bad at guessing. The outcome is that we place more emphasis on one or two signs than we do on the others.
While one or two signs may be used to identify purchase intent, depending on only one or two consumers to tell you how to sell your product is not a good strategy for any company. Your answers will be correct in some instances; yet, they will be incorrect in others.
For example, demographics may be used to determine buying intent. In the past, they were thought to be the greatest approach to target the most qualified buyers, but we now know that they may be incredibly deceptive when used in conjunction with conventional assumptions. Consider the following scenario: you own a baby-products company.
In order to design a highly targeted campaign, you can start with demographic data and work your way backwards from what you perceive to be the ideal consumer. The first and most important criterion for such a consumer would be that he or she is a parent of more than one kid.
Google researchers, on the other hand, are of the opposite opinion. In accordance with their research, 40 percent of all baby product customers reside in families without children:
A statistical illustration of buying intent
In other words, if you limited your marketing efforts to just those with children, you would be losing out on 40% of all baby goods customers.
Purchase intent cannot be effectively predicted only by demographics. The answer is that no one parameter can do it. The strategies listed below, when combined, may help you get a deeper understanding of your target demographic and their purchasing intentions, as seen below.
Make a note of all of your communication channels.
The current location of a prospect is a critical sign of where you should lead them next. Every encounter with your brand takes happen somewhere, whether it’s in-store, on your website, on social media, or in another way entirely.
The last time they interacted with you was on whatever platform. When it comes to customer engagement, what are the most common channels, and where do the majority of purchases originate?
In the past, certain channels were recognized for generating high-intent traffic, whilst others were known for reaching customers who were just beginning the purchasing process. As an example, consider:
Because of the degree of activity performed by a prospect, search is considered a high-intent channel. As opposed to skimming around social media when they click on an ad, in this instance, they are actively searching something out.
High buying intent may also be shown through email. However, keep in mind that email subscribers are individuals who have already given you their email address, so the amount of intent does vary depending on the material they’re interacting with. This indicates that their purchasing intent is already greater than that of the typical visitor to your site.
Aside from that, various pages on your website might imply varying amounts of buy intent. As an example, a customer who views your price page is more likely to make a purchase than a customer who hits your home page, blog, or features page.
There are, of course, limitations to each of these: Searchers aren’t always seeking for material that is associated with high buy intent, however search nearly always has higher purchase intent than, for example, sponsored social media marketing campaigns. Email subscribers who sign up to get gated material are occasionally inactive for a long period of time after that. Therefore, it is critical to integrate this information with the other indications on this list, and even more indicators.
Examine the stuff you’re producing.
The kind of content that your visitors are consuming is one of the strongest indications of purchase intent.
It is well established that various forms of content attract customers at different stages of the purchasing process. In the case of an article titled “How To Do My Small Business Taxes,” the informative goal of someone who needs tax help may be discerned from the title. These individuals, on the other hand, are not likely to be in the market for software.
You can tell the difference between someone who has requested a demo or someone who has read a customer story about your tax software when you compare the two forms of material.
People that download your ebooks and tip sheets on a regular basis are almost certainly just interested in the information they provide. Although evident interest in case studies and webinars may be indicative of transactional intent in certain cases, you can assess how strong these signals are by attempting to sign them up for either a demo or consultation.
Even the smallest user behaviors should be monitored.
In a broad sense, evaluating purchase intent is all about determining how users will behave in the future. In addition to tracking content consumption, you can also measure device use and channel access. However, acts that are even more little than that are often suggestive of buying intent.
Customers that leave a positive review on one of your items, for example, may be twice as likely to purchase from you in the future. This is comparable to what Instapage discovered when they conducted a quantitative study of free trial users who went on to become customers after the trial period ended.
In particular, it was revealed that free trial customers who published at least one page on a custom domain and then immediately began A/B testing were 15X more likely to stay engaged over time and eventually upgrade to a premium plan.
Once you’ve identified the trigger points that your consumers are experiencing, you can begin developing procedures that take advantage of them.
Devices are being tracked.
The sorts of gadgets that visitors utilize are critical in determining their purchasing intentions..
For example, desktop computers are more likely to be used for surfing at home or at work. That is not to imply that mobile devices cannot be used for surfing; in fact, they are often utilized for this purpose. Nobody, on the other hand, is looking for restaurants in the mall on their laptop while they are there. That is a job that should be performed on a mobile device.
It is possible to evaluate the level of purchase intent of your visitors by combining information such as this with keywords that are being searched and geographical data collected. If we consider the case of someone who is at a mall looking for a place to eat, we can conclude that they are more likely to come to our restaurant in the mall than someone who is searching on their desktop computer at home 60 miles away.
To increase buy intent, we may give a local customer a discount in-store, while offering a searcher from 60 miles away a store locator or the chance to book a table in advance.
Identify the most important populations.
Demographics alone cannot give the whole picture, and none of the other characteristics can either. Consider the case of a company that sells baby items. While a large amount of baby product sales comes from households without children, households with children account for a greater proportion of total baby product sales.
As a result, the probability that someone who does not have children will purchase is lower than the likelihood that someone who does have children would purchase.
In this situation, demographic factors such as marital status, family size, and age may be quite useful in predicting purchasing intent. It is erroneous to conclude that they are ineffective just because they are older techniques of targeting.
Obtain an understanding of the context within usual pathways to buy
Every product is unique in its own way. As a result, every customer will want something unique before they are comfortable purchasing a certain product.
Products that need a higher level of commitment, such as pricey courses or software, will take longer to sell than a lunch at a nearby restaurant.
Once again, let us assume that someone is looking for food in the heart of a shopping mall. Nearby restaurants may benefit on this search by running sponsored advertisements that target those within a specified radius. These advertisements may be combined with a discount, such as a complimentary dessert for customers who visit the restaurant in person. Customers who search outside of that radius may be eligible for a discount on delivery.
However, the marketers at the restaurant understand that if someone searches for their restaurant online, it is probable that they are seeking for someplace to dine now rather than months in the future. A modest discount might make all the difference when it comes to gaining a new client.
Marketers of costly classes of software are well aware that the possibility of earning a purchase on the spot is minimal if someone in the same place, using a comparable device, searches for that pricey class of software in question. This individual, in contrast to the ravenous consumer, will take much longer to sell to.
It is thus preferable for software marketers to avoid going straight for the sale and instead give their prospects something in exchange for entering the funnel.
Is it possible that they are ready to purchase the software? It’s a possibility. However, this is not as feasible while searching for restaurants on a mobile device. Of course, an approach like this takes into consideration more than simply the product context; for example, the content of the user’s search and the user’s location are taken into consideration.
Inquire with your customers.
As is usually the case, the most effective approach to learn what your people want is to ask them. And the methods by which you may do this differ.
Exit pop-ups, surveys, chat modules, and customer support inquiries are all effective methods of gathering qualitative input that may be used to improve your business. In this situation, you are not required to discover what is vital to your consumers via data analysis; instead, they are telling you straight out.
To get meaningful information about the preceding factors, rather of asking your consumers explicit questions about purchase intent language, ask them simple questions that disclose important information about the parameters.
Demographics, channel use, and content consumption habits of high-likelihood customers may all be discovered quickly and easily using this method. However, they should always be double-checked against the relevant data set. It is fairly ordinary for individuals to respond in one manner while acting in another one.
Predictive analytics is being used to determine purchasing intent.
It’s crucial to remember that, although recognizing the conditions that led to a purchase might be really beneficial, it’s also important to recognize that the process is extremely flawed.
We are often victims of our own assumptions about the data we consider to be a sign of strong buy intent, and then we construct a case around that data. In other words, we only see what we want to see in the data when we look for it.
Predictive analytics may assist us in overcoming this prejudice. With the ability to connect the dots from a large number of data points, predictive analytics tools can identify the when, where and how that are associated with high purchase intent — to the point where actions can be assigned a dollar value to determine exactly how valuable they are — and then assign that dollar value to actions to determine exactly how valuable they are.
In this case, John Nunziante, Group Director for Client Services at the advertising firm Cardinal Path, took a different tack. According to a blog article published by Martech Today, he and writer David Booth define the ambiguity that often obscures the significance of digital measurements as follows:
“It’s time for your weekly report, and you’re in charge of the digital channel….” The skill of understanding and re-interpreting data in a manner that casts a good light on the digital channels you’re employing, using all of the metrics accessible to you, is becoming second nature to you.”
“50,000 individuals phoned, and we sold $250,000,” says the telemarketer. Wonderful!
“150,000 customers walked into the shops, and 25,000 of them made a purchase, resulting in a total of $12.5 million in retail sales.” Even more impressively, if you give me another $1 million, I can sell 25 percent more.” Fantastic, and you’ve received what you wanted.
“We produced six million display impressions, and our search impression share is 82 percent,” says the digital team. With 95,000 hits, 15,000 utilized the shop finder and 8,000 completed the checkout procedure,” says the company. Huh? What on earth does it have to do with the situation?
Digital marketing, as compared to traditional media, is a straightforward example of how ambiguity may appear. It was for this reason that Nunziante and his colleagues need a more effective method of determining the significance of their measures.
Consequently, they had some predictive analytics constructed and data evaluated, and at the end, they discovered that the signs they believed to be most beneficial for detecting purchase intent were really not that significant after all. The actions of clicking on the “store finder,” adding an item to the basket, and even starting the checkout process were not nearly as strongly associated with the act of making a purchase as you would expect.
Data and models revealed that interactions with the “chat now” function were very beneficial, and that involvement with “special offers” was the most predictive of a purchase, both online and offline. Nunziante describes the procedure as follows:
And after you’ve determined which behaviors are the most beneficial, you can go to work on the really effective task. Using this information, we evaluated every part of the offers pages and navigation elements, optimizing against a goal that we know is very valuable to us, and then quickly calculating how much value was being generated.
Begin by determining the purchasing intent of your target demographic.
Identifying purchase intent in an audience means connecting together a plethora of different characteristics of user behavior. Moreover, as the number of channels, devices, and ecosystems grows, the task will only get more challenging.
It is dependent on a variety of elements, such as budget, company maturity, and even reach, to choose whether to employ observational skills or predictive analytics.
A smaller, local firm that does not have a variety of purchasing options will discover that their resources are better spent on expansion via other means. In contrast, a worldwide corporation with touchpoints across innumerable channels and devices may overlook evidence of buy intent if they rely just on observations.
