What Is Intent Data? Visualizing Customer Interests Through Behavioral Data

What Is Intent Data?

Intent data refers to information that indicates the current intentions or interests of a user.

Intent data is used as a clue to determine whether a user is interested in a specific product or service, or whether they are considering a purchase. For marketers, it serves as a valuable source of information for understanding market needs and trends, and for planning strategies tailored to target audiences.

What Is Behavioral Data?

Behavioral data is information regarding the specific actions or activities a user has taken in the past.

This includes past purchase history, time spent on a website, number of pages viewed, and advertisements or content clicked. By leveraging behavioral data, it becomes possible to perform segmentation and targeting based on a user's past preferences and actions.

The Relationship Between Intent Data and Behavioral Data

Intent data and behavioral data are closely related. While intent data indicates what a user is currently interested in or intending to do, behavioral data indicates the actions or activities a user has taken in the past.

By combining these two types of data, you can build a more precise user profile.

For example, if intent data detects that a user is currently interested in a specific product, analyzing that user's past purchase history and behavioral data allows you to determine whether that interest is recent or continuous.

Furthermore, by creating customer segments based on past behavioral data and then analyzing the intent data (current intentions) shown by users in those segments, you can gain a deeper understanding of the specific needs and interests of your target audience.

The Importance of Intent Data and Its Background

In recent years, the importance of intent data has been increasing in the field of digital marketing. This is because user purchasing behavior has diversified, making it difficult to achieve effective results using only traditional marketing methods.
The fact that intent data has become "purchasable" is also part of the background. With the development of digital technology, many methods for collecting intent data have emerged, and companies that sell this data have been established.
In summary, the sequence is: "Development of digital technology" → "Diversification of user behavior" → "Creation of a market" → "Increased importance."

By leveraging intent data, you can accurately capture a user's true needs and interests, thereby improving the precision of your targeting.

There are several factors behind the rapidly increasing importance of intent data.

Digital Evolution and Adoption

Due to the evolution and widespread adoption of digital technology, consumers now frequently conduct online searches, shopping, and information gathering. By aggregating data on such online consumer behavior, it has become possible to infer their intentions and interests.

Personalization of Marketing

There is a shift from uniform mass marketing to personalized marketing tailored to individual consumers. Intent data provides the information necessary for this personalization.

Intensifying Competition

As competition intensifies across many markets and industries, accurately capturing and responding quickly to the true needs and interests of consumers has become essential for maintaining and strengthening corporate competitiveness.

Data-Driven Decision Making

With the technological advancement of big data and AI, many companies have come to prioritize data-based decision-making. Intent data serves as a crucial source of information for reflecting consumer intentions within such data-driven decision-making processes.

Leveraging Intent Data

Intent data can be utilized in various scenarios within marketing and sales activities.

Personalized Activities

Based on intent data, you can personalize marketing activities to match a user's interests and concerns.

For example, you can provide relevant content or offers to users who show interest in a specific product. This is expected to enhance marketing effectiveness and improve conversion rates.

Lead Scoring

Intent data is also useful in the "scoring" process, which evaluates the quality and enthusiasm of leads. By assigning points based on the degree of intention or interest shown by a user, and prioritizing high-score leads for the sales team, you can support more efficient sales activities.

Competitive Analysis

Through intent data, you can analyze how much interest consumers have in your competitors. This allows you to understand your company's market positioning and gain a strategic perspective to clarify points of differentiation from competitors.

New Product and Service Development

By analyzing user search queries and online behavior identified through intent data, you can pinpoint potential needs and challenges existing in the market. Based on this information, you can generate ideas for new products or services and proceed with development.

Customer Lifecycle Management

By leveraging intent data, you can identify which stage of the customer lifecycle a user is in.

The necessary approach differs between a user considering their first purchase and a loyal repeat customer. By grasping the user's stage based on intent data, it becomes possible to provide communication and services tailored to their specific needs and interests.

Methods for Acquiring Intent Data

Intent data is classified into "First-Party Data" and "Third-Party Data," and the methods and tools used to acquire them differ for each.

First-Party Data

This is intent data that indicates user behavior and intentions on channels owned by the company (e.g., the company's own website, applications, CRM systems, etc.) that the company has collected directly.

Because this data is collected directly by your company, it offers high accuracy and reliability. Furthermore, as it is not shared with other companies, it maintains a high level of uniqueness.

The data is derived from sources such as website visitor page view history, lead information from form submissions and downloads, and email DM click-through rates.

This is intent data that can be acquired through web analytics tools like Google Analytics or CRM tools such as Salesforce and HubSpot, and has been collected in traditional web marketing as well.

Third-Party Data

This is intent data collected by other companies or organizations. It is primarily provided by external data vendors and providers.

Data is provided through each vendor's unique channels and methods, such as visit data from industry-specific websites and forums, social media trend discussions, and research findings or reports.

Because it allows for the comprehensive acquisition of information from multiple sources and platforms, it is useful for grasping broad market and industry trends.

If you can identify users who have an interest or purchase intent for your products or services despite having no prior contact with your company, you can approach them beyond the scope of your existing marketing and sales targets.

For this reason, the utilization of third-party data is attracting significant attention.

By effectively combining First-Party Data and Third-Party Data, you can achieve more precise targeting, segmentation, and personalized marketing strategies.

Management Strategy Platform PLANSonar

PLANSonar is a management strategy platform equipped with features to identify and list prospective customers by leveraging intent data. Utilizing this tool allows for a significant improvement in the efficiency of sales and marketing activities.

By using this tool, AI identifies high-potential, uncontacted companies and automatically generates lists. This enables the streamlining of sales processes and the maximization of marketing effectiveness.

Types of Intent Data Integrated into PLANSonar

PLANSonar comes with the following intent data features implemented as standard. Each data type analyzes corporate intent from different perspectives to support high-precision targeting.

1. Live Access (First-Party Intent Data)

Live Access is a feature that identifies companies visiting your website in real time. By analyzing visiting IP addresses, it is possible to instantly acquire information such as company names, industries, and employee counts.

• Analyze website visit history to create sales lists.

• Verify the effectiveness of advertisements and landing pages.

• Realize real-time approaches to target companies.

2. Interest Signals (Third-Party Intent Data)

Interest Signals leverage partner company data to generate corporate lists based on specified keywords. By utilizing external data sources, it enables the discovery of new target companies.

• Extract comprehensive corporate lists based on keywords.

• Refine attribute information through integration with LBC, one of Japan's largest corporate databases.

• Accurately identify the optimal timing for business negotiations.

3. Interest Sign (Extended Intent Data)

Interest Sign is a service that uses AI to expand upon Interest Signals, generating highly precise target lists.

• AI-Driven Corporate Estimation: Automatically extracts companies with high similarity based on the Interest Signal list.

• Analysis Independent of Fixed IPs: Covers over one million companies, including small and medium-sized enterprises.

• Refinement Based on Region and Employee Size: Further improves the precision of your target audience.

Other: B2B media second-party intent data is also included as a standard feature.

How to Utilize the Management Strategy Platform PLANSonar

Interest Signals and Interest Signs are implemented in PLANSonar, a management strategy platform that can be used in conjunction with Live Access to identify companies browsing your website, delivering the following benefits:

• Clarification of Targets

Dynamically list target companies with high purchasing intent detected by Interest Signals and Interest Signs on PLANSonar. By immediately sharing high-priority companies with sales representatives, you can streamline sales activities.

• Approaching Potential Customers

Utilize Interest Signal and Interest Sign data to visualize the behavior and needs of target companies in real time. This information is provided on the PLANSonar dashboard in a format that facilitates the management of outreach to potential customers.

• Registration, Attribute Assignment, and Analysis of Acquired Leads

Assign needs detected by Interest Signals and Interest Signs to lead information acquired through exhibitions or document requests, and analyze them alongside attribute data. This allows you to determine the optimal timing for priority outreach.

• Nurturing Promising Prospects

Leverage various corporate attribute data, including "Interest Signals" and "Interest Sign," with PLANSonar to achieve seamless data integration with Marketing Automation (MA) tools and CRM systems. We provide an environment that enables efficient and smooth identification of promising leads, campaign design, and lead nurturing activities.

• Efficient Sales Activities

By extracting corporate needs identified through "Interest Signals" and "Interest Sign" and linking them to business card information, sales representatives can develop concrete approach strategies. This enables streamlined sales activities and increases the probability of converting leads into business negotiations.

• Early Detection of Churn Risk

By utilizing "Interest Signals" and "Interest Sign," you can identify potential churn risks—such as searches for other companies' products or interest in competitor services—that are often overlooked when relying solely on CS activities or your own Web site visit history. This allows for the identification of hidden needs and supports proactive risk management.

Leverage intent data to secure a competitive advantage in today's increasingly intense market. "PLANSonar" is an ABM tool that supports both sales and marketing through data, accelerating corporate growth. For more details, please visit our official website:

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