Understanding Demandbase Intent

What Is Demandbase Intent?

Demandbase Intent is a way of discovering which accounts are most interested in your products or services. Demandbase uses your account lists, keywords, and other data to identify interested accounts. 

For example, if your company supplies oil field equipment, a person reading a page about oil might not be a good fit - they could be learning about olive oil. Someone researching oil fields shows more interest, but they could just be writing a school paper. However, if they’re reading about oil field suppliers and comparing Halliburton to Schlumberger’s production optimization, they might be a strong prospect if their interest continues.

Demandbase also supports 133 languages. Although the majority of business intent occurs in English, adding non-English keywords supports global GTM strategies. See Best Practices for Creating Non-English Keyword Sets.

Where Does Demandbase Keyword Intent Come From?

Demandbase collects intent signals through direct access to the bidstream via our B2B DSP. This connects us to over one million web publishers, giving us visibility into the content of their articles.

Annually, we look at over 1 trillion monthly interactions across the web from B2B companies, 4 billion IP addresses, and 36 billion B2B site visits. 

Intent data is gathered from the following sources:

• Public business registries: Basic firmographics such as industry, revenue, number of employees.
• B2B content consumption: Demandbase uses its publisher/advertising network to observe the content employees are reading. To ensure accurate data, we look at global websites focused on B2B-relevant topics. 
• B2B content production: Demandbase crawls the open web for content tied to key company decision makers and stakeholders - blog posts, interviews, bylines, forum posts, speaking slots and panel participation, etc.
• Engagement on your website for direct Intent signals.

Intent Is Probabilistic

Demandbase uses AI and machine learning to find companies that match your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). These technologies detect spikes and trends that signal potential opportunities based on probability. Central to this process is the algorithm, which is a set of instructions used to gather and analyze data.

Using natural language processing and proprietary techniques, Demandbase scans articles for keywords from our library. We then provide unique user views for the most relevant keywords. These views are aggregated weekly and scored based on relative strength of activity (low, medium, high). We also track “trending intent” indicators when intent activity increases significantly.

For example, if people read pages about oil field suppliers, we recognize their interest. As the algorithm collects data, it learns to identify patterns and trends, such as topics like Halliburton vs. Schlumberger Production Optimization. 

Intent Strength

The strength of intent is measured by looking at the number of people at similar-sized accounts that are reading web pages with a keyword.

Important: This methodology may change as Demandbase makes improvements to the model.

How Demandbase Expands Intent Reach

In Demandbase, identifying intent starts when you create keyword sets. AI then expands that set to other related keywords, leveraging a vocabulary of more than 375,000 keywords. AI looks for related keywords in an article to determine relevance and also searches for combinations of keywords to ensure proper context. 

Trending Intent 

Demandbase analyzes intent data to identify trends that signal future opportunities. When an account starts reading about a particular keyword much more than usual, this increase is known as Trending Intent and suggests the account might be highly interested in that topic.

Trending Intent definition: Intent signals increased by two standard deviations the last 7 days compared to the last 8 weeks. 

Intent Surge

Intent activity from third-party intent providers such as Bombora, G2, and TrustRadius are known as Intent Surge. Intent Surge is only available to customers that have a third-party intent integration or manually import intent activities. See Understanding Third-Party Intent in Demandbase One.

How to Use Intent in Demandbase

In Demandbase, intent can be used in many areas including keyword sets, journey stages, and ads.

Keywords Sets

Intent signals are represented as keywords, and a group of keywords is a keyword set. See Set Up Demandbase Intent: Create Keyword Sets

If you receive Intent as a data service, contact your Demandbase account team to set up your keyword list and to enter it in our AI and machine learning systems. See Understanding Demandbase Intent as a Data Service. 

Intent and Account Journey Stage

Demandbase can uncover intent long before a prospect fills out a form on your site or shows other obvious interest. Most research happens on external websites, so discovering their interest early on is important. Using intent data, you can reach out to prospective buyers in time to influence the buying cycle before your competitors do.

The following are some ways you can use intent when targeting accounts in different stages of the journey funnel:

Intent and Advertising

Demandbase Advertising uses intent signals to automatically reach prospects.

With dynamic advertising bidding, Demandbase puts ad budgets to optimal use by bidding higher CPMs for high-intent individuals and by retargeting ads accordingly. Demandbase Advertising can also capture individuals on the periphery, who may have a less significant role in a purchase decision, and programmatically bid for an impression when the price is right.