What Is Intent Data & How You Can Use It In 2025

If you’re a B2B marketing or sales representative handling things like lead generation and qualification and crafting successful conversion strategies, you’ve probably heard of intent data.

Intent data plays a critical role in all essential sales and marketing operations, helping you efficiently detect, score, and convert more leads.

However, to use intent data effectively, you need a crystal-clear understanding of what it is and the optimal ways to use it.

And this is where this in-depth guide steps in.

In this article, I’ll explain all you need to know about intent data, including its:

Definition.
Types.
Best use cases for B2B teams.

I’ll begin by answering the essential question:

What is Intent Data?

Intent data is information about the behaviors and actions of individuals or organizations that indicate their interest - i.e., intent - in purchasing a product, service, or solution.

An example of such behavior would be an individual frequently visiting your website, especially high-intent pages like pricing, or engaging with your chatbot to get detailed information about your product’s features and use cases.

This is why intent data is such a vital part of B2B sales and marketing strategies, as it helps identify and target potential buyers who are:

Actively researching specific products or services.
Engaging with content related to those products or services.

What Are The Key Types of Intent Data?

There are two main types of intent data that B2B sales and marketing teams need to look into to get a complete picture of their prospects’ buyer intent:

First-party intent data.
Third-party intent data.

First-party intent data refers to data collected directly from your own sources, such as your website or platforms.

As such, it provides critical insights into how potential customers interact with your brand.

Some examples of first-party intent data include:

Website visits: When a person or an organization visits your website, as outlined in the example above, it’s the first hint that they might be interested in what you have to offer. Factors like the pages they visited, the time they spent on high-intent pages, or recurring visits all indicate that that specific lead’s buyer intent is high.
Content downloads: If someone downloads your case studies, product guides, whitepapers, or similar product-led content, it’s usually a clear sign that they’re interested in your product.
Email engagement: Subscribing to your newsletter or engaging with your outreach campaign are also signs that a person or organization might be a good fit for your product.
Form submissions: If someone is willing to provide their name and email address in exchange for a piece of content, an inquiry, or a sign-up for your event, they are often more likely to buy your product in the long run.

On the other hand, third-party intent data provides insight into potential buyer behavior beyond your platforms. It consists of buying signals potential customers have left all over the web.

As such, third-party intent data is sourced from external providers who track, collect, and aggregate data across multiple websites and platforms.

Third-party intent data includes behavior such as:

Engaging with your competitors’ content or websites: If a prospect reads several articles about "cloud computing solutions" on a popular technology publication or blog, it can indicate their interest in cloud solutions, signalling a potential need or upcoming purchase decision.
Virtual event attendance: If a professional registers for and attends a webinar hosted by a third-party platform on a topic specific to your product or industry, it can highlight their interest in similar tools or services.
Search history: If an organization actively searches the web for products similar to yours, it demonstrates that it is probably ready to buy and is just looking for the best fit.

Social media and forum activity: Participating in discussions, asking questions, or seeking expert advice about solutions like yours on platforms like Reddit, Quora, or niche industry forums also shows intent.
Looking for user reviews: Browsing and comparing software solutions on third-party review sites like G2, Capterra, or TrustRadius indicates the prospect is in the consideration or decision-making phase.

Ad engagement: When a user clicks on display ads or sponsored content related to a specific product category, it reveals awareness and potential interest in learning more about the product.
Job postings or changes: If a company frequently posts job openings for a specific position that requires the use of a tech solution similar to yours, it can suggest that it’s investing in that particular technology or scaling its tech capabilities, meaning it will need more such solutions.

To make the most of intent data in your sales and marketing strategies, you must take into consideration both first- and third-party intent signals, as that’s the only way of getting a complete picture of who’s most likely to buy right now.

What Are The Benefits Of Intent Data For B2B Teams?

The main benefits of intent data for B2B teams are numerous, including the following:

💡 Improved lead qualification and prioritization: Intent data lets you score leads more precisely based on relevant first- and third-party intent signals, allowing you to focus on high-intent accounts from the get-go, reducing wasted effort on low-quality leads.

💡 Improved lead targeting and personalization: Since intent data provides insights into prospects' pain points, interests, and buying stages, it enables you to create highly personalized campaigns and messaging tailored to a prospect’s specific needs and customer journey stage for maximum impact.

💡 Shortened sales cycles: Engaging with prospects showing clear intent from the start will significantly accelerate the path to conversion, allowing you to focus on leads closer to making a decision instead of wasting time on nurturing cold leads.

💡 Better sales and marketing alignment: Intent data bridges the gap between marketing efforts and sales outcomes, as marketing teams can pinpoint high-value leads very early on and provide sales with actionable insights, pointing them in the right direction.

💡 Higher conversion rates: As intent data identifies prospects most likely to convert, it leads to better resource allocation, helping you create better-focused campaigns that resonate with high-intent leads.

💡 Enhanced Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Intent data identifies accounts that actively research solutions, enabling hyper-personalized ABM campaigns and direct engagement with key decision-makers.

💡 Boosting sales and marketing success: In addition to helping you allocate your resources optimally and shorten your sales cycles - all of which improves ROI across levels - you can also leverage the insights intent data provides to create new strategies optimized for success based on emerging trends and real-time customer needs and demands.

💡 Gives you an edge over the competition: If you understand what solutions and technology your potential prospects are researching, you can identify potential opportunities and gaps in your competitors’ strategies, allowing you to tailor your messaging and outreach tactics accordingly.

How Can You Collect B2B Intent Data?

To use intent data and reap all the benefits listed above, you first need an efficient capture of it.

Let’s take a closer look at the tools and providers that can help with collecting both first- and third-party intent data.

First-Party Intent Data Collection

When it comes to collecting first-party intent data, your best bet is to get a robust website visitor tracking tool.

These tools do exactly what their name implies - identify companies (and sometimes even individuals) visiting your website.

Although the very fact that someone has landed on your website implies they’re interested in your offering, it usually takes more insights than basic contact information to get a complete idea of their likelihood to buy.

That’s where platforms like Warmly step in.

Warmly is a revenue orchestration platform that:

Identifies companies and individuals visiting your website with high accuracy rates (15% of contacts and 65% of companies).

Enriches each with detailed B2B (contact info, firmographic, technographic, demographic, etc.) and intent data.
Lets you engage with high-intent leads while they’re still on your website.

These functionalities enable your sales and marketing teams to optimize various processes, from identifying key accounts on your website to streamlining and personalizing outreach sequences.

Moreover, you don’t have to spend a fortune to access Warmly’s first-party intent data collection capabilities.

Its free plan lets you reveal up to 500 companies and individuals on your website every month at no cost - forever.

If you’d like to see all of Warmly’s features in action - from website intent to outreach orchestration - book a demo with our team, and we’ll give you a personalized tour of our platform.

Third-Party Intent Data Collection

Collecting third-party intent data is vastly different from first-party due to its nature.

Since third-party intent data comes from sources you don’t own and have no control over, you’ll need to rely on third-party B2B and intent data providers that collect and aggregate buyer signals across sources, including:

G2 and Capterra.
LinkedIn and other relevant social media.
Competitors’ websites, and more.

However, when dealing with third-party intent data, you should keep in mind that you cannot rely on it as your sole source of truth when gauging potential leads’ likelihood to buy for several reasons.

Firstly, most third-party intent data providers cannot identify the actual person running searches on software rating sites or visiting company websites.

Most don’t excel at identifying the right company, as they rely too much on IP addresses alone, which doesn’t always give good results.

Secondly, just because someone is looking into software solutions, for example, doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy, so pouncing on them while they’re still nowhere near deciding might put them off your business for good.

Finally, with so many B2B businesses relying on third-party intent data, potential prospects are constantly bombarded by cold emails, LinkedIn messages, etc.

And as you very well know, being too aggressive and pushy won’t do you much good with today’s potential customers who hate being overwhelmed by pitches.

Of course, I’m not saying you should give up on third-party intent data as such, on the contrary.

Third-party intent data vendors like 6Sense and Demandbase can still play an important role in crafting your sales and marketing strategies.

Just keep in mind that third-party intent data will actually benefit you only when used in conjunction with first-party intent data.

For example, knowing that an individual visiting your website is, in fact, a stakeholder in a company fitting your ICP and that they’ve been researching similar solutions for some time now helps you create a coherent picture of their buyer intent.

This is why platforms like Warmly aim to provide insight into both first- and third-party intent data.

Namely, Warmly has a deep integration with Bombora, allowing it to tap into the buyer signals your website visitors left across the web, in addition to capturing intent on your website.

Therefore, when Warmly identifies a website visitor, it also provides a complete overview of their:

On-site behavior.
Entire digital journey.

As a result, you’ll be much more precise in determining who your hottest leads are right now.

How B2B Teams Can Use Intent Data

Intent data can have various use cases and applications in B2B teams’ operations.

Here, I’ll outline some of the most important ones to help you get started.

#1: Personalizing Outreach Efforts

In today’s competitive market, personalization is essential. It’s one of the only things that can help you cut through the noise and establish rapport with your leads.

Intent data can greatly enhance your personalization efforts, as it provides detailed insights into:

What pain points or needs your leads are looking to solve?
Which stage of the funnel they’re in (consideration, decision, etc.)?
Which channels do they reside in?
What content do they consume, etc?

As a result, your sales and marketing people can craft tailored messaging for each lead and lead segment, ensuring that the offer and approach will resonate with them.

Let’s say you’re a cybersecurity provider who has revealed that a potential prospect is searching for "cybersecurity for small businesses."

Your sales team can leverage this information to draft a targeted, personalized email offering your solution at the precise time when the prospect is most likely to buy.

With tools like Warmly, you can automate the entire outreach process, ensuring that each email, message, and LinkedIn connection request is perfectly tailored to the prospect.

Warmly’s Orchestrator feature handles LinkedIn and email outreach by:

Picking up intent signals your prospects leave on your website and across the web.
Leveraging that intent data to craft personalized connection requests, DMs, and emails.

The best part is that you can fully customize the Orchestrator:

You can set up company and individual-level filters to ensure they contact only the prospects fitting your ICP.
You choose the action that triggers the sequence (e.g., a prospect lands on your website, visits the pricing page, engages with the chatbot, etc.).
You decide how often you want it to run sequences.

In addition to the Orchestrator, you can use Warmly’s AI Chat to automate outreach and lead qualification.

The AI Chat can be set up on any web page, fully trained, and customized to fit your goals and needs.

You can use it to:

Engage high-intent leads.
Book meetings.
Offer contextual collaterals.
Answer questions, and much more.

Using these features together ensures that all high-value leads will be adequately engaged and nurtured, helping your sales reps convert them.

#2: Lead Scoring & Prioritization

Scoring and qualifying leads often feel like a guessing game unless you use intent data.

As I explained above, intent data provides deep insights into buyer intent, such as how interested a lead is in your offering and how likely they are to make a favourable buying decision.

You can leverage intent data to set up custom lead intent scores based on leads’ behavior. This allows sales reps to easily detect and prioritize leads most likely to buy right now.

Here’s how you can create intent-based lead scoring:

Define key triggers: Identify the behaviors that indicate high interest or intent to purchase (e.g., multiple visits to specific product or pricing pages or searching for your company or related industry terms on third-party platforms.).
Set scores for each trigger: Assign a score or weight to each behavior based on its significance in the buying journey (e.g., visiting a pricing page (10 points) may carry more weight than reading a blog post (2 points)).

Combine first-party and third-party data: Remember to consider both types of intent for accurate lead scoring.

Sales reps can then leverage these scores and the insights into each lead’s behavior intent data to craft tailored and timely outreach strategies.

Check out how some of Warmly’s customers use the platform to enhance lead scoring and prioritization:

#3: Create Lists of Customers That Fit ICP

Intent data can help you pinpoint leads who best fit your ICP, thanks to the granular insights it provides.

Let’s take your website visitors as an example to understand best how intent data can be used for this.

While visiting your website can indicate that a person is interested in your product - especially if it’s a recurring visitor or they stick to high-intent pages - you need more information to determine whether they’re a lead and a good match.

Namely, the visitor in question might be a blogger researching your solution for their content or a person just casually exploring software without an actual intent to buy.

So, how do you weed those out from actual leads?

Determining whether they match your ICP is always a good starting point, as it automatically eliminates those who are obviously not a fit by a long shot.

With Warmly, you can easily detect visitors that fit your ICP profile because the platform enriches each identified visitor with granular B2B and both types of intent data.

This leaves no room for guessing, as you’ll figure out at a glance whether the visitor is a prospective customer.

Moreover, you can use the Orchestrator feature to automatically add those visitors to personalized outreach cadences.

When setting up the accounts you want it to target, just use your ICP criteria, and the platform will handle the rest.

#4: Contact Interested Prospects Quickly With Real-Time Alerts

Time-to-lead is often the critical factor in whether you’ll successfully convert a lead.

Quality intent data can significantly reduce your sales reps’ reaction time, enabling them to pounce on leads when interest is at its peak.

Warmly leverages real-time alerts to help your sales reps get to leads faster.

Namely, once a high-intent lead matching your ICP lands on your website or takes any action you define as a trigger (goes to the pricing page, downloads content, etc.), your reps will immediately be notified via Slack and/or email.

This way, they can tune into the lead’s web session in real-time and reach out while they’re still hot.

#5: Create Sales Enablement Content

Intent data can also help optimize your sales enablement strategy across levels. It provides valuable insights into what prospects are researching, their pain points, and the solutions they’re considering.

You can leverage this information to create targeted sales enablement content that equips sales teams to engage prospects effectively at various stages of the buyer’s journey.

Namely, once you know what your target audience is actively searching for and what their needs and pain points are, you can:

Craft comparison charts that position your product against competitors.
Create objection-handling guides that address common pain points.
Prepare comprehensive technical documentation and FAQs for technical buyers.
Create industry-specific case studies, guides, and testimonials.
Develop demo scripts emphasizing features relevant to intent signals.
Train sales reps with role-play scenarios informed by intent data, etc.

This way, every sales rep will become your top rep, as they’ll have all the content, insights, and information at their fingertips, allowing them to create better pitches and handle common questions and objections more efficiently.

#6: Optimize Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Campaigns

Finally, intent data is a God-given when it comes to ABM.

Namely, ABM is a highly targeted approach focusing on high-value accounts.

Intent data helps boost the effectiveness of ABM campaigns by providing actionable insights into the interests and behaviors of key decision-makers within those accounts.

Knowing your key accounts from the start and identifying the right stakeholders within them allows your reps to focus on those accounts and personalize their messaging to resonate with their interests and needs.

Moreover, you can use the intent data insights to pick the right outreach channel for each account, prioritize outreach timing, and more.

Within Warmly, for example, you can streamline your ABM efforts using its intent signal detection and Orchestrator to identify and engage key stakeholders within surging accounts via personalized email or LinkedIn campaigns.

Next Steps: Collect First-Party Intent Data With Warmly

If you haven’t already started leveraging intent data to enhance your sales and marketing strategies, the right time is now - unless you’re ok with losing your competitive edge.

The best way to start collecting and implementing it is by relying on platforms like Warmly that can:

Reveal your website visitors.
Enrich them with granular B2B and first- and third-party intent data.
Leverage intent signals to automate personalized outreach across channels.

Ready to give it a go?

Try Warmly for free and transform your website into a lead-generating machine today.

Or, book a demo with our team to explore all of Warmly’s capabilities.