Sales Leaders: Keywords Are Key to Understanding Buyer Intent

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Sales Leaders: Keywords Are Key to Understanding Buyer Intent

Know What Your Buyers Look For – And How – To Reach Them Faster

As a sales leader, you might be focused on getting high-quality contact data for your prospects. Of course, being able to reach the right prospect quickly is critical to your ability to convert.

But another piece of the puzzle you might not be considering is keyword data and what that can communicate about your prospects.

Keywords Aren’t Just for SEO or Marketing

Anyone who works in SEO can tell you that gaining insights into the words and phrases people use to search for information is a cornerstone of digital marketing. With good keyword data – coupled with thoughtful analysis – you can understand a lot about what people are looking for and why.

Sales Leaders: Keywords Are Key to Understanding Buyer Intent

Understanding what topics people search for and their frame of mind when searching – whether they’re searching for information or are researching a potential transaction – is the cornerstone of optimizing content for organic search. It’s also what drives paid search strategies, so marketers can wisely spend their ad dollars.

Understanding keywords also can be highly useful to sales leaders, though. Quality keyword data and analysis can speed prospecting by providing insights into buyer intent and when they’re in-market for what you want to sell.

When you know which buyers are in-market, you can:

  • More efficiently and effectively target prospecting
  • Prioritize your outreach
  • Avoid wasting time on unlikely prospects
  • Get to in-market buyers before your competition

Keywords as Buyer Intent Signals

Simply put, a keyword is a word or phrase someone uses to search for information. Certain types of words and phrases signal that someone is searching for a service or product. Additional words and phrases are indicators that the person searching is in a transactional state of mind rather than just seeking general information.

In other words, keywords can tell you when someone has started their buying journey.

For example, someone searching for “What is a widget?” is likely just trying to get educated about a topic. But when someone searches for a phrase like “widget company” then they’re more likely looking to purchase.

That’s a simplistic example of what is actually highly complex analysis, though, especially in the era of artificial intelligence and machine learning. With the power of AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics, you can automate the evaluation of countless keywords in what feels like the blink of an eye to gain faster insights into what buyers are thinking and doing.

You can gain insights into not only when and how buyers search for your product or service, but related terms or topics that add to the relevance of your analysis. Let’s say that you’re selling a credit card with airline miles as a reward. If your buyer has been searching for “vacation packages” or travel blogs in addition to searching for a credit card, then they might be just the buyer who needs what you offer – and are ready to sign up so they can book that vacation.

Again, that’s a simple example. With AI, you can unmask and evaluate potentially billions of digital signals to ID that buyer. Then you your sales team can reach out to that buyer – and other buyers showing relevant intent – to accelerate their buying journey and close the deal.

Use Your Buyers’ Language

To make the most of keywords as a buyer intent signal, you have to be plugged into how your buyers think about topics and the language they use to search for them. That means stepping back and taking an outside-in view of your prospects.

Some things to think about:

  • Avoid using your own jargon and instead, use natural language phrases and questions.
  • How would your prospects describe a product or solution they’re looking for? Hint. It’s probably not by the product name, especially if they’re just starting their journey.

Again, AI and machine learning can accelerate the identification and targeting of your prospect’s keywords. With the right algorithm, you can evaluate the meaning of keywords in context as words that are part of a page and glean better insights about intent.

D&B Buyer Intent uses unique, patented natural language processing and machine learning to read words on a page and link them to what buyers need and want. That includes understanding variations on a keyword or phrase.

For example, if the term “AWS” appears in an article or blog post online about cloud storage, we know it means “Amazon Web Services” because we’re seeing that keyword in context. We can also accurately screen out articles where AWS is mentioned but it actually refers to something else, like the Animal Welfare Society. When false positive matches on intent are screened out, you get leads that are more precise and accurate.

Your Turn to Reach Buyers When It Matters

Armed with this information, a sales leader could then generate a custom report to understand who their in-market buyers are – and get to them before the competition.