Insights
November 1, 2023

Buyer Intent Software: How It Helps You Sell Smarter and Drive More Revenue

by 
Albert Finder

Have you ever struggled to figure out what your online traffic really wants? Well, you're not alone. Knowing what your website visitors think as they browse your website is the golden nugget of sales. Everyone wants a piece.

If you understand how they tick, you can make them convert. But to get there, you'll need two things:

  • Accurate intent data
  • A top-tier buyer intent software to make it all happen

You could play the guessing game and A/B test your hypotheses all the way to their hearts (and credit card information). Unfortunately, in a world where people are highly complex and users skim through websites in a few seconds, that alone is not a winning strategy.

Here's the catch: ContentSquare's Benchmark Report found that websites with high customer engagement deliver 19% higher conversion rates.

With that in mind, let's discuss leveraging buyer intent data to move leads through the sales cycle. Keep reading to learn how to leverage this buyer intent data to push all the right buttons in the customer journey.

What is Buyer Intent Software?

Buyer intent software is a digital tool that helps businesses determine what their prospects are showing interest in and which users are showing the highest propensity to buy.

A tool like this complements the efforts of your sales and marketing teams, being used to identify and prioritize your highest quality leads. When buyer intent is high, the sales team can target prospects that are likely to turn into active buyers.

In other words, it makes it easier to focus on people willing (or ready) to buy.

Buyer intent tools employ different systems to interpret intent data and digital footprints.

Here's a breakdown of how they can work:

  • Data Collection. The process begins with extensive intent data point collection. It gathers information on your prospects’ actions.
  • Pattern Recognition. For example, these tools recognize intent based on similar patterns of previously converting visitors.
  • Behavioral Scoring. To assess the seriousness of a visitor, the software may use lead scoring. For instance, a website visitor who explores prices and product specifications may have a high purchase intent score. Hence, the tool will reveal strong intent signals for potential prospects. However, these behaviors alone are not enough to accurately determine a website visitors’ intent - for that, you need AI and Machine Learning.
  • AI and Machine Learning. This allows the software to adapt to changing user buyer behaviors and preferences, providing accurate, error-free insights. Machine learning helps predict buyer intent and deliver this data to your team in real time. Lift AI integrates this cutting-edge technology to keep enhancing the best purchase intent tool on the market. 

Types of Buyer Intent Software

It comes in three main types:

  • First-party data-based solutions. These systems use the data that you already have from users who engage with your owned properties that you control, such as your website. 
  • Third-party data-based solutions. External sources, like market research, a benchmark analysis, or a third-party website, make up third-party intent data. These insights give you more information on prospects from a border perspective.
  • Hybrid solutions. These combine data from inside and outside your earned and unearned channels for a more comprehensive view. This buyer intent data can help sales and marketing teams determine the market perspective and how customers react to your offering.

Key features of Buyer Intent Software

People get frustrated when browsing online. Searching for a B2B solution is complex, and hunting for the best deal is a challenging, time-consuming task. Some users will drop the quest and move on with their tasks if information is hard to find.

Then, when you think you have them, they leave you high and dry. That's why 2023 is forecasting to conclude with an alarming cart abandonment rate of 70%.

As of today, every business needs buyer intent software.

If you still think understanding purchase intent is a luxury, and not a necessity, stick with us. 

Let's explore the key features of what buyer intent software can do (note, not all tools can perform all features):

  • Real-Time Data Analytics. This software, such as Lift AI, is an intent data provider first. It analyzes customer behavior as they navigate your site on the spot.
  • Customer Segmentation. It divides your visitors into categories based on their actions.
  • Visitor Intent Scoring. After determining the actions, the system assigns scores accordingly.
  • Personalization Capabilities. Intent data providers allow for tailored experiences based on visitor intent levels and behavior.
  • Integration with other Systems. Good buyer intent software integrates with your existing tech stack for unified lead and customer data management.
  • Predictive Analytics. The system can forecast visitor behavior by analyzing historical and current data (IP addresses, past actions, recent checkout cart activity, etc.). Similarly, this helps you forecast future marketing and sales results.
  • Behavioral Insights. With this software, you can gain valuable insights into your visitor's preferences, pain points, and decision-making factors.

Benefits of Using Website Buyer Intent Data

In a nutshell, here are just a few ways that website-focused buyer intent data software impacts your business:

  1. At first, it helps you make sense of all your visitor's data, present or past.
  2. Then, it tells your sales and marketing who to focus on with it.
  3. Your teams use the data to prioritize and nurture leads.
  4. Finally, you sell more and boost your revenue.

Now, let's get into specifics. Here are the benefits of using buyer intent software to interpret customer data:

  • It improves upon traditional lead scoring. Traditional lead scoring uses human hypotheses and rules to try and score someone’s intent. Using machine learning with AI models, this process is advanced and works with anonymous visitors.
  • Help you expand your existing customer persona and your ideal customer profile. Sometimes there are individuals showing buyers' intent who may challenge your definition of ICP and would not be given any focus with a purely ICP-based qualification system
  • It boosts productivity for sales and marketing teams. With more time on their hands, marketing can use resources in the lead generation process and other marketing campaigns. On the other hand, salespeople have more windows to pursue high-quality leads and engage with active buyers, rather than spend time with non-buyers.
  • It can improve the lead nurturing process by telling you where each user is in the sales funnel. For those in the research phase, you can push informative content. For SQLs, you can send relevant sales triggers.

Key Takeaway

With buyer intent tools and software, you can improve strategies, offerings, and customer experience by leveraging insights into visitor behavior.

This proactive approach boosts engagement, conversions, and customer loyalty. Needless to say, a buyer intent tool is a solid competitive advantage in the business world.

Comparing Buyer Intent Software: The Top 5 Market Picks

When it comes to choosing the best tool for your business, research is key. Fortunately, we did the digging, so you don’t have to.

Here's a closer look at the 5 top-rated buyer intent software tools:

1. Lift AI - Used for Real-Time Website Buyer Intent Insights

Key Features:

  • Real-time buyer intent analysis on your website
  • Comprehensive data collection for every single visitor 
  • AI-powered behavioral scoring
  • Integration with your tech stack
  • Over 85% accuracy 

Pros:

  • Instant and continually updated analysis of visitor behavior
  • Scores all users, even anonymous prospects with great accuracy
  • Allows personalized experiences based on visitor intent
  • Seamless integration with popular tools in your tech stack
  • AI adapts to changing user behavior for reliable insights over time 
  • Generates immediate results, as the model is pre-trained and ready to deploy

Cons:

  • Works exclusively on your website, not outside of it 
  • Best for websites with more than 20,000 visitors 

Pricing:

Varied pricing options depending on your business size and requirements, starting at $1,500 USD / month (at the time of writing).

2. Bombora - Used for B2B Market Insights

Key Features:

  • Expansive B2B intent data network
  • In-depth insights into buyer intent outside of your website
  • Allows enhanced lead scoring and targeting

Pros:

  • The star product (Company Surge) can anticipate market demand for your niche
  • Taps into one of the largest pools of data and networks to pull data
  • Extensive filtering options to analyze leads and topics of interest
  • Sales and marketing teams report better levels of collaboration between the two after implementing the tool

Cons:

  • Only works with ID matched companies/accounts and contacts
  • Primarily focuses on mid-sized B2B companies
  • Might require additional data sources (as it relies mostly on third party data)
  • It doesn’t always integrate easily with other tools in your tech stack (especially Salesforce)
  • Users find it difficult to understand the buyer intent and scoring system

Pricing:

Bombora’s pricing is not transparent, meaning that you have to fill out a form to get a quote. This process can delay the decision-making process and confuse users. 

*We used G2 Reviews and TrustRadius to aggregate this data. 

3. UpLead - Used for Lead Generation and Prospecting

Key Features:

  • Extensive features, filters and functionality
  • Delivers on its promise to help businesses find out buyer intent
  • Works well with sales and marketing teams

Pros:

  • Easy-to-use platform
  • Suitable for businesses of all sizes
  • Good value for money
  • Free trial

Cons:

  • Only works with ID matched companies/accounts and contacts
  • The database of B2B and B2C leads is not as extensive as users would expect
  • At times, the contact and company data of leads is not 100% accurate

Pricing:

UpLead’s pricing model is straightforward. It has three pricing tiers:

  • $99
  • $199
  • Custom (enterprise level pricing)

*We used G2 Reviews to aggregate this data. 

4. HappierLeads - Specializes in Lead Generation 

Key Features:

  • Lead generation is driven by intent data
  • Advanced personalization 
  • Integration with a range of marketing tools

Pros:

  • Extensive features that replace the need for other tools
  • Seamles integration with your stack
  • Delivers great results for email marketing
  • Great customer service
  • Free trial

Cons:

  • Only works with ID matched companies/accounts and contacts
  • Doesn’t filter out bots (5 second interactions)
  • Less-than-stellar user interface
  • Limited advanced analytics features

Pricing:

Happier Leads has three pricing tiers, ranging from $99, $499 to custom pricing for large organziations. The platform offers a free trial worth 50 credits to try out the tool.

*We used G2 Reviews and GetApp reviews to aggregate this data. 

5. Demandbase - Used for Account-Based Marketing

Key Features:

  • Advanced account identification
  • Real-time intent data
  • AI-driven personalization

Pros:

  • Specializes in account-based marketing
  • Integrates with marketing systems and Slack
  • Good for B2B leads

Cons:

  • Only works with ID matched companies/accounts and contacts
  • Might be pricey for smaller businesses
  • Requires a steep learning curve 
  • Not ideal for B2C brands
  • Poor insights reviews and reporting

Pricing:

The pricing model is complex and multi-level tiered. Leads need to go through the sales team to explore costs and packages.

*We used Gartner Reviews to aggregate this data.

Best Overall: Lift AI - The Superior Choice

In the competitive world of buyer intent software, Lift AI stands out as the best overall choice. 

Lift AI integrates all the must-have features of a buyer intent software:

  • Real-time buyer intent analysis
  • AI-powered behavioral scoring 
  • Accurate insights into customer intent
  • Works with anonymous website visitors (no other tool can)
  • Seamlessly integrates with your existing tech stack

Lift AI is designed for those aiming to maximize the revenue potential of their website by uncovering target high-intent prospects (whether they are ID matched or not) and take their sales and marketing strategies to the next level.

When you're in pursuit of superior buyer intent insights and aiming to elevate your sales and marketing game, Lift AI stands out as the smart choice. 

👉 Get started with Lift AI today. Leverage your customers' intent with real time insights.

How Lift AI Helps Businesses Understand Buyer Intent

Unique user needs and a one-size-fits-all approach are like water and oil. They don't mix well together. They never did, but sales and marketing teams lacked the tools and data to figure that out.

Fortunately, Lift AI brought a whole new perspective on sales intelligence.

This buyer intent software isn't just another tool in your tech stack. This tool helps companies of all sizes make sense of their customers' data and improve their figures. Alone, it shines a light on your website traffic, allowing you to immediately see who the potential buyers are right now, and who is not.

With Lift AI, you can use the buying intent score across nearly all of your tech stack. From Google analytics, to personalization tools, from conversational marketing, pop-ups and marketing automation, lift AI integrates with your existing tech stack. Once the lift AI buying intent score is available in your specific tools, you can then use this to segment for high, mid, and low intent traffic on your website.

Here are the results our clients shared with us after using Lift AI:

Now, you may be wondering – can this tool deliver the same results for my company, considering the unique problems our visitors face? Of course!

Let's break this down. We promise you – no sales pitches here, just real software data.

How Lift AI Works

Lift AI employs advanced machine learning algorithms to analyze visitor behavior in real time. It instantly identifies high-intent prospects and connects them with your sales team.

Our Step-by-Step Approach

Lift AI begins by collecting data on your website visitors' actions and interactions. This includes:

  • The pages they visit
  • How long they spend on each page
  • Clicks across pages
  • Multiple page views
  • Previous browsing history
  • Referral information 
  • ...and many others.

The software then employs our AI model to identify recurring behaviors and correlations between all of those actions and behaviors.

Our Technology

One of Lift AI's most powerful aspects is its real-time buyer intent analysis capability. As visitors navigate your website, the software processes actions and updates their intent scores live.

Then, it segments visitors into distinct categories based on the collected data. This real-time insight allows for immediate responses.

This way, you can turn prospects into active buyers faster, better, and with less input.

What's more – Lift AI uses the latest-generation machine learning to gain insights from visitor responses. It is pre-trained using millions of data points, and the tool continuously improves itself to predict buyer intent with close accuracy.

Don't take our word for it. Our clients' successes speak volumes. If you're ready to boost conversions, Get Started with Lift AI Here.

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