Realizing new opportunities in the customer journey with intent marketing

For traditional advertising in the form of pop-up banners, direct mail or TV commercials, this development is ushering in difficult times: Customers are increasingly realizing that they can expect specific and accurate responses. This reduces the likelihood that they will engage with advertising or content that is outside of this experience. With intent marketing, a customer is therefore not interrupted during an activity such as reading or watching TV, but is offered exactly what they need based on their questions and previous actions.

In the past, target group targeting was based on the results of demographic research. Customers were grouped based on factors such as age, ethnicity, gender or income to determine who might be interested in which products. "Women between the ages of 21 and 45" as the main target group for baby products was a rather sweeping and inaccurate assumption, but before the internet age, marketers could only rely on demographic targeting.

People's intentions instead of "target groups"

Today, we know that customers cannot be defined by age or gender alone. In fact, marketers who rely solely on demographic targeting risk missing out on an estimated 70+ % of potential buyers. It is therefore important to identify a customer's online and offline behavior to understand their mindset in real time.

Knowing what customers think helps to create a more personalized customer experience, maximize profitability and increase conversion rates. The gradually changing behavior of customers on the Internet plays into the hands of marketing professionals: more and more people are not searching online with a single keyword, but are typing a series of words or entire sentences or questions into the search field. Especially when consumers use voice assistants, they ask questions in complete sentences. In doing so, customers express their true intention, i.e. their "intent" and thus their intention to inform, act or buy, much more obviously and more often than in previous times. This change means that intent marketing is also becoming increasingly important. Companies are therefore well advised to adapt themselves and their marketing strategies to these new circumstances.

Previous customer action as a basis

Intent marketing refers to any type of commercial interaction that is based on a customer's original action - such as an online search, clicking on an ad or downloading content. In contrast to traditional demographic marketing, which makes blanket assumptions about customers, intent marketing can be used to determine the respective needs of customers based on their actions.

It is about understanding the original motivation of each customer and orienting yourself to his or her intention. In other words, you should offer customers exactly what they want or need at any given time. For example, according to a study by "Think With Google", 40 percent of buyers of baby products live in households without children. If you were to focus solely on the target group of "women and men with children" in this case, you would miss out on a considerable proportion of potential buyers. If, on the other hand, you concentrate on the actions of customers and their search queries - for example, when they search online for "gifts for baby showers" and then click on your own website - you find out who the customers are, what they were looking for and what they really want. This kind of differentiated understanding enables companies to reach new groups of buyers exactly when they are ready to act.

New search behavior changes customer expectations 

Intent marketing has received a particular boost from advances in AI-supported search functions. With natural language processing (NLP), a branch of artificial intelligence, computer programs can "listen", i.e. process human language - and also provide answers.

Interestingly, this development is self-reinforcing! Because we can interact more and more "organically" with search engines, we also search more via them. According to data from Yext, consumers make an average search query three to four times a day. As NLP enables search engines to answer complex questions, more searches are being made online.

Potential for marketing

These developments open up unimagined opportunities for marketing managers. After all, customers are searching online for products or services from companies more than ever before. They are asking dialog-oriented questions that include several words. Such questions from consumers are easier to convert into customers because they reflect the intention to act to a high degree. Long questions from customers indicate a precise search intention and consequently a high willingness to buy.

In fact, the longer the query, the more likely a customer is to click on your site. According to an internal Yext analysis, long search queries consisting of more than six words lead to a click 55% more often than queries with just one word.

Why? A customer searching for a keyword such as "bank" can have a variety of intentions. For example, they may want to find out how a bank is structured or which banks are available in their area. However, a search query such as "How do I find a good bank in Berlin?" signals that the customer is already much deeper in the purchasing process or "purchase funnel". This person is more likely to be ready to take a certain action - namely to look for a new bank in Berlin.

Example search "Tips for renovating my bathroom"

A second example of why you need to go beyond keywords: A customer searching for "tips for renovating my bathroom" may still be at the beginning of their research, but they are signaling an intent to renovate their bathroom. A brand like Hornbach, for example, should not miss out on this. However, Hornbach would not be able to serve the customer journey of this customer if only keywords such as "Hornbach" or "home improvement" were taken into account across the entire purchase funnel instead of intent-based, dialog-oriented search queries.

Nowadays, the customer journey no longer begins in the store. It starts with a question and is not linear. This is why intent marketing is redefining the marketing funnel. Thanks to NLP, the search experience is better than ever, which is also reflected in a significantly higher search volume. As a result, people are expressing their intent more and more frequently.

If you imagine the motivated customers behind these queries, it quickly becomes clear why intent or search queries are estimated to account for around 62 % of all web interaction. Responses to longer, intent-based queries are 37 % more likely to result in a click. For brands that pick up customers exactly when they make the search query - no matter where they are from - this means a higher return on their investment.

Customers are signaling their intent more and more frequently and in increasing detail. The task of marketing professionals is to pick up customers at key moments - both on your website and when searching on third-party platforms such as Google Maps.

If you want to determine customer intent, the first step is to analyze customer behavior over a certain period of time and then determine trends. This includes recurring search queries or website content that encourages interaction and leads to a conversion - such as a purchase, an appointment booking, a newsletter registration or a job application. Marketing staff can then target potential customers who carry out these actions. In this way, search data trends can be used to determine customer intent and successively make your own marketing more effective.