Keywords Help Sales Teams Understand Buyer Intent

As a sales professional, you might be focused on getting high-quality contact data for your prospects. Of course, being able to reach the right buyer quickly is critical to your ability to convert. But another piece of the puzzle you might not be considering is keyword data and what it can reveal about your prospects.

Keywords Aren’t Just for SEO Marketing

Anyone who helps create search engine optimization (SEO) marketing strategies can tell you that gaining insights into the words and phrases people use to search for information is fundamental to effective digital marketing. Keyword data, coupled with thoughtful analysis, can help you understand what people are interested in and why.

Learning what topics people search for and their frame of mind — whether they’re strictly searching for information or potentially preparing for a purchase — is essential for effective organic search. It’s also what helps drive paid search strategies, so marketers can wisely spend their paid media dollars.

Understanding buyer keywords can also be highly useful to sales teams. Quality keyword data and analysis can improve prospecting by providing insights into buyer intent — the actions and behaviors that help indicate a buyer’s readiness to purchase a product or service. Buyer intent helps reveal which individuals and accounts are actively searching for what you want to sell.

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

• More effectively target prospects
• Prioritize your outreach
• Avoid wasting time on buyers who are unlikely to purchase your solution
• Reach 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 can signal that someone is looking for a particular service or product. Additional words and phrases can be indicators that the buyer is in a transactional state of mind rather than simply an informational one.

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 the topic. A search like this suggests that the individual lacks base-level knowledge about the subject and therefore is unlikely to be ready for a sales transaction. But when someone searches for a phrase like “widget company,” then they’re more likely to be considering a purchase.

That’s a simplistic example for what is actually highly complex analysis, especially in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). When both are combined with business analytics, sales teams 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, and gauge what stage they might be at in the buying process.

Keyword analysis can help you gain insights into when and how buyers search for your product or service, as well as related terms or topics. This information can add relevance and context to your analysis.

For example, let’s say that you’re selling a credit card with airline miles as a reward. If your prospects have been searching for “vacation packages” or travel blogs in addition to searching for a credit card, then they might need what you offer and might even be ready to sign up so they can book that vacation.

Again, that’s a simple example. With AI, you can unmask and evaluate volumes of digital signals to uncover new buyers. Armed with this intent data, your sales team can reach out to these prospects to accelerate the buying journey and close more deals.

Use Your Buyers’ Language

To make the most of keywords as a buyer intent signal, you need 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 consider:

• Avoid using your own jargon and instead use more common, conversational phrases and questions.

• Consider how your prospects would describe a product or solution of interest. (Here’s a hint: They probably don’t use a specific product name, especially if they’re just starting their journey.)

• Consider the challenges that your prospects face and focus on the ones that can be addressed with your offerings. Before buyers search for solutions, they often start by searching for information about the problems.

AI and machine learning can accelerate the identification and targeting of your prospect’s keywords. With the right tools, you can evaluate the significance of particular keywords within the context of digital content they consume, glean insights about their potential next steps, and generate leads more efficiently.

Reach Buyers When It Matters

To reach buyers faster, it’s vital for sales teams to know what and where prospects are searching to help spot important behavioral trends or changes.

After identifying and analyzing relevant keywords, sales professionals can generate a custom report to help you understand who the active and in-market buyers are, craft messaging to speak their language, and connect with them before the competition can. 

Don’t forget that new competitors may enter the scene, market needs can shift, and new use cases can develop for company solutions. That means sales teams will need to revisit their search keyword analysis and reporting on a regular basis, and based on your findings, finetune your approach to help ensure more successful engagement with active buyers.