What Is Intent Data and Why Is It Important for Agencies?

Intent data is information that captures consumers' intent as they interact with the digital world. This can include things like:

• Types of pages they visit on a website (e.g., money pages vs. informational articles)

• Links or buttons they click on those pages

• Keywords they search for to land on your website

• Social media posts they share

• Information filled out on lead-qualifying web forms

• The sequence of web pages they visit

• Links clicked inside the body of your marketing emails

• Comments left on your blog posts or videos

• Engagement signals on your social media channels (comments, likes, shares, etc.)

• Client product reviews left on review sites like G2, Trustpilot, TrustRadius, etc.

• Lead-magnet downloads

• Subscription or registration data

• …and other sources, depending on the unique nature of your agency

Intent data is important for your agency because it can help you understand what product or service your potential clients are either already interested in or open to exploring further.

By tracking the behavior of visitors to your website and social media channels, or the actions they take as they navigate your digital properties, you can paint a picture to understand better what they’re looking for and help you tailor your sales pitch accordingly.

How Can Agencies Collect Intent Data?

There are several ways to collect intent data. One popular method is through website tracking tools. For example, by placing a cookie on your visitors’ browsers, you can track their online behavior and see what pages they visit, how long they stay on each page, and what actions they take.

To track what people say about your agency on websites you don’t control, you can use a free service like Google Alerts to get notified whenever there’s a mention in cyberspace of your products, services, members of your staff, or your brand in general, anywhere in the world.

By placing social media buttons on your web pages, you can keep track of social shares originating from your website.

When it comes to social media channels, there are several monitoring tools, like Sked Social, that allows you to manage your social media inbox, and keep track of hashtags, keywords, and mentions relevant to your brand to get an idea of what people are saying about your agency and its services.

Finally, most email marketing automation tools, like Drip or Active Campaign, have hooks that track what links your subscribers are clicking and then let you use that information as a trigger for further automation.

How Can Intent Data Be Used to Improve Your Sales Process?

Intent data can be used in many ways to improve your sales process. One way is by using it to better understand the specific stages in the sales cycle your clients currently occupy based on their historical online behavior.

By tracking the trail of digital breadcrumbs they leave, from pages they visit on your website (e.g., the sales page for service X or product Y) to the length of time on page (a short time typically indicates shopping around, long times indicate more serious consideration,) to the keywords they search for to land on your pages, you can get a better idea of their needs.

Another way intent data can be used to improve the sales process is by helping you understand what objections potential customers may have. This could be ascertained by reading comments people leave on your site or social channels or analyzing user content found through Google Alerts.

Once you get a clear view of the type of objections that come up, you can take proactive steps to address them in your sales pitch, for example, through the use of an FAQ section on your site, lead qualification forms, sales letters, etc.

How Can Intent Data Be Used to Track the Success of Marketing Campaigns?

Intent data is not only critical for improving your sales process but also for tracking the success of your agency’s marketing campaigns.

By understanding what keywords are being searched for or what social media posts are being shared, you can get an idea of which campaigns resonate with people and which ones need more work.

For example, if the user intent of one of your ranking search keywords does not match the marketing message on your landing page, your time on page will suffer. Users looking for top-of-the-funnel background information on your services will not appreciate a bottom-of-funnel pitch.

Likewise, users showing a clear purchase intent in their keywords (e.g., through the use of the terms “reviews,” “features,” “pricing,” “cancellation policy,” “trial,” etc.) won’t resonate with top-of-funnel informational messaging.

What Are Some Best Practices for Using Intent Data?

There are a few best practices to keep in mind when using intent data.

First, intent data shouldn’t be used in isolation but in conjunction with other data sources to get a comprehensive picture of your potential clients.

Other sources include historical marketing and sales reports, industry trends, customer data in your accounting system, the average length of your sales cycle, market research, etc.

Additionally, intent data should be used to inform your sales and marketing efforts, not as a replacement for human interaction.

Automated online behavior tracking and monitoring systems should not be used at the expense of direct email, voice, and video communications. You need both to succeed.

Finally, intent data should be regularly monitored and updated to ensure you get the most accurate information possible.

What Are Some Potential Pitfalls of Using Intent Data?

When used incorrectly, intent data can lead to misguided marketing efforts and inaccurate sales projections.

Intent data is subject to well-informed analysis based on your knowledge of your business and your industry. If, say, someone less experienced on your staff draws the wrong conclusions from your tracking and monitoring data, your conversions will suffer.

That’s why it’s important to use intent data in conjunction with other data sources to get a comprehensive picture of your potential client base so you can assess accurately where they fit in your marketing funnel or where they are in your sales cycle.

For intent data capture to be meaningful, you first need to know your customer from multiple angles. At a minimum, you need to know basic demographic data points about them (e.g., age, gender, position/title, etc.)

Then, you need to complement this data with deeper psychographic information (e.g., what they hear, think, and feel about the type of services you offer, what their challenges and aspirations are, what keeps them up at night, etc.)

You also need to have a solid grasp of your product-market fit. If you’re an established agency with a clear track record, this won’t be as critical. But if you’re a new agency, you’ll need to be very clear about where your product fits in the marketplace before you can establish clear client intent.

Otherwise, your intent data will be a moving window that’s hard to pinpoint and analyze.

Conclusion

Intent data can be a powerful tool in transforming the sales process for your agency.

When used correctly, intent data will help you improve your sales process in many ways, from understanding purchase intent and having a clear view of where your clients are in your sales cycle to tracking the success of your marketing campaigns by looking at their intent data as they traverse your marketing funnels.

Just make sure to complement your intent data with added data points from other sources within your business and from outside industry sources to get a holistic view of where your potential client base is at.

Finally, make sure not to use intent data in a silo or as a replacement for direct lines of client communication but as a valuable resource to be shared with members of your marketing and sales organizations to help your clients along their purchasing journey better.

The top data visualization tools will provide you with a fast and intuitive way to create visual representations of large data sets without the need for coding.

When dealing with data sets that include hundreds of thousands or millions of data points, automating the process of creating useful visualizations will make your job significantly easier.

What are the Best Data Visualization Tools?

1. Datawrapper

Datawrapper is one of the best data visualization tools to help you create charts, maps and tables from raw data without spending hours learning how to code or design.

With Datawrapper's intuitive interface and wide selection of chart and map templates, you can create beautiful data visualizations quickly and easily.

And because Datawrapper is fully responsive, your charts will look great no matter what device they are viewed on.

Datawrapper Features that Stand Out

• No limit to the number of charts, maps, and tables you can create
  
• Make use of shared folders, a Slack & Teams integration, and admin permissions to see what your team is creating
  
• Datawrapper visualizations scale to the largest audiences and support even millions of viewers
  
• Responsive visualizations on desktop devices, tablets, or smartphones
  
• Export every visualization as PNG, SVG or PDF and continue working on them in with external tools, like Adobe Illustrator
  

2. Mode.com

Mode is a data visualization platform that enables you to quickly and easily explore your data. Mode's Visual Explorer feature is a game changer for exploratory analysis.

It enables you to quickly and easily identify weak spots in your funnel, improve landing-page performance, and understand the sources of churn before it begins to manifest in a way that's revenue-impacting.

Mode also runs advanced analysis by switching between an SQL editor, Python & R notebooks and interactive visualizations to help you understand how users are engaging with your product.

Mode.com Features that Stand Out

• Switch between data-heavy visualizations quickly with Helix, Mode's data engine
  
• Prepare pivot tables, data facets, combo charts, dual axes with multiple measures, and more
• Link visual elements, like size or color, to your data and expressively represent your findings
• Perform codeless quick calculations and transformations without writing additional SQL
  

3. Tableau

Tableau is a leading analytics platform designed to help you present your data in many different ways — from simple spreadsheets to complex databases.

It offers a wide range of features, including: visual analytics, dashboards, data connectors, and more.

Whether you're a data analyst, business user, IT professional, or student, Tableau can help you explore and understand your data faster with its intuitive visualization features.

Tableau Features that Stand Out

• Access and combine disparate data without writing code. Power users can pivot, split, and manage metadata to optimize data sources
• Quickly build powerful calculations from existing data, drag and drop reference lines and forecasts, and review statistical summaries
• Make your point with trend analyses, regressions, and correlations for tried and true statistical understanding
• Use custom geocodes and territories for personalized regions
• By combining advances in database and computer graphics technology, you can analyze very large datasets from the convenience of a laptop
  

4. FusionCharts

Best Data Visualization Tool for Dashboards

FusionCharts is a comprehensive charting solution that helps you create web & mobile dashboards so you can make sense of complex data sets and gain valuable insights into your business.

If offers an extensive library of over 100 Interactive charts and over 2,000 data-driven maps — including bar, column, line, area, pie charts as well as specialized charts like treemaps, gauges, spider charts, and more.

Plus, it’s backed by a supportive community of over 800K developers who have used FusionCharts to create their own visualizations across 28K companies.

FusionCharts Features that Stand Out

• Powerful time-series charts for large data; You can plot millions of data points in your browser
• Export dashboards: from generating charts server side to exporting the dashboard as a PDF, to sending reports via email
  
• Popular charts are supported on older browsers(IE6). All charts are responsive to different screen sizes. For mobile devices, the charts automatically adapt to touch events
  

5. Zoho Analytics

Best No-Code Data Visualization Tool

With Zoho Analytics, you can connect directly to hundreds of different data sources — from spreadsheets and databases to cloud services.

You can also quickly prepare your data for analysis using Zoho's intuitive drag-and-drop interface, where you can filter, aggregate, and transform your data to extract the insights you're looking for.

With Zoho Analytics intuitive visualizations and reporting tools, you can create dashboards and interactive reports in minutes to help you track key performance metrics and make better data-driven decisions.

Zoho Analytics Features that Stand Out

• Connect to a multitude of sources like files and feeds, popular business apps, cloud and on-premise databases, custom apps and more, with easy-to-use connectors
  
• Zoho's augmented, self-service data preparation and management module can cleanse, transform, enrich, and catalog the data that you want to analyze
  
• Use a wide variety of charts, widgets, pivot tables and tabular view components to visualize your data
  
• Collaborate with users through secured sharing and fine-grained permissions.
  
• Low-code, no-code model to easily build and embed analytics
  

6. ChartBlocks

Best Data Visualization Tool for Chart Building

Chartblocks is a user-friendly chart builder app that makes it easy for people to design and share charts in minutes.

With Chartblocks, you can choose from dozens of chart types and then customize them to your needs, making it the perfect tool for creating charts for presentations and reports.

You can also embed your charts into any website or share them using the built-in social media sharing tools.

ChartBlocks Features that Stand Out

• Build a chart using data from spreadsheets, imported via API or typed in manually. Update your data directly in the ChartBlocks app or set up scheduled imports
  
• The ChartBlocks interface gives you control over every aspect of your chart; from colors, sizes and fonts to adding grids and changing the number ticks on your axes
  
• Using the power of D3.js your charts are rendered as scalable vector graphics, making them ready for use on retina screens and high-quality printed documents
  
• When you've finished designing your chart, grab the embed code and embed the chart on your own website. You can also share charts straight to Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites
  

7. Grafana

Best Open-Source Data Visualization Tool

Grafana is an open-source data visualization and monitoring suite that has become popular with users for its ability to query, visualize, and understand regardless of source.

This tool doesn’t require you to ingest data to a backend store or vendor database, instead it takes a unique approach of providing a “single-pane-of-glass” by unifying your existing data wherever it lives.

Whether you need to monitor server metrics, application performance, or IoT data, Grafana allows you to quickly build powerful dashboards that provide deep insights into your data without having to move it around.

Grafana Features that Stand Out

• Data source plugins hook into existing data sources via APIs and render the data in real time without requiring you to migrate or ingest your data
  
• With Grafana alerting, you can create, manage, and silence all of your alerts within one simple UI, allowing you to consolidate and centralize all of your alerts
  
• Transformations allow you to rename, summarize, combine, and perform calculations across different queries and data sources
  
• Annotate graphs with rich events from different data sources. Hover over events shows you the full event metadata and tags
  
• The panel editor makes it easy to configure, customize and explore all of your panels with a consistent UI for setting data options across all of your visualizations
  

8. Infogram

Best Infographics-Based Data Visualization Tool

With Infogram, you can turn complex data into easy-to-understand visuals through templates and tools that help you create infographics, reports, charts, and more in minutes.

Infogram allows you to design visualizations with a minimal learning curve, collaborate in real-time, download, share, and publish your work online with a few clicks.

Infogram Features that Stand Out

• Analytics feature provides you with detailed viewer demographics, average on-screen rate, and how many people shared your content
  
• Create individual tracking links and share them with clients or others. See what parts they engage with most using Infogram’s analytics engine
  
• Get custom templates with your brand, colors, fonts, and logo. Empower everyone on your team to create branded visuals in minutes
  

9. Sisense

Best AI-Driven Data Visualization Tool

Sisense is a business analytics platform that helps you to gain insights into all aspects of your business with just a few clicks.

With Sisense, you can embed analytics into your workflow or products and build custom self-service portals to bring AI-driven insights to you and your customers.

Whether you're looking to optimize your sales cycle, pinpoint new opportunities for growth, or improve customer retention, Sisense makes it simple even for beginners to get started quickly with data analysis.

Sisense Features that Stand Out

• Connect, analyze, explore, and collaborate with or without code to uncover powerful insights
  
• With APIs at every endpoint, leverage full customization from the look and feel of the front end to deep control around security and monitoring of the back end
  
• Connect cloud, in-application and on-premises data for an AI-led 360-degree view
  
• Code-first, low code, and no code tools enable you to transform, investigate and visualize large volumes of complex data
  
• Use built-in code-first statistical and predictive analysis libraries and machine learning technologies to uncover future opportunities and outcomes
  

10. Qlik

Best Data Visualization Tool for Enterprise

Qlik is a cloud-based platform that provides real-time data integration and analytics so you can stay on top of what's going on in your business.

Its intuitive visualization tools allow you to slice and dice your data to uncover hidden patterns and trends.

With its active intelligence capabilities, you can gain insights very quickly and take action on your findings in real time.

Qlik Features that Stand Out

• Qlik Sense uses AI to help your users understand and use data more effectively, minimizing cognitive bias, amplifying discovery and elevating data literacy
  
• It combines a real-time data pipeline with action-oriented analytics capabilities to provide in-the-moment insights that can drive immediate action
  
• You can deploy a full enterprise SaaS solution or use Qlik Forts, a hybrid service that extends SaaS analytics to where your data resides
  

11. Power BI

Best Data Visualization Tool for Teams

Power BI is a cloud-based business intelligence and analytics service that helps you gain actionable insights from your data.

With it, you can quickly transform data into clear visuals, allowing you to make better decisions. Power BI is designed for business users who need to mine data with urgency.

Power BI allows you to share your findings with others so team members can work together to find clarity when they need it most.

Power BI Features that Stand Out

• Build apps that easily connect to your data using Excel-like expressions to add logic, and can run on the web, iOS, and Android devices
  
• Unify data from many sources to create interactive, immersive dashboards and reports that provide actionable insights
• Include powerful workflow automation directly in your apps with a no-code approach that connects to hundreds of popular apps and services
  
• Easily build chatbots to engage conversationally with your customers and employees with no coding required
  

12. DOMO

Best Data Visualization Tool for Customization

Domo is a business intelligence and analytics platform that allows you to connect to all your data sources in one place, helping you to drive data exploration and gain deeper insights into your business operations.

You can create pie charts, graphs, interactive maps and other visualizations of your data with just a few clicks, and Domo's drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to customize your dashboards.

DOMO Features that Stand Out

• Create pie charts, graphs, interactive maps, and other visualizations of your data with just a few clicks
  
• Customize your page layout to emphasize certain points and guide users through analysis of the data
• Access your dashboards from your computer, tablet, or device for real-time insights anytime, any place
• A collection of Domo app solutions provides dashboards with KPIs for retail, marketing, data science, among many others
  

13. Datapine

Best Data Visualization Tool for Third-Party Platform Integration

Datapine is a cloud-based business intelligence (BI) solution that offers interactive BI dashboards, which give you secure access to all relevant company data and enable you to make data-driven decisions in real time.

Its BI dashboards are designed to help you unlock the full potential of your data, so you can make informed decisions that will improve your business performance.

Datapine Features that Stand Out

• Over 50 data connectors for databases, flat files, CRM and ERP data, marketing or social media data and many more
• Match and unify data from multiple data sources and run cross-database queries to capitalize on comprehensive analytics
• Choose between calculated and merged fields, predefined functions, and create your own formulas and advanced expressions
  
• Instantly identify trends and choose from a variety of trend lines so you don't miss business opportunities or important market trends
  

How do you find the best data visualization tools for your business?

The best way to select a data visualization tool for your business is to first assess your needs and then find the tool that best meets them, based on the following general criteria:

• What type of data do you need to visualize?
• What type of analysis do you want to perform?
• Do you need a custom or template-based solution?
• How important are interactivity and collaboration features?
• What level of support and training is available?

Once you have a good understanding of your needs, you can start browsing different tools and compare them against each other. Be sure to read reviews from other users to get an idea of what the tool is like in real world applications.

What to Do Next

Designing data visualizations can be a difficult task, especially when dealing with large data sets. However, using the right data visualization tool can make the process a lot easier.

In this article, we’ve looked at some of the best data visualization tools currently available in the market and provided a brief overview of their capabilities.

The best way to see what they can do for you is to test them out with real-world data to see if they're able to fit your business needs.

Most of the above tools offer either free limited-time trials or a money back guarantee.