Charlie Whife, CRO & Co-Founder, Demand AI
Traditional intent data has made B2B marketing smarter. But it also created a dangerous assumption: that knowing what a buyer is researching means you understand what they need (it doesn’t).
Intent platforms can tell you when an account is researching cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure or data management. They can identify topics attracting attention and help sales teams prioritise accounts showing buying signals.
That’s useful, but it’s only half the picture.
Knowing that an account is researching cybersecurity is useful. Knowing they’re asking how long deployment takes is actionable. It’s the difference between observing behaviour and understanding a buyer.
Activity isn’t intelligence
Imagine your sales team receives an alert that a target account has been researching cybersecurity solutions. What should they do with that information?
Perhaps the company is preparing to replace an existing platform. Perhaps it is responding to a security incident. Maybe its IT team is building a business case, trying to understand implementation costs, or simply exploring what’s possible.
Each scenario demands a different conversation.
Yet too much B2B marketing still treats intent as a trigger for action rather than the beginning of an investigation. A topic is identified, an account is scored, and a campaign follows. The assumption is that more activity means greater readiness to buy.
But activity doesn’t tell you what is driving it. It doesn’t reveal the internal objections a buyer needs to overcome, the risks they’re trying to manage or the questions standing between initial interest and a purchase decision.
And without that context, even well-targeted marketing can miss the point.
The missing question: why?
B2B purchases are rarely straightforward. They involve multiple stakeholders, competing priorities, budget constraints and decisions that can carry significant professional risk.
A technical evaluator might want to understand integration requirements. A security leader could be concerned about exposure. A procurement team may be focused on cost. A C-suite executive might simply want to know whether the investment will deliver a measurable return.
They could all be researching the same topic. They are not looking for the same answers.
This is where the next generation of buyer intelligence needs to go further. We need to understand not just which topics attract attention, but what buyers are trying to resolve.
What are they worried about? What information are they missing? What would they need to hear before moving forward?
These are not abstract questions. They should shape the content we create, the messages we deliver and the conversations our sales teams initiate.
Let buyers tell you
One promising route to that deeper understanding is conversational engagement.
When buyers can ask questions while consuming content, they give marketers something far more revealing than a click or a download. They reveal, in their own words, what they want to understand.
At Demand AI, we see this through conversational AI experiences that let buyers engage with content and ask questions as they research. Those interactions provide context around the subjects that matter to them and the issues they are trying to resolve.
The distinction is important. A click tells you someone took an action. A question can tell you why they took it – or at least give you a much better clue.
That creates an opportunity to make marketing more relevant. Content can address the questions buyers have. Follow-up can reflect the interests they’ve demonstrated. Sales teams can approach conversations with a clearer understanding of what may matter to an account, rather than relying on a topic alert alone.
It doesn’t mean every question signals immediate purchase intent. Nor does it remove the need for human judgement. But it gives marketers richer evidence on which to base both.
From signals to understanding
Intent data isn’t the enemy. It remains a valuable part of the B2B marketing toolkit. The problem is treating it as a complete picture of buyer intent when it is often only the starting point.
The opportunity is to combine behavioural signals with the context that makes them meaningful.
The companies that do this well will be better equipped to create relevant content, prioritise follow-up and help sales teams have more informed conversations. They will spend less time guessing what an account might want and more time responding to what buyers are actually telling them.
The future of buyer intelligence won’t be defined simply by how much activity we can detect. It will be defined by how much we can understand.
Because knowing where a buyer is looking is useful. Understanding why they’re looking there is where the real value begins. Find out more about how Demand AI can help you do that, and download our latest Buyer Curiosity Index research to understand the questions buyers are asking.