How to Drive ROI with Demand Intelligence
18 min
Executive summary
B2B marketing requires deep insights to drive measurable business outcomes. Compiling demand intelligence is necessary to truly understand, engage, and influence prospects across the entire buyer journey.
Integrating demand intelligence into your strategy drives higher program performance and deeper buyer engagement. This guide highlights the key trends and practices for applying demand intelligence effectively:
- Collecting and activating actionable insights to improve targeting and personalization
- Aligning demand programs with self-directed, omnichannel buyer journeys
- Applying predictive analytics and intent data to prioritize high-value prospects
- Continuously optimizing campaigns using post-campaign intelligence to drive long-term results
Read the full guide to explore modern demand intelligence strategies that help organizations turn insights into growth.
What is demand intelligence?
Demand intelligence is the strategic process of turning carefully selected buyer and market data into actionable insights that guide how organizations attract, engage, and convert prospects. With deep visibility into buyer journeys, demand intelligence improves targeting, enables true personalization, and fuels data-driven growth across the entire demand lifecycle.
Effectively influencing buyer journeys requires a deep understanding of your prospects, which is the core idea behind demand intelligence.
However, effective demand intelligence involves more than simple data collection. It involves thoughtfully deciding what data to source, how to collect it, and for what purpose. In this way, creating demand intelligence transforms raw data into strategic insight that drives action.
Demand intelligence is built on lead and buyer intelligence, aligning with today’s self-directed, omnichannel buyers. These insights improve targeting, provide the information required to personalize campaigns, and power data-driven growth across the entire demand lifecycle.
Firmographic Data
Technographic Data
Intent Data
Behavioral Data
Account-level insights
Intent signals
Behavioral Data
Account-level data
Why is demand intelligence important?
Demand intelligence improves targeting and personalization, as well as directly impacting return on investment (ROI) by ensuring every marketing dollar is spent on the most promising opportunities.
By collecting and activating actionable insights, teams can:
- Continuously optimize campaigns: Post-campaign analysis highlights which messaging, channels, and content resonate strongest, enabling iterative improvements that maximize engagement and conversion rates.
- Prioritize high-value prospects: Predictive analytics and intent data allow marketing and sales to focus on accounts and buyers most likely to convert, reducing wasted spend. According to the 2024 ABM Benchmark Report, marketers using ABM (which heavily relies on account-level intelligence) report 81% higher ROI compared to those using traditional approaches.
- Align teams around shared goals: When marketing, sales, RevOps, and client success work from the same intelligence, programs are coordinated. This reduces redundancies and drives more efficient pipeline progression.
- Measure impact on revenue: Multi-touch attribution and account-level KPIs allow teams to quantify how campaigns influence pipeline, close rates, and long-term account value.
How to get started with demand intelligence
Successfully implementing demand intelligence requires creating actionable insights that guide strategy, improve targeting, and ultimately drive ROI.
The entire process can be broken down into five practical steps:
Step 1: Audit and use existing data
Start by evaluating the data you already have across your organization.
Sources of internal data include:
Whenever possible, prioritize first- and zero-party data, as these sources provide the most reliable, consent-based insights for building trust and precision in targeting. To highlight that this is a growing trend, an Insights for 2026 report noted that 91% of B2B marketers report collecting first-party data (though many admit their strategy is immature).
Rather than waiting for a “perfect” dataset, you can form hypotheses based on the available insights you already have. These hypotheses can allow you to pilot small initiatives to validate assumptions and learn from early results.
In this case, working data is often more valuable, as it gets your team moving and generates actionable insights quickly.
According to the INFUSE Insights Voice of the Marketer, only 8% of marketers currently use advanced buyer and account intelligence models to inform their campaigns. This is a clear indicator of the untapped potential of optimizing existing datasets.
Step 2: Share insights across teams
Demand intelligence is most effective when insights are shared across the entire organization . As a result, encouraging collaboration among marketing, sales, RevOps, and client success teams is important. This can be achieved by establishing shared dashboards and cross-functional review processes.
These shared insights create full transparency. Doing so ensures that every team benefits from enriched datasets, consistent messaging, and aligned strategy, which turns individual insights into organizational intelligence.
Step 3: Test programs strategically
At this stage, your team will have hypotheses based on existing data. However, validating these hypotheses will require implementing real-world testing.
Implementing initiatives like these creates opportunity for early-stage program data collection, which allows you to iteratively improve your scoring, segmentation, and messaging. This creates a solid foundation for broader demand generation initiatives.
To do this, small-scale, low-risk campaigns can be launched to refine your ICP, messaging, and targeting. Consider paid media pilots, retargeting initiatives, or omnichannel nurture sequences to validate hypotheses.
Step 4: Continuously optimize your dataset
Demand intelligence should not be treated as a static set of data. Ideally, these datasets evolve with every campaign to ensure that your demand intelligence remains relevant, accurate, and predictive. This approach supports smarter decisions for future campaigns.
You can continuously incorporate new insights to:
Step 5: Build a data-driven culture
Even the richest datasets do not have an impact if they are not activated across the organization.
This is why it is important to encourage a culture where insights are accessible to all relevant teams, and all campaign planning, KPIs, and RevOps strategy are informed by demand intelligence. This approach means decisions are based on data rather than intuition alone.
By embedding this mindset alongside demand intelligence, organizations can nurture independent buyers with relevant content, improve engagement, and drive greater ROI.
How to ensure long-term results with demand intelligence
Collecting demand intelligence is only valuable if it drives actionable outcomes. Here are four best practices to maximize long-term results:
1. Produce a demand intelligence report after every campaign
61% of B2B buyers are already well into their purchase process before engaging with sellers (6sense, 2025), meaning timely insights can help your team influence prospects earlier and more effectively.
Teams can standardize reporting for all campaigns, including:
2. Focus your analysis on actionable insights
Focus your analysis on actionable insights by identifying pain points and bottlenecks in the buyer journey that impact conversion, highlighting the top three performing content assets at each funnel stage, and providing three to four clear recommendations for the next campaign or nurturing phase.
3. Update messaging and UVPs based on prospect behavior
According to Voice of the Buyer, modern buyers prioritize operational efficiency and verified expertise. Campaign intelligence can be used to refine your UVP and USPs by:
4. Adapt to modern buying dynamics
Ensure campaigns engage all stakeholders in complex buying groups while aligning with self-paced buyer journeys. Utilizing partner and consultant networks adds credibility and reduces risk.
Modern demand intelligence trends and considerations
It is important that your demand intelligence strategy aligns with current B2B buyer behaviors. The following four trends are key to achieving this.
Omnichannel buyer journey tracking
Understanding the full buyer journey requires tracking engagement across multiple channels, including all digital touchpoints, events, social media, and ABM campaigns.
Notably, B2B buying cycles now average 6–12 months, with 22% extending beyond 12 months (Voice of the Buyer 2025), which highlights the importance of consistent tracking and engagement throughout the journey.
AI and predictive analytics
AI-powered tools improve prospect scoring, segmentation, and personalization, allowing teams to prioritize high-value prospects. With 55% of organizations prioritizing AI for automation and data analysis , AI-driven insights are increasingly critical (Voice of the Buyer).
Intent data integration
Incorporating intent data into demand intelligence strategies allows teams to proactively target prospects based on their expressed interests and behaviors.
By understanding the right intent signals, teams can deliver timely, relevant programs that resonate and accelerate progression through the buying journey.
How to analyze demand intelligence
Effectively analyzing demand intelligence is essential for transforming raw data into actionable insights that drive growth.
Ultimately, demand intelligence should inform the metrics that matter most: revenue impact, engagement, and account-level outcomes.
The following KPI examples reveal key insights that different teams could monitor:
Marketing KPIs
Sales KPIs
Client Success KPIs
Conversion rate
Close ratio and win/loss analysis
Client Lifetime Value (CLTV) and churn
Engagement metrics: Website traffic, content consumption, email engagement, and social engagement
Sales bookings and pipeline growth
NPS and CSAT
Funnel velocity and prospect qualification
Average deal size and revenue
Upsell/cross-sell performance
Cost per lead (CPL) and client acquisition cost (CAC)
Marketing-influenced revenue
How to determine the success of a demand intelligence campaign
According to Voice of the Marketer, 58% of marketers still measure performance by pipeline and revenue, while only 38% track their influence on retention or advocacy. This imbalance highlights the need for a more holistic, intelligence-led approach that looks across the entire buyer journey, and not just the top of the funnel.
The following strategies can effectively measure demand intelligence success.
1. Combine data and human insights
Start with comprehensive program reports that blend quantitative metrics with qualitative feedback.
Key metrics such as conversion rates, engagement levels, and pipeline contribution can be aggregated. Layer these findings with feedback from sales and client success teams to understand buyer sentiment, objection patterns, and account readiness.
These outcomes can be measured through multi-touch attribution models to identify which channels and assets most effectively drove impact.
2. Identify actionable takeaways
Every campaign should yield insights that can inform smarter future efforts. Use your demand intelligence to pinpoint:
As 6sense’s 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report notes, most deals are won or lost before sales ever engage, which emphasizes the importance of continuously refining your targeting and messaging through intelligence-led learnings.
3. Focus on continuous optimization
Program analysis should be viewed as a continuous process, and not a one-time review after the demand program ends.
For best results, teams can focus on improving:
- Prospect and account scoring: Adjust scoring models based on engagement depth and intent signals
- Sales funnel performance: Map drop-off points in the buyer journey to uncover friction and missed opportunities
- Content strategy: Reassess your content marketing strategy to see what generated the highest engagement and what failed to convert
Voice of the Marketer research shows that 40% of marketers now invest more than half their budget in demand generation, signaling that optimization is a major part of how leading teams secure ROI in a buyer-led marketplace.
4. Learn from real-world scenarios
Applying insights from demand intelligence can completely elevate program performance by turning data into targeted, measurable action.
This can be achieved through:
5. Know when to pivot
Pivoting demand programs is essential once you are sure a program is heading in the wrong direction. However, it should always be a decision informed by accurate data, not just a reactive move. If engagement drops significantly or buyer behavior signals misalignment with campaign objectives, reassess the strategy.
However, it is best to wait until sufficient data is collected, often a full program cycle, to validate findings before redirecting resources.
Demand intelligence program success is not about the number of prospects captured, but the depth of understanding gained. Marketers who transform every demand program into a source of strategic intelligence drive stronger alignment, richer buyer experiences, and improved revenue outcomes.
How to action post-campaign demand intelligence to drive results
Capturing demand intelligence data is the first step, but its value lies in how effectively you activate it.
6sense’s 2024 Buyer Experience Report reveals that 81% of B2B buyers have already selected their preferred vendor before engaging sales, which makes post-campaign insights critical to influencing earlier phases.
Here are some steps and strategies to achieve this:
Establishing a consistent, organization-wide framework allows for transparent reporting. For this, each post-campaign report should combine quantitative metrics with qualitative insights from sales and client success teams.
Ideally, reporting should also include an analysis of buyer sentiment, content performance, and campaign attribution. Sharing this across marketing, sales, RevOps, and CS establishes a unified understanding of results.
Refreshing demand intelligence quarterly or post-campaign allows teams to maintain relevance. This involves incorporating the latest intent, firmographic, and behavioral data to:
Post-campaign intelligence is a powerful tool for evolving how your brand communicates value. Insights can be used to:
Many marketers still struggle to align content with buyer journeys. Using post-campaign insights can help close that gap.
True optimization happens when intelligence informs both marketing tactics and the entire client experience.
This can happen when you feed your findings into Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and Account-Based Experience (ABX) strategies. By integrating post-campaign learnings into your ABX framework, you can extend the impact of each campaign far beyond initial acquisition, which creates a self-reinforcing cycle of intelligence, personalization, and growth.
Findings here can:
