Inside Look: How Buyer Research and Data Drive Demand Generation
We Went Behind the Scenes with BlueWhale’s Experts
At BlueWhale Research, we believe transparency drives innovation. That’s why we hosted a behind-the-scenes conversation to unpack the findings from our latest Tech Buyer Preferences Survey and to reveal how those insights are directly shaping the products and data solutions our clients rely on every day.
The session was a candid look at the evolving relationship between B2B marketers and the modern tech buyer, and how BlueWhale is using data to close the gap between the two.
Across the discussion, one truth became clear: today’s B2B marketing success depends not just on data, but on how intelligently data is used.
B2B Tech Buyers: Motivated by Change, Not Curiosity
Our Tech Buyer Preferences Survey engaged over 350 senior IT and finance decision makers, asking what truly motivates them to start researching new technology solutions.
The answer was surprisingly consistent: dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Buyers enter the research phase because something isn’t working. They’ve hit a wall with their current tools, identified a lack of ROI, or found that their systems simply can’t keep up with business demands.
As Susanna Blauch, Director of Marketing, explained during the session, “Marketers need to help prospective buyers see that there’s a better way; that their solution represents the next step forward.”
For marketers, this means successful efforts must start when buyer frustration begins. Recognizing that moment (and responding to it with the right message) is critical for great demand generation.
At BlueWhale, we’ve built our demand generation strategy around that principle. One of the keys to finding those moments of opportunity lies in a crucial concept: diversified intent.
Diversified Intent: Seeing the Full Picture
As John Connell, Chief Product Officer, shared in our discussion, diversified intent is more than a buzzword; it’s a mindset shift in how we understand buyer behavior.
Diversified intent, he explained, means using more than one type and more than one source of content engagement data, and synthesizing those signals into something more powerful, more meaningful, and ultimately more actionable.
This approach allows BlueWhale to expose significantly more accounts that are actively engaging around relevant topics, giving marketers a wider, deeper view of their market and helping them prioritize outreach earlier in the buying cycle.
Making Complex Data Simple and Actionable
Connell also emphasized that while the data powering these insights is sophisticated, the user experience must feel effortless.
“Our clients shouldn’t have to burn extra calories to benefit from the intelligence we’re applying behind the scenes,” he said.
That philosophy, making intelligence invisible but powerful, is embedded in every BlueWhale product. Whether through intent signals or business intelligence data, marketers receive clarity, not complexity.
What Makes Diversified Intent Different
- Multiple data sources, unified signals: Instead of relying on one provider, we combine data from many to reveal broader market activity.
- Increased visibility: Diversified intent identifies 2.5X more engaged accounts and reveals 10–15% of leads that were previously not showing intent.
- Validated accuracy: 50% of leads show intent across more than one source — confirming stronger buying signals and greater confidence in targeting.
The outcome? Marketers using diversified intent aren’t just chasing leads, they’re connecting with verified, engaged accounts earlier in the buyer journey, when influence matters most.
As Blauch put it, “It’s about helping our clients get in front of the right buyers at the right time, with the right message that speaks to their needs.”
ADS: Turning Data into Visibility
One of the most tangible ways BlueWhale applies diversified intent is through our ADS platform, a purpose-built B2B digital advertising solution designed to help marketers maximize brand visibility and reach.
When buyers begin exploring alternatives to their current solutions, visibility becomes everything. But as Connell reminded our audience, not all visibility is equal.
ADS transforms raw intent data into precise audience activation, ensuring that your ads appear to the right decision makers across the right digital channels at the most strategic moments.
How ADS Elevates Marketing Performance
- Precise audience targeting: Using diversified intent data, ADS builds highly customized audience segments that prioritize your most important accounts or mirror your ideal customer profile.
- Account-Based Marketing (ABM) activation: Reach entire buying committees within named accounts instead of relying solely on firmographics.
- Cross-platform reach: Extend campaigns seamlessly across desktop, mobile, and connected TV to maintain consistent visibility.
As Vanessa Castiglioni, Vice President of Product Operations, explained, “We think of digital advertising as the fundamental way for our clients to be seen and understood. And in this case, the “seen” part matters most. We’re using diversified intent to isolate the most qualified, relevant audiences and ensuring they see our clients’ messages in the most meaningful ways possible.”
ROI: The Deciding Factor in Every Tech Purchase
If there’s one metric that defines B2B tech buyers’ priorities, it’s ROI.
When asked what most influences their purchasing decisions, respondents overwhelmingly identified Return on Investment as the top factor.
For marketers, that finding has major implications: messaging must connect directly to value realization. Buyers want evidence that your solution will outperform their current investment, not hypotheticals or flashy marketing language.
That’s why BlueWhale’s approach to data doesn’t stop at intent. We go deeper, integrating business intelligence data to help marketers tell the ROI story that buyers are looking for when making purchasing decisions.
As Blauch explained, “Marketers must show that the time, effort, and cost of overhauling existing systems will be worthwhile.”
Business Intelligence: The Context Behind Every Conversion
Connell described business intelligence data as “the full bank of information that we build, collect, and make actionable in our products.”
This intelligence includes:
- Intent data
- Technology install data and past purchases
- Firmographics and demographics
- Market and behavioral segmentation
Leveraging this data allows BlueWhale clients to adapt campaign messaging based on the buyer’s current situation, whether they’re evaluating a new category (white space), replacing a competitor (competitive displacement), or weighing total cost of ownership.
By embedding this intelligence at the product level, BlueWhale empowers marketers to communicate ROI in context, whether the buyer prioritizes price, ease of implementation, or performance outcomes.
And by integrating AI into this process, it’s now seamless. “We’ve operationalized our intelligence layer with artificial intelligence,” Connell explained. “It allows us to deliver world-class company data without passing cost or complexity on to our clients.”
Business Intelligence in Action
- Competitive Targeting: Engage accounts already using a competitor’s product to showcase superior ROI and innovation.
- Complementary Targeting: Identify technologies that integrate well with your solution to highlight interoperability.
- Whitespace Discovery: Uncover accounts not yet using any related tools, untapped potential for net-new opportunities.
As Connell described, business intelligence data acts like “the icing on the cake,” enriching every campaign with real-world context. This data doesn’t just tell marketers who to target, but why those targets matter.
Personalization Across the Buying Committee
As our survey found, personalization has moved from advantage to expectation.
B2B buying decisions now involve ten or more stakeholders, each with unique objectives and concerns. IT leaders prioritize capability; finance focuses on ROI; operations wants usability and adoption success. Our dedicated series on buyer personas unpacks how understanding the distinct motivations, behaviors, and challenges of your audience can dramatically improve targeting and conversion.
To engage effectively, marketers must tailor messaging that resonates with each audience within the committee, addressing role-specific pain points while maintaining consistent brand value across all touchpoints.
At BlueWhale, we make this possible by grounding every product in accurate, comprehensive business contact data.
The Foundation: Data Accuracy
Data accuracy is the unsung hero of effective marketing. As Tom Mandell, Senior Director of Data Services, explained, “Our foundation is quality and scale.”
BlueWhale maintains over 200 million business contacts, including 80 million verified decision makers, sourced from world-class providers and enriched with firmographic and technographic data. BlueWhale’s data team ensures that marketers can reach complete buying committees by building detailed audience profiles that go beyond job titles to include role function, department, seniority, and even software usage.
“Using the highest quality contact data enables us to deliver engagement more effectively and accurately to exactly the right people marketers need to reach,” Mandell said.
This attention to data quality ensures that diversified intent and business intelligence data reach their full potential, because insights only drive results when they reach the right audience.
Account-Based Visibility: Reaching the Entire Buying Team
While accurate contact data fuels precision outreach, account-based marketing (ABM) ensures visibility across the entire organization.
“With ADS, we can take it a step further and really activate people across the entire buying committee,” Castiglioni explained. Through the ADS platform, BlueWhale activates account-level campaigns that keep your brand in front of every influencer and decision maker from first awareness through final evaluation.
This full-funnel visibility is crucial in today’s complex buying environment, where consensus drives final purchase decisions. ABM helps marketers build organizational alignment, ensuring every stakeholder sees consistent, relevant messaging that connects to their unique goals.
Three Takeaways from the Tech Buyer Preferences Survey
As Blauch summarized in closing, BlueWhale’s product innovations align directly with the top buyer insights from this year’s survey:
- Market intelligence and intent signals are essential for understanding when and why buyers enter the buying cycle, and for reaching them early.
- ROI remains the top decision factor, and business intelligence data helps marketers position solutions competitively and communicate tangible value.
- Personalization across the buying committee is critical. BlueWhale’s data solutions make it possible to reach every decision maker from awareness through conversion accurately.
From Data to Differentiation
For BlueWhale, these findings aren’t theoretical; they’re transformational.
As Connell reflected, “Much of this survey has really been validation for us. And some of it has given us new insights from which we’ll need to react. But the results show us that we’re in a tremendous position to help our clients execute in a way that will get them in front of the right people, at the right time, at the right companies.”
By combining research-driven insight, diversified intent, business intelligence, and high-quality data, BlueWhale enables marketers to do what today’s buyers demand:
- Reach them earlier.
- Speak to them more intelligently.
- Prove value at every step.
As Blauch concluded, “Our data-driven approach to product development directly translates into better performance and stronger results for our clients.”
Looking Ahead
The modern tech buyer is more informed, collaborative, and ROI-driven than ever. At BlueWhale Research, we’re proud to give marketers the visibility, intelligence, and precision they need to meet those buyers where they are, and lead them where they’re going next.
Watch the full behind-the-scenes conversation: