The building product market is more competitive than ever, and the manufacturers pulling ahead are the ones who understand what AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) professionals want before the sale happens.
That's where intent data comes in. It's a powerful signal of what your potential customers are researching and considering while they're actively specifying products, giving you visibility into demand you'd otherwise miss. With CADdetails Analytics, building product manufacturers get access to this exact kind of insight: actionable intent data that sharpens sales outreach, focuses marketing spend, and informs smarter product decisions.
In this blog, we'll cover:
- What intent data is and why it matters in the specification process
- How CADdetails calculates intent data
- How your sales, marketing, and product teams can put intent data to work
- How to get started with CADdetails Analytics
Understanding Intent Data & Why It Matters
Before talking about intent data, let’s define what we mean by intent. Intent refers to a design professional’s demonstrated intention to specify one of your products based on their real-time interactions with your brand’s offerings.
To measure AEC intent, CADdetails uses data sourced directly from our product listing platform, CADdetails. Intent data collected from our website then accurately gauges a buyer’s interest in your building products based on their engagement with your products and/or related product categories.
CADdetails’ intent data offers insights into the online behavior of your target AEC audience, providing valuable information you can use to make smarter decisions and drive your growth.
How CADdetails Calculates Intent Data
With CADdetails’ 25+ years of industry experience, you can rest assured that you're getting top-notch intent data. Using a precise proprietary algorithm and new metrics hyper-focused on the quality of audience engagement, CADdetails accurately measures intent based on AEC interactions with your products and related product categories on CADdetails and Design Hub (if applicable).
Each firm is then assigned an intent score and ranked on the Leaderboard, allowing you to quickly identify and target the most relevant active firms based on their activity.
Maximizing Your Intent Data: Key Benefits for Your Sales, Marketing, & Product Teams
Intent data is a goldmine for manufacturers looking to gain a competitive advantage in today’s high-stakes market. Let’s break down the unique benefits to your sales, marketing, and product teams and take a closer look how intent data skyrockets each of them to success:
How Intent Data Empowers Your Sales Team
With intent data, your sales team can:
1. Identify High-Intent Firms with Ease
- Quickly surface high-intent firms that may not have been on your radar.
- Sharpen the precision of your prospecting by reaching potential clients early in their specification journey, before competitors get there.
- Prioritize outreach based on intent, so you always know which prospects to focus on and can manage your time and resources more effectively.
2. Anticipate Specifier Needs
- Shape your outreach around how your AEC audience actually behaves. For example, host a Lunch-and-Learn to give specifiers deeper information on products they've already shown interest in on CADdetails.
- Nurture existing relationships with personalized follow-ups, relevant updates, and recommendations tailored to recent engagement—building trust, shortening sales cycles, and strengthening intent signals over time.
- Use these insights to reach interested firms at the exact moment design decisions are being made, improving your odds of conversion and deepening relationships with AEC professionals.
How Intent Data Empowers Your Marketing Team
With intent data, your marketing team can:
1. Get a Better Understanding of Your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
- Ranking design firms by intent helps you identify which ones are most interested in your products or product categories, giving you deeper insight into your ICP. This is highly beneficial since research shows that businesses with a strong, well-defined ICP achieve 68% higher win rates.
- With a more accurate ICP, you can also adjust your website, social media, email communications, and other outreach strategies to target potential customers already interested in your products.
2. Create & Market to Lookalike Audiences
- Understanding intent based on factors like geographic location and job title allows you to generate lookalike audiences that have similar characteristics and interests to your existing community of high-intent firms.
- Craft marketing campaigns that target your lookalike AEC audiences via display ads to extend your reach, enhance the likelihood of meaningful interactions with your brand, increase brand awareness, and drive conversions.
3. Craft Relevant, Personalized Content Targeted at High-Intent Firms
- Build effective marketing campaigns aimed at firms that engage most with your content to drive brand visibility and interest in your products, leading to higher engagement.
- Tailor your content development efforts based on your audience’s activity, ensuring that what you produce resonates with their behavior and preferences and addresses their specific concerns and pain points.
How Intent Data Empowers Your Product Team
With intent data, your product team can:
1. Improve Your Products
- Refine your products so that they better resonate with your target audience and stand out in the market.
- Understanding your audience’s preferred file types can guide product improvements and boost AEC user experience and satisfaction.
2. Guide Product Expansion
.png?width=702&height=306&name=MASTER%20-%20Analytics%20User%20Guide%20(2).png)
- Align your product development efforts with the preferences and interests of the firms most interested in your existing offerings.
- Intent data reveals what potential customers are actively researching, enabling product teams to pinpoint unmet AEC needs, gaps in the market, and areas for enhancement.
- Identifying when interest in specific products is at its highest can help teams determine the optimal timing for new product launches, maximizing their impact.
Ready to Get Started?
With intent data from CADdetails Analytics, you can engage the right AEC professionals at the right time, strengthen your outreach, and increase your chances of getting specified.
Book a demo to see how CADdetails Analytics can help you connect with specifiers and drive real revenue.
Cover image by Zac Gudakov on Unsplash