Digital marketing trends food and beverage brands cannot ignore in 2026
The specific 2026 digital marketing trends most relevant to food and beverage brands, prioritised for visual discovery and retail media coordination.
5 min read
Intent data — signals indicating a company is actively researching a relevant topic or solution category, often gathered from content consumption across the broader web — helps B2B marketers identify likely active buyers before they ever fill out a form or otherwise directly engage.
How intent data is typically gathered and used
- Third-party intent data providers track content consumption patterns across many websites and publications.
- Signals are aggregated to identify companies showing unusually high research activity in a relevant topic area.
- Marketing and sales teams prioritise outreach toward companies showing strong current intent signals.
Intent data does not tell you a company will buy — it tells you a company is currently paying more attention to a relevant topic than usual, which is a meaningfully different, more modest claim worth keeping in mind before over-trusting the signal.
The genuine limitations worth keeping in mind
Intent signals indicate increased research activity, not confirmed purchase intent or timeline — a company might be researching for many reasons unrelated to an active buying process, making intent data a prioritisation input rather than a qualification substitute.
Practical integration into a marketing and sales workflow
- Use intent signals to prioritise which accounts receive proactive outreach first.
- Combine intent data with genuine qualification conversation before committing significant sales effort.
- Monitor intent data accuracy against actual conversion outcomes to calibrate how much weight to give it over time.
Frequently asked questions
How accurate is third-party intent data typically?
This varies by provider and topic specificity — validating a provider's signals against your own actual conversion outcomes over time is worthwhile before relying heavily on the data.
Does intent data raise privacy concerns?
It generally operates at the company level rather than identifying specific individuals, though understanding a specific provider's data collection methodology and compliance posture is worth checking.
How does intent data connect to account-based marketing?
Directly — intent signals are commonly used to help prioritise which accounts within a broader ABM target list deserve the most immediate attention.
If you want help integrating intent data into your B2B marketing strategy, talk to our team.
The takeaway
Treat intent data signals as a prioritisation tool for outreach, not a guaranteed buying signal — even strong intent data indicates increased likelihood, not certainty, and should be combined with genuine qualification before significant sales effort is committed.
Written by Fibvo — Bengaluru and Erode, India — working with clients in other time zones. Questions, or think we have it wrong? Tell us.
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