Leaving marketing and sales to shoot off in all directions is no longer an option.
With Buyer Intent, Research Intent, and Intent Signals in HubSpot, you can now talk to companies that are already active in your category.
Even before they fill out a form.
1. Why is purchase intent so important right now?
Today, around 50-70% of the purchasing journey happens anonymously, before anyone fills out a form or speaks to sales. Emblaze
In other words: when a lead finally appears in your CRM, they have often already made half of their decisions; about the problem, the options and, sometimes, even the supplier!
If you continue to work only with:
- form leads,
- cold contact lists,
- and the good old ‘gut feeling’ of the sales team,
you are ignoring a huge part of the market that is already researching what you sell, but has not yet raised their hand to buy.
This is where the following come in:
- Buyer Intent – information about companies that visit your website and show interest in your brand; HubSpot
- Research Intent – companies (in or outside the CRM) that are researching topics related to what you sell; Hubspot
- Intent Signals – external signals (funding, growth, tech investments, layoffs, etc.) captured by HubSpot, which appear as events on company/contact timelines. HubSpot
Translation:
Stop shooting in all directions and start talking only to accounts that are already hot (i.e. showing signs of it), even if they have never interacted with you directly.
2. What exactly does HubSpot do with this data?
Quite simply: HubSpot’s tracking code identifies visits to your website and uses reverse IP and data enrichment to link that traffic to real companies.
The Buyer Intent engine brings everything together:
- target markets
- website behaviour (pages, frequency, paths)
- research topics (research intent)
- external signals (intent signals: funding, expansion, hiring, etc.)
And from there, it builds a kind of mini account funnel:
- Total addressable market (companies that fit the ICP)
- How many of these are showing intent
- Which ones are already in the CRM
- Which ones are not yet (but can be added with HubSpot credits).
In practice, you now have a ‘radar’ of hot accounts, directly within HubSpot, with filters, lists, segments, and workflow triggers based on intent.
3. Prerequisites (before working with Buyer Intent)
Before you start playing with Buyer Intent and Intent Signals, you need to ensure four basic things:
a) HubSpot tracking code properly installed
Check in Marketing > Buyer Intent > Configuration > Check code installation.
b) ICP well defined
- Industry
- Country/region
- Number of employees/turnover
- Tech stack (if relevant)
c) Permissions & credits
- Data Enrichment permission to track companies.
- Permission to edit Buyer Intent.
d) HubSpot Credits available
- Using intent signals/advanced filters requires credits.
- Adding new companies to the CRM from Buyer/Research Intent consumes credits; see more in Use buyer intent and Use research intent.
Without this, you will waste time setting up something that does not work.
4. Set up the Buyer Intent ‘engine’ in HubSpot (step by step)
4.1. Define target markets
Menu: Marketing > Buyer Intent > Configuration > Markets
Here, markets (max. ~20) are defined based on their ICP:
- location (Portugal, Spain, DACH, etc.)
- industry (Manufacturing, Software, Hospitality…)
- company size
- tech stack (e.g., companies already using Salesforce, SAP, Shopify, etc.)
Practical tip (how I would do it):
- Market 1: PT – Manufacturing 50–500 people
- Market 2: PT/ES – B2B Software 20–200 people
- Market 3: Hotels PT – 50+ rooms
Don’t overcomplicate things at the beginning. Start with 3–5 obvious markets where you know you can sell.
4.2. Define Visitor Intent criteria (behaviour on the website)
Still in Configuration, Intent section > Visitor intent criteria.
We can create up to 10 sets of criteria. Some concrete examples:
“Pricing intent”
o Visits to /pricing OR /prices 2+ times in 7 days
o OR 3+ unique visitors from the same company on these pages
“Evaluation intent”
o Visits to features/comparison pages
o Average time on page > 60 seconds
o Download of 1 white paper/case study
“Migration intent”
o Visits to content about “Salesforce for HubSpot”, “CRM migration”, etc.
Each criterion assigns a kind of ‘score’ of intent to the company.
The goal is for your CRM to only light up when the probability of a project is real, not because someone opened a random blog article.
Then you can see:
o how many companies are researching each topic,
o which ones are already in the CRM,
o and which ones are not yet.
These companies can then be:
o added to the CRM,
o placed in segments/outreach lists,
o or sent directly to workflows.
4.3. Configure Research Intent (search topics)
Menu: Marketing > Buyer Intent > Configuration > Research Intent Topics.
Here, we no longer look only at our website, but at topics that companies are searching for on the web and that HubSpot can map:
Examples within my context (yours will be different):
o “HubSpot implementation partner”
o “HubSpot migration”
o “RevOps consulting”
o “marketing automation agency”
o “HubSpot vs Salesforce / Zoho / Dynamics”
Then you can see:
o how many companies are researching each topic,
o which ones are already in the CRM,
o and which ones are not yet.
These companies can then be:
o added to the CRM,
o placed in segments/outreach lists,
o or sent directly to workflows.
4.4. Connect Intent Signals (external events)
Intent Signals are the extra layer: funding rounds, geographical expansion, tech investments, thought leadership, hiring/layoffs, etc., which appear as events on the company/contact timeline.
In practice, we can:
o see when a target account:
o opens a new office in a region that interests you
o receives funding
o invests in technology (often the perfect trigger to review CRM/stack)
o is hiring (more headcount = more pain + more budget)
And, more importantly, we can use these events as triggers in workflows.
4.5. Choosing which companies to follow
On this screen, we are in Marketing > Buyer Intent > Visitors > Track companies to monitor:
Source:
o All companies in CRM
o Companies in a segment (this is where it makes sense to start)
What I would do (and recommend to clients):
o Create segments/lists for your outreach ICPs:
o Outreach – Machinery Manufacturing – PT
o Outreach – Tech B2B – UK/ES
etc.
In Buyer Intent, choose ‘Companies in a segment’ and select these lists (as in the screen above).
Click on Track intent signals only for accounts that really matter.
Important: tracking companies and, above all, adding new companies to the CRM consumes credits.
This prevents you from wasting credits on junk (ISPs, competitors, irrelevant traffic, etc.).
5. Turn signals into pipeline: 4 playbooks that really matter
Setting up Buyer Intent is half the battle. The other half is what you do with it. This is where things usually go wrong.
Playbook 1 – SDR / Sales: Outreach only for accounts with intent
Trigger (company workflow):
o Company belongs to the Outreach – X segment
o AND
o Shows ‘Pricing intent’ OR ‘Evaluation intent’ OR is researching one of the critical Research Intent topics.
Actions:
o Create task for SDR/AE with clear context:
o ‘Company X – 3 visits to pricing page in 5 days + researching “HubSpot migration”’
o Enrol key contacts in a custom sequence.
o Adjust company lead score + send internal alert on Slack/Teams.
Objective: Stop calling cold lists and start working daily on a short list of accounts that are already in the market.
Playbook 2 – Marketing: Hyper-targeted campaigns
Use Buyer Intent + Research Intent:
o Create dynamic segments based on topics searched or pages visited.
o Example:
o Segment ‘Companies searching for “HubSpot migration” in the last 30 days’
o Activate:
o paid campaigns (LinkedIn, Google, Meta) only for these companies,
o very specific nurture emails (migration cases, checklists, technical guides),
o personalised content on the website (personalisation with segments).
This reduces budget waste and dramatically increases the relevance of campaigns.
Playbook 3 – Customer Success: detect risks and opportunities in current customers
Use Buyer Intent / Intent Signals on customers as well, not just prospects:
o Current customer starts searching for ‘HubSpot alternatives,’ ‘Salesforce CRM,’ etc. Customer shows signs of expansion (new offices, funding, increased headcount).
Possible workflows:
o Alert the Customer Success Manager when:
o the customer frequently visits pricing pages,
o or searches for topics related to churn (competition, RFPs).
o Create ‘expansion play’ tasks when there are signs of growth (funding, hiring, geographic expansion).
This helps to:
o protect recurring revenue,
o and open cross-sell/up-sell at the right time.
Playbook 4 – Reporting: prove that Intent generates revenue (not just ‘insights’)
At the end of the day, what matters is:
o how many opportunities came from Buyer/Research Intent,
o what is the conversion rate vs. ‘normal’ leads, and the impact on pipeline and revenue.
Suggested reports/dashboards:
o Funnel: ‘Accounts with Intent → Meetings → Opportunities → Closed Won’
o Comparison:
o Opportunities originating from ‘Buyer Intent / Research Intent / Intent Signals’ vs. the rest.
o Average sales cycle time for accounts with intent vs. without intent.
This helps justify internally the investment in credits, data, and configuration time.
6. Common mistakes (and how to avoid them)
Tracking “everything that moves”
If we track all companies in the CRM + all traffic, we will only generate noise and burn credits.
Not aligning Marketing and Sales on intent criteria
If marketing thinks that “1 blog visit” is high intent and sales does not, we have a guaranteed war on our hands.
The best thing to do is to define together what ‘intent’ really means.
Do not exclude domains that only generate junk
ISPs, universities, our own domain, technical partners, etc. should be excluded from the outset.
Set it and forget it
Behaviour changes. You need to revisit markets, criteria and topics at least quarterly.
7. Where does SmartLinks come into this?
The technology is there, but the impact comes from strategy + configuration + governance:
o Define ICPs and markets that make sense for your business
o Translate your actual funnel into Buyer Intent criteria
o Decide which signals count as a ‘raised hand’
o Design workflows, sequences, and campaigns based on these signals
o Connect all of this to your sales, CS, and reporting processes
This is where we, as a HubSpot Platinum Solutions Partner, come in:
WE HELP YOU SET UP THE BUYER INTENT ENGINE, ALIGNED WITH MARKETING, SALES AND CUSTOMER SUCCESS, SO THAT THE SIGNS DON’T JUST LOOK GOOD ON THE DASHBOARD, BUT ARE TRANSFORMED INTO A REAL PIPELINE.
