Buyer intent is a signal from potential customers researching or preparing to buy.
In any given market, only a tiny percentage of buyers—just 2-5%—are actively looking to purchase at a given time.
Identifying these in-market buyers is critical for turning website traffic into meaningful leads.
HubSpot’s buyer intent tools help you uncover these high-intent visitors.
By analyzing their behavior, you can determine who’s genuinely interested and engage with them at the perfect moment, even if they don't convert on one of your website forms.
In this article, we’ll break down the concept of buyer intent, show how it works within HubSpot, and explore actionable strategies to use it for better lead generation and higher conversions.
Breeze (formerly Clearbit) enhances HubSpot by adding deeper insights, advanced i intent, and enrichment features that help you work smarter, not harder.
Think of buyer intent data as a digital breadcrumb trail.
Every time someone clicks through your website or engages with your content, they leave behind clues about what they’re looking for and how serious they are about finding a solution.
Breeze automatically adds company size, revenue, and industry details to your lead profiles. No more manual research—it’s all there, ready to help you qualify leads in seconds.
By pairing Breeze AI, you’ll have a robust system that uncovers high-value prospects, prioritizes them for outreach, and helps you close deals faster.
In HubSpot, buyer intent data does more than track clicks or page views. It combines these signals with enrichment tools to give you a full picture of who’s interested in your offerings.
This means you can stop guessing who’s ready to take the next step and focus on turning high-intent visitors into qualified leads instead of reaching out to cold, uninterested leads.
How does it all come together? Let’s break it down.
It’s all in how they interact with your website. Certain behaviors are like flashing neon signs, telling you they’re actively considering your product or service, albeit at an early stage.
HubSpot tracks these behaviors and connects the dots for you so you can focus on the leads that are most likely to convert.
HubSpot’s buyer intent tools are a secret weapon for your marketing and sales teams.
They take the guesswork out of who’s ready to buy, making it easier to focus on your best leads. Here’s how they work:
1. Spot Anonymous Visitors:
With reverse IP tracking, HubSpot uncovers which companies are browsing your site, even if they haven’t filled out a form. Imagine knowing a key account is researching you!
2. Enrich Profiles Automatically:
HubSpot doesn’t just collect data—it enriches it with firmographic details like company size, industry, and location. This means you’ll know whether a lead is worth your time at a glance.
An additional benefit is that this plays well with the progressive profiling features in HubSpot, meaning that data enrichment reduces the number of form fields a visitor needs to fill out.
3. Score and Segment Leads:
Every interaction adds points to a lead’s score, helping you rank and organize them. High-intent leads rise to the top, so your team knows exactly where to focus.
Create Smart Follow-Ups:
Integrating intent data into workflows allows you to send personalized emails, assign leads to the right reps, or even trigger a call at the right moment.
With these capabilities, HubSpot turns buyer intent data into a practical tool that drives better decisions and more substantial results.
Let’s face it—not all website visitors are ready to buy.
Some are just browsing, but others are doing serious research, comparing options, and preparing to decide which providers to start a conversation with.
These “active buyers” are the ones you want to focus on because they’re closer to converting into customers.
By prioritizing these leads, you can work smarter and get better results from your pipeline.
Timing can make or break a deal, especially in B2B sales, where long cycles, multiple stakeholders, and endless decision-making delays are the norm.
The question is: how do you know the right time to reach out? That’s where buyer intent data becomes your secret weapon.
Here’s how acting at the right moment can give you the edge:
1. Catch Buyers Before Competitors Do:
When a prospect shows interest, chances are your competitors are on their radar, too. Buyer intent data helps you spot these signals early to engage before someone else does.
2. Shorten the Sales Cycle:
Reaching out while prospects actively research solutions means fewer delays and faster decisions. No more endless back-and-forth trying to keep their attention.
3. Work Smarter with Multiple Stakeholders:
In B2B, there’s rarely one person calling the shots. Buyer intent data shows when a whole team explores your solution, making it the perfect time to connect and address their needs.
With the right timing, you’re not just responding to interest—you’re positioning yourself as the obvious choice, ready to help when it matters most.
Ready to turn buyer intent data into action?
Setting it up in HubSpot is straightforward if you know where to start.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get the most out of this powerful tool.
Step 1: Total Addressable Market (TAM) and Target Markets
Start by identifying the specific market segments you want to focus on.
Building detailed profiles for these segments helps attract high-fit visitors to your site and ensures your marketing efforts are aligned with the right audience. Here's how to structure this step:
Define the industries you want to target. Consider sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, or B2C, depending on where your product or service fits best.
Use keywords to refine your target audience within these industries further.
These keywords can pinpoint specific types of companies or niches, such as "AI-powered solutions" or "sustainable manufacturing."
Keywords can also be used independently to identify companies that are aligned with your goals.
Specify the employee size range of the companies you're targeting. This can help tailor your messaging to small businesses, mid-market, or enterprise-level organizations.
Identify the web technologies commonly used by your ideal customers. This could include CMS platforms, eCommerce solutions, or marketing automation tools.
Set a target revenue range for the companies you focus on to ensure alignment with their purchasing power and needs.
By refining these criteria, you create a clear and actionable blueprint for targeting high-potential market segments effectively.
Use intent-based criteria to identify companies demonstrating interest in your offerings.
Intent is determined by analyzing factors like the number of visits, unique visitors, and recency of visits to specific pages on your website.
For example, companies visiting your Product or Pricing pages are strong indicators of interest.
After installing the HubSpot tracking code (if you don't use the HubSpot CMS), buyer intent data connects anonymous website visitors to known companies using IP address matching.
You can apply filters to identify high-priority companies:
Time Frame: Filter companies by the recency of visits, e.g., the last 14 days.
Target Markets: Focus on companies that meet your predefined target market criteria.
Intent Criteria: Select companies meeting at least one intent criterion, such as visiting a specific page.
Step 3: Auto-add Companies and Email Digests
Take your intent-based targeting to the next level by automating key actions and staying informed about high-potential companies.
HubSpot's tools simplify how you manage and act on buyer intent data, ensuring no missed opportunity.
With Breeze Intelligence, you can configure settings to automatically add companies from saved views to your CRM.
Buyer intent data bridges the gap between your inbound and outbound efforts, turning anonymous visitors into actionable leads and helping you focus on those most likely to convert.
For B2B marketers, it’s the key to transforming website traffic into real opportunities.
By leveraging HubSpot’s buyer intent tools, you can pinpoint high-intent behaviors, engage prospects at the perfect moment, and shorten your sales cycles.
Whether it’s enriching lead profiles, automating personalized outreach, or aligning your teams, buyer intent data gives you the clarity and tools to act confidently.
Don’t let high-value leads slip away. Explore how buyer intent data can elevate your sales and marketing strategy today.