What Is Buyer Intent?

Buyer intent is the digital footprint companies leave when they are actively researching or preparing to buy.  These behaviors often happen before anyone fills out a form or speaks to a salesperson.

Intent might look like:

• Searching for your category
• Reading industry content
• Evaluating competitors
• Visiting your product or pricing page
• Expanding into new markets
• Announcing new funding
• Hiring into relevant roles

In short: Buyer intent surfaces the companies who are “in-market” weeks or months before they ever raise their hand.

Why Buyer Intent Matters

In today’s buying landscape, a prospect can be 70–90% through their research before talking to sales.  If your team only sees form submissions, you’re missing the upstream signals.

Intent matters because it helps you:

• Spot early buying activity
• Prioritize outreach with perfect timing
• Align marketing and sales around active buyers
• Build smarter lead scoring
• Personalize outreach with context
• Drive more revenue with less effort

HubSpot’s Buyer Intent Signals

The Intent Signals Dashboard

Let’s say your team wants to know which accounts are researching strategic topics, which ones just opened a new office, and which ones received funding—all in one place.  The HubSpot buyer intent dashboard gives a real-time snapshot so reps know who is heating up today.

,HubSpot shows all the signals you can track:

• Research intent

• Visitor intent

• Job changes

• Funding

• Geographic expansion

• Leadership/strategic content

From here, you decide which signals matter for your business.

Selecting Which Companies to Track

If, for example you maintain a “Top 200 Strategic Accounts” list. You want intent tracking only for those companies—not your entire CRM.  You select the list once, and HubSpot tracks all signals automatically.

You can track:

• All companies

• Target account lists

• ICP-only lists

• Lifecycle-based segments

• Any workflow-generated segment

You can even automate:

• Start tracking when they become MQL/SQL

• Stop tracking when they become customers

Intent Summary Drawer 

A rep opens a company record and wants to understand why the account suddenly became high-priority.   The AI summary shows research trends, expansion signals, leadership posts, and significant events — all in one TLDR snapshot.

The Intent Summary Drawer includes:

AI summary of all recent intent

• Research topics
• Content engagement
• Expansion or funding events
• Links and metadata

This allows a rep to prep highly personalized outreach in seconds.

Intent Events on the Company Timeline

Your rep is preparing outreach for tomorrow. They open a company record and see activity cards like:

“New Office Opened in Nairobi”

“Leadership Post Published on Strategic Change”

“Research Intent Spike: Growth Strategy”

Instant, high-quality context drives better emails and calls.

These intent events show up with timestamps and source detail, giving reps clarity on what happened and why it matters.

Intent Criteria in Lists & Segments

Marketing wants to run a campaign targeting companies who:

• Recently researched “leadership development”

• AND have a funding event in the last 90 days

Now you can build that list in seconds and launch a relevant, high-performing campaign.

You can filter lists by:

• Funding amount/date
• Research topics
• Visitor intent thresholds
• Geographic expansion
• Leadership content
• Job changes

Perfect for ABM audiences, retargeting, or rep focus lists.

Using Intent in Workflows

When a company shows high pricing-page intent + recent funding, you want a sales rep to get an immediate task + an email template prepared.

HubSpot workflows let you automate that entire sequence based on intent events.

You can trigger:

• Tasks

• Playbooks

• Sequences

• Internal alerts

• Lifecycle stage updates

• Ownership routing

• Lead score adjustments

Workflows unlock automation driven by real buying behavior—not guesswork.

Adding Intent to Lead Scoring

You want your scoring model to reflect real buying readiness.You assign points for things like:

• Research intent high → +20

• Pricing page visit → +30

• Funding > $1M → +15

• Leadership content engagement → +10

• Job change → +5

Now your highest-intent accounts float to the top immediately.

You can score:

• Company-level intent

• Contact-level intent

• Associated activity

• Negative signals (email bounce, job end)

This makes your scoring model significantly more accurate.

Next Steps: Start Using Buyer Intent Signals Inside HubSpot

Buyer intent isn’t a “nice to have” anymore — it’s becoming one of the most reliable ways to identify active buyers long before they fill out a form or respond to outreach.

With HubSpot’s new Intent Signals, you can:

• See which companies are warming up in real time

• Give your reps the context they’ve always wished they had

• Personalize outreach with relevance, not guesswork

• Trigger automation when buying activity spikes

• Focus on accounts that are actually in-market

Whether you’re running ABM, outbound, or a long B2B sales cycle, intent data is now a strategic advantage you can’t ignore.

Want Help Implementing Buyer Intent in HubSpot?

If you want support setting up:

• Intent tracking

• Scoring models

• Outreach playbooks

• ABM lists

• Automation workflows

• Sales Workspace views

• Alerts and rep notifications

I can help you build the exact setup that fits your sales cycle and ICP.

→ Get in touch to set up a Buyer Intent audit and implementation plan.