Strategic Go-To-Market Blog | Six & Flow

Leveraging HubSpot AI to Understand and Act on Buyer Intent

Written by Manveen Kaur | 13 November 2024

Let's pause and reflect on the countless potential customers who visit your website daily - reading your blog posts, checking out your product pages, or downloading resources—only to leave without filling out a single form. Every one of those unconverted visitors could be a missed opportunity, a potential sale slipping through the cracks. And while a visitor who doesn’t convert may seem insignificant, multiply that by hundreds or thousands of site visits each month, and the missed opportunity starts to impact your bottom line in a big way.

Many buyers begin their journey anonymously, researching solutions long before they’re ready to engage. By focusing only on visitors who provide their contact information, you’re leaving a wealth of high-quality leads untapped. What if you could find out which of these anonymous visitors are already in the market, actively researching solutions like yours?

That’s where HubSpot AI - Breeze Intelligence comes in with its buyer intent feature.

 

What is Buyer Intent Data and Why it Matters?

We all know that timing is everything in B2B marketing. With buyer intent data up your sleeve, you can understand when prospects are actively researching solutions like yours, signalling potential interest even if they haven’t engaged directly with your sales team.

 

What Is Buyer Intent Data?

Buyer intent data is a collection of signals and behaviours from potential buyers that indicate they’re interested in learning more about specific products or services. These signals might include site visits, content downloads, keyword searches, or engagement with certain online resources. Using this data, companies can analyse and interpret behaviours to identify individuals or companies that are likely in the market.

 

Why Does Buyer Intent Matter in B2B Marketing?

The B2B buying journey is often long and complex, with many potential touchpoints before a prospect is ready to convert. Relying on traditional lead capture methods, like form fills, only tells part of the story—and it limits your ability to act on interest that doesn’t follow a predictable path.

Buyer intent data changes the game by allowing you to identify high-potential prospects based on their behaviours, not just their form submissions. This empowers your sales and marketing teams to:

  • Engage with Prospects Sooner: By identifying interested companies earlier, you can reach out and start building a relationship before competitors even know they’re in the market.
  • Prioritise Resources on High-Intent Prospects: Intent data highlights those most likely to convert, allowing your team to focus time and energy where it will have the most impact.
  • Reduce Missed Opportunities: With a clearer view of potential customer’s interests, you can proactively engage prospects that might otherwise go unnoticed.

 

How AI Powers Buyer Intent Data

The power of buyer intent data lies in its ability to capture and process a wide range of digital signals using AI. With methods like reverse-IP tracking and data enrichment, AI tools can identify anonymous website visitors, match them to target companies, and gather insights about their online behaviours.

In short, buyer intent data turns anonymous traffic into actionable insights, enabling you to understand and act on interest across your target market. This provides a strategic advantage for building a pipeline and positioning your brand as the top choice, even before the competition has reached out.

 

 

How Buyer Intent Works with HubSpot Breeze AI

Integrating buyer intent data into your CRM, especially if you’re using a platform like HubSpot, enables your team to not only gather insights about anonymous visitors but also act on those insights efficiently. With HubSpot’s powerful CRM features combined with buyer intent data, you can streamline lead identification, tailor messaging, and prioritise high-potential accounts that are ready for outreach.

Reverse-IP Tracking and Enrichment

One of the core technologies that powers buyer intent data is reverse-IP tracking. This process captures the IP addresses of anonymous website visitors and identifies their company details, giving you insight into who’s showing interest in your site without requiring form submissions. Combined with Breeze intelligence data enrichment, you can gather additional details—like industry, company size, and location—that help you better understand each company’s profile.

Define and Refine Target Markets

HubSpot CRM allows you to define and refine target markets to focus on specific industries, regions, or company sizes. With buyer intent data, you can further narrow these target markets to identify companies that are actively in the research phase for solutions like yours. By syncing these intent signals with HubSpot, you ensure that your CRM is continuously updated with high-quality, intent-based data on companies that align with your ideal customer profile.

Using Keywords and Intent Criteria for Precision Targeting

With buyer intent data, you can set up specific keywords and intent criteria that align with your product or service offering. For example, if you offer marketing automation software, you can configure buyer intent to flag companies that have recently searched for or interacted with content around “marketing automation,” “email personalisation,” or “lead scoring.” By combining these keywords with your target criteria, you can identify companies showing interest in precisely the type of solution you provide.

Identify Intent Signals in HubSpot’s Companies Tab

Once configured, buyer intent data populates in HubSpot’s Companies tab, where you can see which companies have shown recent intent signals. HubSpot’s interface provides easy filtering options so you can sort companies based on their intent level, allowing your team to quickly identify high-priority prospects. This creates an efficient workflow, where your sales team can focus on engaging companies that are actively researching relevant solutions.

Automate Actions Based on Intent Signals

One of the most powerful benefits of integrating buyer intent with HubSpot is the ability to automate follow-up actions. For example:

  • Automated Lead Assignment: Automatically assign high-intent accounts to specific sales reps based on criteria like region, industry, or deal size.
  • Personalised Nurture Campaigns: Enrol high-intent accounts into tailored nurture sequences that address their specific interests and needs.
  • Real-Time Alerts: Set up alerts to notify your team as soon as a high-fit company shows intent, enabling swift action when the interest is at its peak.

 

With buyer intent data integrated into HubSpot, you not only gain access to high-quality intent signals but also create a streamlined process for acting on them, helping you turn anonymous traffic into prioritised leads in your CRM.

 

 

Breeze Intelligence in Action: Practical Use Cases of Buyer Intent

Buyer intent data offers a range of applications that help businesses prioritise and act on high-fit, high-intent prospects. By integrating this data into your CRM, you can target accounts more strategically, personalise your outreach, and ensure you’re capturing the attention of those most likely to convert. Here are some of the key ways you can leverage buyer intent data to optimise your sales and marketing efforts:

1. Identifying High-Fit and High-Intent Accounts

Not all website visitors are created equal, and buyer intent data helps you filter out casual browsers from serious prospects. By analysing the online behaviour of companies that fit your ideal customer profile, you can determine which accounts show the strongest intent signals. This allows you to focus on the right leads - those who are actively seeking a solution like yours - improving your chances of conversion and shortening your sales cycle.

2. Adding High-Intent Companies to Your HubSpot CRM and Enriching Them

Once you’ve identified companies showing intent, adding them directly to your HubSpot CRM ensures they’re in your pipeline from the very beginning of their journey. By enriching these profiles with additional data—such as company size, industry, and location—you’ll be able to qualify leads more effectively and assign them to the right sales teams. This data also gives your team a head start, enabling them to create personalised outreach strategies based on specific company characteristics and interests.

3. Detecting Potential Buyers Early in Their Journey

Buyer intent data enables you to capture prospects at the start of their buying journey rather than waiting until they reach out directly. By monitoring intent signals, you can identify companies that are in the early stages of research and engage them with relevant content, such as blog posts or case studies, that address their specific interests. This early touchpoint allows you to build rapport, position your brand as a thought leader, and move prospects further down the pipeline.

4. Tailoring Marketing Messages to Match the Buyer’s Stage

With insight into a prospect’s intent signals, you can personalise marketing messages based on where they are in the buying journey. For instance, companies showing high interest in competitor comparisons may be in the consideration phase, making them ideal candidates for case studies or testimonials. In contrast, those researching product fundamentals could benefit from educational content that addresses initial questions and concerns. Tailoring messages this way improves engagement rates, as prospects receive relevant information aligned with their current needs.

5. Optimising Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Campaigns

Buyer intent data can be a game-changer for account-based marketing (ABM). By layering intent data over your existing ABM efforts, you can pinpoint which target accounts are most engaged, allowing you to allocate resources effectively. For example, companies displaying strong intent signals can be added to retargeting campaigns on paid ads, helping keep your brand top of mind. Intent-driven ABM enables your team to engage with the right accounts at the right time, maximising campaign ROI.

 

 

Our Experience with Breeze Intelligence's Buyer Intent Feature

At Six & Flow, buyer intent data has significantly simplified our process of identifying and engaging high-intent leads. By integrating buyer intent tracking into HubSpot, we were able to reduce reliance on extra tools and improve data accuracy.

For example, in a recent campaign, we set up tracking for visits to case study pages from target accounts. When an account reached a set visit threshold, sales received instant alerts, allowing them to follow up immediately with relevant outreach. This approach helped the team engage potential buyers early without unnecessary manual steps.

Our marketing team also used buyer intent data to improve their account-based marketing (ABM) strategy by launching retargeting ads tailored to different buying stages. This ensured that both sales and marketing could focus on accounts that showed the strongest intent signals, leading to more effective engagement across the pipeline.

 

Conclusion

Relying solely on form fills or waiting for prospects to self-identify can result in missed opportunities. Buyer intent data provides a proactive approach, enabling your team to identify and engage high-fit prospects early in their journey. By integrating intent data with your HubSpot CRM, you can prioritise leads that show strong buying signals, streamline your ABM and retargeting efforts, and ensure that your outreach aligns with where prospects are in the buying process.

For companies aiming to optimise resources and improve their pipeline, buyer intent data is a critical asset. It allows sales and marketing to focus on the right leads at the right time—without the inefficiencies of a disjointed tech stack. By leveraging buyer intent, you’re not just reaching more potential clients; you’re targeting the ones most likely to convert, ultimately driving sustainable growth and higher returns on your outreach efforts.