Intent signals and buying signals are often sold as the same thing. They are not. One tells you a company is reading about a topic; the other tells you something happened inside the company that makes a purchase more likely. This guide explains what intent signals are, where intent data comes from, how it differs from event-based buying signals, how to judge an intent signal before you act on it, and how to use the two together.
01
What intent signals are
An intent signal is a sign of buyer intent: evidence that people at an account are researching a problem or a product category. The evidence is behaviour, such as pages read, searches, comparisons, downloads or visits to a pricing page. Intent data is the collection of those signals, usually scored by topic and by account.
Intent data comes from three places, and they differ a lot in how much you can trust them.
Yours
First-party intent
What people do on your own website, product and emails: a pricing page visit, a demo request, a trial sign-up. You know exactly where it came from.
A partner's
Second-party intent
Another company's first-party data, shared or sold: for example, who viewed your category on a review site.
Inferred
Third-party intent
Third-party intent data is collected across many websites and matched to companies, often by office network. It shows a rise in reading on a topic, not who read.
Third-party intent is built in a few steps. A provider collects page views from a network of publisher sites, matches each visit to a company, usually through the office's internet address, and tags the page with topics. When a company reads much more about a topic than it normally does, the provider reports a surge. Each step loses detail: home and mobile visits are hard to match, topics are broad, and the score depends on the provider's own model. That is why two providers can disagree about the same account.
02
What buying signals are
A buying signal, in the sense used here, is a dated event at the account that makes your offer relevant now. Many are public records you can read and date to the day.
- Hiring. A job post for the role your product serves, or a new team being built.
- A change in systems. A new core system, a migration, or a tool being removed.
- Expansion. A new site, country, product line or sales channel.
- Money and ownership. A funding round, a new lender, or a change of owner.
- A deadline or an incident. A regulation the company must meet, or a dated failure it has to fix.
The useful ones are often called a trigger event: something that starts a buying process, rather than describes the company.
03
Intent signals vs buying signals, side by side
| Intent signal | Buying signal | |
|---|---|---|
| What it shows | Interest in a topic | A change at the company |
| Where it comes from | Your site, partners, or a data provider's network | Job posts, filings, registers, press, the company's own pages |
| How it is dated | A week or a month of activity, usually as a score | The day the record was filed or posted |
| Who else sees it | Every customer of the same provider | Anyone who reads the record, though few do it well |
| Best used for | Ranking accounts you already want | Deciding when to reach out, and what to say |
| Main risk | Mistaking reading for a decision | Mistaking a common event for a reason |
Neither is better in general. Intent is wide and fuzzy; an event is narrow and specific. An account that shows both is a stronger lead than one that shows either.
04
How to judge an intent signal
- Ask who is reading. Third-party intent is matched to a company, not a person. Check the company is the right size and in your market before you treat it as a lead.
- Check the topic is yours. A topic close to your category also attracts your competitors, agencies and students. Searching a category word often returns the category's own vendors, not its buyers.
- Look at strength and recency. A rise against the account's own normal level means more than a high score that never changes. A surge from two months ago is history.
- Find a second, different record. Intent is stronger when the same company also has a dated event: a hire, a new system, an expansion. A second intent score or a second job ad for the same seat is not a second record.
- Test it on your own past deals. Did accounts that bought show the signal more often before they bought than in an ordinary year? If not, it describes who, not when.
Intent can tell you a company is paying attention to a problem. It cannot tell you whether the budget exists, who decides, or whether they already chose. A dated event often answers more of those questions, which is why the two work best together. For how to build outreach around events, see signal based selling.
05
How to use intent and buying signals together
Use them in order: fit first, then events, then intent. Fit says who could buy. A dated event says why now. Intent helps you choose between accounts that pass both.
An invented example, for one quarter:
| Step | Accounts | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| In your target market | 400 | Too many to contact one by one |
| Showing intent on your topic | 60 | A shortlist, but no reason to write yet |
| With a dated event in the last 90 days | 12 | Contact first, and open with the event |
The message to the 12 can say what happened at their company. The message to the other 48 can only say what they might be reading, which is weaker and easy to get wrong.
06
Common mistakes with intent signals
Treating reading as buying. Research on a topic can be a student, a competitor or a team that already chose.
Telling the prospect what they read. "I saw you were researching X" sounds like surveillance and is often wrong. Lead with a public event instead.
Forgetting who else has the data. If many vendors buy the same intent feed, the same accounts get the same emails in the same week.
Acting on old surges. Interest fades fast. Check the dates before you write.
Never checking the signal. A score is not proof. Read a sample of the accounts it flags before building a campaign on it.
07
The intent or signal checklist
Before you act on a signal, ask
- Is this interest in a topic, or a dated change at the company?
- Is the account inside your target market by size, industry and region?
- Is the topic close to what you sell, and not just to your category?
- Is it recent enough to be a reason to write this month?
- Does the same company have a second, different record?
- Did this signal come before purchases in your own past deals more than in an ordinary year?
What we have seenWhen we checked 46 signals we had pitched against the public records, 1 held as first worded, 29 held only once we narrowed them on the evidence, and 16 did not hold. And a popular event can be common every year: in one study of 28 companies that bought, 26 had a leadership change in the year before the purchase, and 26 in the year before that.
08
Questions
Is intent data the same as a buying signal?
No. Intent data shows research activity on a topic. A buying signal, in the event sense, is a dated change at the company. Some vendors call both "signals", so check which one you are buying.
Which is more reliable, first-party or third-party intent?
First-party, because you know where it came from and who acted. Third-party intent covers far more accounts, but it is inferred, scored by the provider, and shared with their other customers.
Should I mention intent in my outreach?
Usually not. Mention a public event the reader will recognise. Use intent to decide who to contact, not what to say.
09
Where to go next
For the event side in full, read buying signals in B2B sales, and how to tell the real ones from noise.
New to the research side? Start with what sales prospecting is.