In business, wasting time equals wasting money. Therefore, you need a strategy that is efficient and makes optimal use of your resources.
With this in mind, intent-based marketing is an optimal strategy for marketers who want to ensure they are reaching audiences that have a genuine interest in what their company has to offer.
But what is intent-based marketing and how does it differ from traditional or account-based marketing? Let’s dive in.
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What is intent-based marketing and how is it different from ABM?
Intent-based marketing (IBM) is a strategy that focuses on delivering targeted messages to consumers based on their online behavior and preferences.
Intent-based marketing differs from account-based marketing (ABM) in that ABM targets specific high-value accounts, while IBM targets accounts that are actively seeking solutions.
For intent-based marketing, you need one Smart CRM like HubSpot, which uses AI automation to identify prospects who are actively interested and showing buying signals, so you can prioritize and engage at the perfect time.
Additionally, you need a CRM that unifies and enriches your data, with key features like custom reports that turn data insights into manageable reports that track everything from the beginning of the buyer’s journey to revenue attribution.
Why intent-based marketing matters now
At a time of increasing data breaches and growing distrust of the way companies manage their data, consumers are understandably becoming more cautious about how they handle their personal information.
As a result, consumers are increasing the security of their personal information by using privacy tools and deciding which companies to purchase from based on their data practices.
With this in mind, intent-based marketing is an excellent strategy for engaging potential customers while respecting their privacy because it relies largely on first-party data collected from user interactions on your website, as opposed to relying largely on third-party sources. But what are third-party sources and why are consumers wary of them?
Have you ever visited a website and been bombarded with pop-ups asking you to “Accept or manage cookies”? Well, these website cookies and tracking scripts come from third parties.
Not only do they annoyingly interrupt your internet surfing, but they also track your activities. They are owned by outside companies, which raises concerns about the extent of control consumers have over the collection and use of their data.
These third-party sources are under even greater scrutiny due to regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), both of which place restrictions on the collection and use of third-party data.
Another major benefit of intent-based marketing is that it allows marketers to create highly personalized experiences for website visitors by tracking their behavior and actions on the site.
Let’s say you’re an online clothing store and a website visitor spent a lot of time clicking through your fall lookbook before subscribing to your email list.
You could then send personalized emails recommending fall clothing and/or create a personalized digital fall lookbook, rather than a generic email with general sales and offers.
How to start targeted marketing
1. Define your ideal customer profile and buying signals.
Start by clearly identifying who you are targeting and what behaviors indicate purchase intent.
Record the specific actions that indicate someone is actively searching for solutions in your category – such as visiting pricing pages, downloading white papers, or searching for comparisons with competitors.
The more precisely you use these signals, the more effective your targeting will be.
This fits perfectly Express Phase of HubSpot’s Loop Marketing Frameworkwhere you define your brand identity and ideal customer profile before using AI to create targeted campaigns.
By establishing clear buyer personas and intent signals upfront, you lay the foundation for AI-powered personalization throughout the process.
2. Select your intent data sources.
Choose the right combination of first-party, second-party and third-party intent data for your needs. First-party data from your website and CRM shows direct engagement with your brand.
Third-party vendors indicate when potential customers search the Internet for topics related to your solution. Consider your budget and identify the sources that best fit your target accounts.
Remember that most consumers are not fans of third-party sourcing. Therefore, be careful when collecting and using third-party data and ensure you follow GDPR and/or CCPA guidelines.
3. Integrate intent data into your marketing technology stack.
Connect your intent data sources with your CRM, marketing automation platform, and advertising tools to optimize your marketing efforts. This integration ensures that intent signals flow seamlessly into your existing workflows and can trigger appropriate actions.
Platforms like HubSpot’s Marketing Hub Offer native integrations with major intent data providers to make it easy to centralize your intent signals along with your contact data, email campaigns, and analytics, giving you a unified view of prospect behavior.
4. Create intent-specific content and messaging.
Develop tailored content that directly speaks to prospects at different stages of their buying journey. Prospects who show early research intent need educational content, while high purchase intent prospects who are nearing completion need case studies, demos, and competitive comparisons.
Tailor your message to the urgency and specificity of their signals.
In the Tailored phase of loop marketingUsing AI, you can personalize these messages at scale, leveraging unified CRM data to create experiences that feel customized based on each prospect’s specific intent signals and stage of the buying journey.
5. Create automated workflows and launch campaigns.
Set up rule-based workflows that automatically respond when prospects reach specific intent thresholds. This can include adding high-purchase intent contacts to nurture sequences, notifying sales reps of leads, or launching targeted advertising campaigns for accounts that show buying signals.
Automation ensures you respond quickly to intent data while keeping it relevant.
6. Measure, optimize and refine your approach.
Track which intent signals correlate most closely with actual conversions and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Monitor key metrics including time to conversion, campaign engagement rates, and ROI by intent source. Regularly review which topics and behaviors have the greatest influence on purchases in your specific market and continually refine your targeting criteria based on what works.
This continuous optimization reflects that Development phase of loop marketingwhere AI helps you measure, predict and adjust in real-time instead of waiting for quarterly reviews – making each campaign cycle smarter and more effective than the last.
Intent signals to collect and track
Not sure which intent signals you should track? No problem. I’ve put together 5 intent signals for you to track Smart CRM.
1. Website behavior patterns
Repeated visits to high-value pages, such as pricing, product comparisons, case studies, or demo request pages, indicate serious interest. Multiple meetings over a short period of time, especially from the same business area, suggest active evaluation.
2. Content consumption activity
Downloading proprietary content such as white papers, industry reports, implementation guides, or ROI calculators shows that prospects are investing time to understand your solution. The deeper the content, the stronger the signal.
3. Search intent and keyword research
If a prospect is actively searching for solution-specific keywords, competitive comparisons, or “best (product category)” terms, then they are in active buying mode. Third-party intent data can reveal when companies research these topics online.
4. Interaction with sales or support content
Watching product demos, participating in webinars, requesting trials, or interacting with chatbots about implementation or pricing questions all signal high purchase intent and willingness to engage in sales discussions.
5. Technological and firmographic changes
Changes in a company’s tech stack, recent funding rounds, new executive hires, office expansions, or job postings for positions that would use your solution can indicate windows of opportunity when the company is likely to invest in new tools.
How to enable cross-channel intent-based targeting
So we’ve talked about data and patterns to observe when building an intent-based marketing strategy, but what do you actually do with this information? And how do you implement it across channels? Here are four ways to do this:
1. Keyword and search query targeting
Monitor and target users based on their search behavior and the specific keywords they use. Search behavior and searches for specific keywords reveal active intent as people look for solutions to their problems. You can bid on relevant search terms or use search data to advertise across platforms.
2. Target group segmentation in the market
Identify and target users who are actively searching or comparing products in your category. Platforms like Google and Facebook offer in-market audience segments based on browsing behavior, website visits, and interaction patterns that signal purchase intent.
Tools like those from HubSpot Marketing Hub can help you analyze and segment these audiences based on their behavioral and engagement data.
3. Retargeting based on behavioral signals
Create campaigns that target users who have shown specific intent signals, such as: Such as visiting product pages, adding items to their shopping cart, downloading resources, or spending a lot of time on comparison content.
Overlay these audiences with recency and frequency data to prioritize users with high purchase intent.
This multi-channel retargeting approach is essential Reinforce the loop marketing phasewhere you diversify sales to meet buyers across the dispersed channels where they actually spend time – from social platforms to AI-powered search engines – rather than waiting for them to return to your website.
4. Content engagement triggers
Target users based on their interaction with specific content types that indicate intent, such as: B. viewing pricing pages, accessing product demos, reading buying guides, or interacting with customer reviews.
You can also leverage lead scoring systems that trigger advertisements when users reach certain engagement thresholds.
AI in intent-driven marketing
If I’ve said it in one blog post, I’ve said it in a million others: When it comes to collecting and analyzing data, you want AI in your corner.
Artificial intelligence simplifies data assessment, clustering and purchase prediction. AI algorithms seamlessly analyze large amounts of data points in real-time and assign points to each lead based on digital behavior.
For behavioral assessment, the AI evaluates actions such as visiting pricing pages, subscribing to newsletters or downloading case studies. The AI then groups prospects and visitors to gain a deeper understanding of their intentions.
From there, AI uses machine learning and predictive analytics to predict which leads are most likely to make a purchase.
Tools like those from HubSpot Breeze AI can help marketers act on these insights by automatically scoring leads, identifying prospects with high purchase intent, and triggering targeted campaigns at the optimal time in the buyer journey.
This human-AI collaboration is the foundation of Loop marketingwhere AI handles execution and optimization while marketers focus on strategy and creativity – allowing you to launch campaigns in days rather than months while continually improving results with each cycle.
How to measure and optimize intent-driven marketing
To successfully launch an intent-driven marketing strategy, you need to match message intensity to buyer readiness. So start by segmenting all of your metrics by intent stage (awareness, consideration, decision).
The core measurement is intent conversion rate – track how many high-intent signals convert within at least 30 days – and optimize monthly by checking which signals actually drive sales, testing message intent suitability, and reallocating budget to decision intent channels with lower customer acquisition costs (CAC).
Implement quick wins like intent-based scoring, keyword-to-close tracking, and intent-specific landing pages. Tools like HubSpot’s AEO Grader can help you assess how well your content matches search intent and identify optimization opportunities to better capture high-intent traffic.
If you notice high traffic but weak pipeline contribution or unqualified leads, you should recalibrate your strategy to ensure you don’t waste time and money on awareness-stage audiences who will never buy.
Here are some additional metrics you can track to optimize your intent-based marketing strategy:
- Intent Rise Duration – How long a prospect stays in a high intent state
- Content consumption trends – Examples include white paper downloads and blog visits by role
- Social engagement by target role or target account
- Website engagement – How often and for how long potential customers visit your website, how many pages they visit per session (page depth), and how much time they spend overall on the site
- Conversion rate
3 Intent-Based Marketing Playbooks You Can Copy
High-intent intercept playbook
Target prospects who are actively looking for solutions with keywords in the decision phase such as “best CRM for start-ups” or “(competitive) alternative”. Create dedicated landing pages for each high-intent search query, run paid search campaigns with aggressive bidding, and drive conversions directly to sales in minutes.
This captures the demand that already exists rather than trying to create it.
Account Surge Playbook
Monitor target accounts for spikes in intent, such as multiple visits to pricing pages, repeat product searches, or engagement with comparison content.
When an account reaches your intent threshold, trigger coordinated outreach using the following tactics:
- personalized emails from sales
- LinkedIn ads for key decision makers
- Retargeting with case studies
Strike while buy signals are hot, typically within 24 to 48 hours of the rise.
Content development playbook
Match content to intent stages and use engagement to move prospects through the funnel. Visitors to the awareness phase receive educational content, visitors to the consideration phase receive comparison guides and ROI calculators, visitors to the decision phase receive demos and consultations.
Use marketing automation to determine the next suitable materials based on consumption patterns and evaluate interactions to identify when someone moves from browsing to buying mode.
Frequently asked questions about intent-based marketing
Is intent-based marketing the same as ABM?
Not quite, but they work very well together. ABM focuses on targeting specific accounts with personalized campaigns, while intent-based marketing identifies prospects who are actively showing buying signals, regardless of whether they are on your audience list.
Think of intent marketing as the “when” and ABM as the “who,” then combine them to reach the right accounts at exactly the right moment.
Do I need third-party intent data to get started?
No. Start with first-party signals you already have: website behavior, content downloads, page visit prices, search queries, and email engagement.
This is often more accurate than third-party data because it reflects direct interaction with your brand. Once you’ve optimized your first-party intent strategy, consider incorporating third-party data to engage prospects earlier in their journey.
What is the difference between purchase intent and search intent?
Search intent is what someone wants to achieve with a specific search query (informational, navigational, or transactional), while purchase intent indicates that they are actively in the market to purchase a solution like yours.
Someone searching “What is marketing automation” has informational search intent but likely low purchase intent, while “HubSpot vs. Marketo pricing” indicates both transactional search intent and high purchase intent.
How long should I run a pilot before assessing the results?
Give at least 90 days to see meaningful patterns. However, you can see early indicators after just 30-45 days. B2B sales cycles typically last three to six months. So you need enough time for high-intent leads to convert and for your team to repeat messaging and targeting.
Track leading indicators (intent score distribution, engagement rates) weekly while waiting for lagging indicators (pipeline, revenue) to occur.
How often should I update my intent signal taxonomy?
Review it quarterly and update as necessary, but do not revise it. Your intent signals should evolve with product launches, competitive changes, and what your data reveals about actual buyer behavior.
If you notice new keywords, content types, or high-converting behavior patterns emerging, add them immediately instead of waiting for the quarterly review.