A CSO I worked with last year had just signed a $60K annual contract with a major intent data provider. Three months in, she showed me their dashboard: 847 companies currently "in-market" for their solution, ranked by engagement score, color-coded by urgency. It looked impressive. The problem? Her sales team had contacted fewer than 70 of them. Not because the reps didn't care. Because nobody had built a workflow for what to do when a company "showed intent."
That's the real state of intent data at most B2B companies. The data isn't bad. The workflow doesn't exist. And because no workflow exists, a $60K line item turns into a dashboard that someone checks twice a month and then ignores.
This post is the guide I wish I could have sent her before she signed.
What buyer intent data actually is
Intent data is any signal that suggests a company might be in the market for a product like yours. That covers a lot of ground, so it helps to split it into three categories.
First-party intent is what happens on your own properties. Pricing page visits. Demo requests. Content downloads. Email opens, forwards, replies. Trial signups. Repeat visits from the same company domain over a short window. This data is yours, it's free, and it's the most reliable signal you'll ever get. The downside: it only covers accounts already in your funnel.
Third-party intent comes from what your target accounts do somewhere else on the internet. Bombora, the largest provider in the space, tracks research behavior across 5,000+ publishers and scores companies on 17,210 intent topics. When a company's employees are suddenly reading a lot of articles about "CRM implementation" or "HubSpot alternatives," Bombora surfaces that account. G2 tracks who is comparing your product to competitors on their platform. LinkedIn shows you hiring signals that often precede buying decisions.
Second-party intent is when a partner shares their first-party data directly with you. G2 showing you exactly who viewed your profile falls here.
The reason this matters: most companies spend $25K-$100K on third-party intent providers and ignore the first-party signals they already have for free. That's backwards.
The market is growing but ROI is terrible
91% of B2B marketers now use some form of intent data. Only 24% report exceptional ROI. That gap should make you pause before you sign your next contract.
64% of companies collect intent data but can't turn it into action. 37% can't measure ROI at all. 61% take more than six months before seeing any return.
The providers know this. That's why 6sense and Demandbase have built orchestration layers directly into their platforms. They're solving a problem they helped create: selling data without solving the workflow problem meant most customers never saw results. Now they're selling the workflow too, which is why 6sense averages $58K per year and Demandbase can run into the hundreds of thousands at enterprise scale.
For most Series A and B companies, that's not the right answer. You don't need a $58K platform. You need a $500/month workflow.
The providers and what they're actually good at
Before building anything, you should understand what each tool is actually measuring. The market has a lot of overlap and a lot of marketing noise.
My honest take on each:
Bombora is useful if your product is in a category with lots of research behavior (CRM, cybersecurity, HR software). If you're selling something niche where buyers don't research much online, the signal is thin. And at $25K minimum, it's a hard sell for a sub-50-person company.
6sense is genuinely impressive. The AI prediction layer is better than what most teams could build themselves. But at $58K you need a RevOps team that can actually use the orchestration layer, or you'll be back to the dashboard-that-nobody-checks problem.
G2 Intent is the sleeper pick. If your product is listed on G2 and buyers in your category use it for research (they do), the signal is extremely high quality. Someone comparing you to Competitor A on G2 is much further down the funnel than someone reading an article on Bombora's network. The cost is effectively zero since you're paying for the G2 listing anyway.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator I'd use even if I had no budget for intent data at all. The hiring signals alone are worth the subscription. A company hiring five SDRs in Q1 is almost certainly making outbound investments. That's a trigger.
Why most intent programs fail
Intent data is an input. Your team needs a system, not a dashboard.
A list of 847 in-market companies is useless without a workflow that routes the right accounts to the right reps within 24 hours. The data isn't failing. The process around it is.
Here's what typically happens when a company buys intent data:
Week 1: Everyone is excited. Sales leaders pull up the dashboard and show it to the board. Marketing starts talking about pipeline.
Week 4: Sales reps are asked to review the list weekly and prioritize accordingly. They do, sort of.
Week 8: The list review is happening every other week. Some reps have stopped looking.
Week 12: The intent data is effectively unused. The dashboard shows 900+ in-market accounts. Nobody has contacted 85% of them. The CSO is wondering what she paid for.
This is not a hypothetical. I've seen this cycle at half a dozen companies. The failure isn't the data. It's that the intent signal never got connected to the action that follows from it.
Two-thirds of B2B leaders say their intent dashboards show "success" metrics that never translate to revenue. The companies that escape this pattern all have one thing in common: they automated the path from signal to conversation.
The workflow that makes intent data work
You don't need to build something complicated. You need to build something that removes the human decision point between "signal appears" and "rep gets task."
This is the workflow I've built for clients using Clay, n8n, and HubSpot. The total cost is under $1,000/month, and it runs without a rep touching it until there's a qualified account ready to contact.
The specific trigger I've seen work best: when a target account shows three or more signals in a 30-day window, the automation fires. One pricing page visit could be a competitor doing research. Three signals in a month suggests something real is happening.
Signals that actually matter, ranked
Not all intent signals deserve the same response. Here's roughly how I prioritize them:
Tier 1: act within 24 hours
A demo request from a company that matches your ICP is the highest-quality signal that exists. It doesn't happen enough, but when it does, speed matters more than anything else. Research shows that responding within five minutes versus 30 minutes increases qualification rates by 21x.
A pricing page visited three or more times in seven days from the same domain is nearly as strong. Someone is doing a calculation. Get in front of them before they decide.
A free trial signup from a company matching your ICP should go directly to a rep, with Clay enrichment attached, within an hour.
Tier 2: act within 72 hours
Someone at a target account comparing you to a competitor on G2. This person is actively in a buying process. The sequence you use should reference the category decision they're making.
A contact at a target account opens your previous email three times without replying. They're thinking about it. A short, direct follow-up with a new angle works here.
A job posting at a target account requires experience with your direct competitor's product. They're either replacing that tool or their new hire will champion the switch.
Tier 3: add to nurture, not outbound
A Bombora keyword spike for broad category terms. Real but weak. Surface the account for future targeting, don't send a cold outbound immediately.
A website visit from an unknown visitor. You don't have a contact. Add the account to a retargeting list and check back.
Most teams collapse all three tiers into one pile and sequence everyone the same way. That's why their reply rates are 1-2% and their reps are frustrated.
Getting started without a six-figure budget
If you're at Series A or B and evaluating whether to invest in intent data, here's what I'd actually recommend:
Start with your first-party signals. Set up HubSpot tracking so you can see which companies are visiting your pricing page, demo page, and case study pages. This costs nothing extra. Build a workflow that alerts your sales team when a target account hits these pages twice in a week.
Add G2 Intent if you have a listing. The setup is straightforward and the signal quality is high.
Use Clay to enrich accounts showing intent. When you know a company is looking at your pricing page, Clay can find the buying committee at that company in under a minute. You get names, titles, emails, and LinkedIn profiles. Your rep goes into the first call with context.
Connect it all with n8n. The automations are not complex. A basic n8n workflow to capture page visit data from HubSpot, enrich with Clay, and create a task in HubSpot takes an afternoon to set up. You don't need a RevOps team. You need an afternoon.
Only buy third-party intent data (Bombora, 6sense) once your first-party and second-party signals are generating meetings. At that point, you've proven the workflow and you know what to do with a signal. Adding volume makes sense. Adding volume before you have the workflow just creates a bigger pile of ignored data.
For a detailed look at how to set this up inside HubSpot, see our CRM and RevOps work, or read about AI automation workflows we've built for growth-stage teams.
Still sitting on intent signals with no workflow?
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Book an audit →FAQ
What is B2B buyer intent data?
B2B buyer intent data is information about the research and online behavior of companies that might be in the market to buy a product like yours. It comes in three forms: first-party data (what happens on your own website and email), second-party data (what partners like G2 share directly with you), and third-party data (what intent providers like Bombora track across publisher networks). The goal is to identify accounts that are actively researching your category so you can reach them before they make a decision.
What's the difference between first-party and third-party intent data?
First-party intent data comes from your own properties: pricing page visits, demo requests, email engagement, trial signups. It's the most accurate and most actionable, and you already own it. Third-party intent data comes from publisher networks and review sites tracked by providers like Bombora and 6sense. It tells you what accounts are researching across the broader internet, not just on your site. Third-party has broader reach but lower signal quality. Most teams should build their first-party workflow before spending on third-party data.
Is Bombora or 6sense worth it for small B2B teams?
Usually not at the Series A or B stage. Bombora costs $25K-$100K per year, and 6sense averages $58K annually. Without a RevOps team and an existing workflow to process the signals, you'll end up with an expensive dashboard nobody acts on. The smarter play for smaller teams is to get value from G2 Intent (included with your listing), LinkedIn Sales Navigator hiring signals, and Clay enrichment before committing to a five-figure intent contract.
How do I connect intent data to HubSpot?
The most practical setup uses n8n as the glue. HubSpot captures your first-party signals (page visits, email engagement, form submissions). When a target account hits a trigger (say, three pricing page visits in seven days), n8n fires a workflow that calls the Clay API to enrich the account's buying committee, then creates a deal in HubSpot with the contact records and signal context attached. The rep sees a task, not a spreadsheet. The whole setup runs in the background without manual review. If you want to learn more about how we build these, see our go-to-market and automation work.
What intent signals should I prioritize if I'm just getting started?
Start with three: pricing page visits from accounts matching your ICP (set the threshold at two or more visits in a week), G2 comparison views if you have a listing, and job postings at target accounts that mention your category or competitors. These three signals are free or near-free to capture, have high conversion rates compared to broad third-party signals, and can be routed automatically into HubSpot within an hour of appearing. Once you're generating meetings from these, add more data sources. If you're ready to build this, reach out to our team.