Getting the right message to the right person at the perfect time is every go-to-market (GTM) team’s dream.

The secret?

Matching your audience with the right offer—built on a solid understanding of what people need (demand) and what you can deliver (supply).

With 75% of B2B buyers now preferring a self-service sales process that’s tailored to their needs, using intent signals has become a game-changer. Signal-based marketing helps you create personalized experiences that build strong pipelines and drive conversions.

In this guide, we’ll share a simple, step-by-step playbook to help you use intent signals to improve your GTM strategy, connect with your audience, and boost results. Let’s dive in!

1. Understanding Signals: What are signals and how it can make your GTM strategy powerful

What are signals?

Signals are actions or events that show a prospect’s potential buying intent, like visiting your pricing page, interacting with your product, or engaging with a social post.

What are attributes?

Attributes are traits that identify high-value users, such as their job role, seniority, company size, or industry. These traits help determine if they can act on their buying intent.

Combining signals and attributes creates a clear picture of your ideal audience. This overlap helps you focus on prospects who are ready to buy, leading to more efficient sales efforts and higher conversions.

Sales Triggers

Sales triggers are events or actions that indicate a potential customer is ready to buy or engage with your product. These can include things like a company launching a new product, a job change, funding announcements, or increased online activity. Identifying these triggers helps sales teams act at the right moment to convert leads into customers.

Why Are Sales Triggers Important?

In sales, timing is everything. When you know a company is going through a big change, it’s the perfect chance to offer your products or services. Reaching out at the right time increases your chances of making a sale and building a strong relationship.

Sales triggers help you:

• Personalize your outreach

• Reach out at the perfect moment

• Find opportunities to cross-sell and upsell

• Stay ahead of the competition

• Easily fit into your existing sales process

  
  

How to Identify Sales Triggers?

Tracking sales triggers takes a mix of tools and strategies. Here are some ways to stay on top of trigger events:

• Google Alerts: Set up alerts for key terms related to your prospects.

• LinkedIn: Follow companies and key people for updates.

• Industry News: Stay updated with industry news and publications.

• Company Press Releases: Regularly check press releases from your prospects.

The challenge is that these methods can be time-consuming and require a lot of manual effort.

2. Selecting Signals: Data Sources That Matter

To capture intent effectively, start by identifying the best data sources.

Signal Categories

A- First-Party Signals (Owned Data)

1. Website interactions (e.g., pricing page visits)

2. Product actions (e.g., trial sign-ups)

3. CRM updates (e.g., meetings booked)

4. Email campaigns (e.g., webinar attendance)

5. Support tickets or chatbot engagements

B- Second-Party Signals (Unowned Contact Data)

1. LinkedIn activity (e.g., job changes or post reactions)

2. Community involvement (e.g., Reddit discussions)

3. Developer activity (e.g., GitHub contributions)

C- Third-Party Signals (Organizational Data)

1. Technographic data (e.g., new SaaS tools adopted)

2. News updates (e.g., funding announcements)

3. Keyword consumption (e.g., visiting competitor pages on G2)

By combining these signal categories, you gain deeper insights into audience behavior and readiness to buy.

3. Mapping Signals: Aligning with the Buyer’s Journey

Think of your buyer’s journey as a T-shaped funnel:

• T-base layer:

  Buyers explore multiple channels (e.g., social media, product pages, webinars).

• T-bottom layer:

  Buyers move to more linear actions (e.g., booking a demo).

Steps to Map Signals:

1. Outline the customer journey, from initial interaction to closed deal.

2. Pinpoint the “divergence point,” where intent becomes actionable (e.g., demo request).

3. Prioritize high-performing signals based on volume, cost, and conversion rates.
   
   

   

4. Scoring Signals: Focus on What Converts

Not all signals are equal. Some drive more pipeline than others. So, we gotta build a scoring system by analyzing:

• Volume/Frequency: How often a signal occurs.

• Impact on Conversion: How predictive a signal is of progression in the funnel.

• Signal Difficulty: The effort required to act on the signal.

For instance, a prospect who visits your pricing page and follows your LinkedIn posts may have higher intent than someone who only likes a post.

5. Executing Signals: Personalize Your Outreach

Use high-intent signals to craft personalized messages that resonate with your audience. Examples include:

1. Signal: Visiting your integration page → Action: Share a case study featuring that integration.

2. Signal: Reaching a usage limit on their current plan → Action: Offer a walkthrough of upgrade options.

3. Signal: Engaging with a competitor → Action: Highlight your unique value proposition.

6. Automating Signal-Based Outreach: Scale Smartly

To scale effectively, follow the Crawl, Walk, Run framework:

• Crawl: Manually capture, enrich, and act on signals.

• Walk: Use tools to automate signal collection and enrichment, but keep outreach personalized.

• Run: Fully automate data capture, enrichment, and engagement.

  
  

  

  
  Here’s how we do it:

• Content - Post high-quality content

• Data Enrichment - Scrape the leads and enrich the data using Clay

• Lead Generation - Use Trigify.io to intent signals from content.

• Email - Prospeo.io to get emails

• Prospecting - Scale the outreach with Instantly.ai

Combine content, data, and outreach.

Leads come to you…

7. Stacking Signals: Unlock New Opportunities

Combine multiple signals for richer insights. For example:

• Signal A: LinkedIn engagement → Signal B: Website visit

  Indicates strong interest and readiness to move beyond the awareness stage.

  
  

• Signal A: Job change → Signal B: Company fundraising

  Shows a prospect likely to drive major decisions, ideal for outbound engagement.

Closing Thoughts

Ready to take your signal-based marketing to the next level?

At AcquisitionX, we help B2B marketing leaders generate more qualified leads through cold email and LinkedIn strategies. Want to learn how we can elevate your LinkedIn content game?

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