Intent-based marketing: reaching people while they are looking
updated 1 November 2026
Intent-based marketing aims your marketing and outreach at people or companies that show signs they're ready to buy, instead of at everyone who fits a profile. You stop asking "who could buy?" and start asking "who's looking right now?", so timing becomes part of who you target.
A fit-only list treats a company that started evaluating vendors last week the same as one that hasn't thought about the problem in a year. Intent marketing tries to tell the two apart and put the effort into the first.
The two types of intent
| Type | Where it comes from | What you know | Main limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stated intent | Public posts where a person says what they need: "Looking for a tool that does X, budget around Y" | Who has the need, in their own words, and often the timeline | Only covers people who ask in public |
| Inferred intent | Behaviour: visits to your pricing page, email clicks, topic research across publisher sites, comparison-page visits, often sold as third-party data | An account is acting like a buyer | The reason is a guess, and it usually names a company rather than a person |
Inferred intent reaches more accounts. Stated intent is rarer but clearer, since nobody has to guess what the person meant.
Examples
- Search ads on comparison terms. Someone typing "alternative to [product]" has told the search engine they're shopping. Bidding on that phrase is the oldest form of intent marketing.
- Pricing-page follow-up. A known contact visits your pricing page twice in a week, and sales gets an alert to reach out.
- Account surge campaigns. A third-party feed shows a company reading about your category more than usual, so marketing adds that account to a targeted ad campaign.
- Answering a public request. Sample: "We're a five-person agency and need a better way to track client approvals. What do you use?" A helpful reply in that thread reaches someone who asked for help that day.
How it differs from intent data
Intent data is the signal: the visit, the surge, the post. Intent-based marketing is what you do with it, meaning which accounts you target, what message you send, and how fast. Plenty of teams buy intent data and never change their marketing. The data only pays off when it changes who you contact and when.
Most teams combine signals with lead scoring to get a priority order. For strong and weak signals side by side, see buying signals examples.
Where HearBuyers fits
HearBuyers works on stated intent. You paste your company website, and it reads public X and Reddit posts, scores each one from 0 to 100 for buying intent, and drafts a reply that a person approves and posts. Nothing posts on its own. For inferred, account-level signals, our guide to the best intent data providers covers that side.
Next step
Write down three sentences one of your buyers would post when they start looking, then search Reddit and X for those exact phrases this week. Count the real requests you find before you decide which kind of intent to pay for.
See who is asking for what you sell
Paste your website. Your first scored matches from X and Reddit arrive within minutes, each with a drafted reply. Free for 14 days, no card.