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Use buyer intent (BETA)

Last updated: September 18, 2024

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Use buyer intent to gain insight into which companies are visiting your website and showing an interest in your brand, and from there, identify which companies to focus on.

In buyer intent, you can add and define specific target markets. You can also define a company's intent by count of visits, unique visitors, and review which pages are being visited.

For buyer intent, data collected through the HubSpot tracking code allows website visits to be matched to companies. This helps HubSpot build a commercial dataset that allows you to identify which companies are visiting your website. Learn more about the data that's collected by the HubSpot tracking code.

Necessary Disclosure: by participating in the buyer intent Beta, you agree to the Buyer Intent Beta Terms & Conditions.

Before you get started

Before getting started with buyer intent, please note the following:

Set up buyer intent

Before using buyer intent, it is recommended to set up your target market, intent criteria, and confirm that your HubSpot tracking code has been installed and is successfully firing on your website. 

Add a target market 

When adding a target market, a company must meet at least one criteria in all selected categories to be added as part of that market. For example, if the target Industries has been set to Accounting or Energy, and the target Company country has been set to France, the target market will include specifically accounting companies in France or energy companies in France. 

  • In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Buyer Intent.
  • At the top, click the Configuration tab
  • In the Total Addressable Market (TAM) and Target Markets section, click Add Target Market.
     

Buyer Intent - Add Target Market
 

  • In the right panel, click Add next to the category you'd like to use to define your target market. Then, configure the following target categories: 
    • Industries: the industry these companies belong to, such as Accounting or Manufacturing
    • Company keywords: use keywords with industries to narrow your target market to specific companies within industries. Company tags can also be used to identify companies that match specific keywords or terms, such as B2C, healthcare, or more. 
    • Employee range: the range of employees in each of your target companies. 
    • Company country: the country that these companies are based in. 
    • Company state/province/region: the state, province, or region that these companies are based in. 
    • Company city: the city that these companies are based in. 
    • Web technologies: the technologies currently used by these companies internally and for their websites. 
    • Revenue: the revenue for each of your target companies. 
  • To manage your target market criteria: 
    • To add another criteria within each category, click the dropdown menu and select or enter another criteria
    • To remove a criteria within a category, click the X icon next to the criteria. 
    • To remove a category, click Remove.
  • To exclude specific criteria:
    • In the category section, click + Add [category] to exclude. To add an exclusion, you must have a cat
    • Click the dropdown menu and select your criteria
    • To remove an exclusion criteria within a category, click the X icon next to the criteria. 
  • After setting up your target market, at the bottom, click Create Target Market.
     


 

  • To edit an existing target market:
    • Click Edit next to the target market description.
    • In the right panel, edit the target market's details. 
    • At the bottom, click Save changes
  • By default, the target market's name will be set based on the selected categories. After creating, to rename your target market: 
    • In the table, click Edit next to the target market.
    • In the right panel, at the bottom, click More and select Rename.
    • In the dialog box, enter the new Name
    • Click Save. Then, click Save Changes.
  • To clone your target market: 
    • In the table, click Edit next to the target market.
    • In the right panel, at the bottom, click More and select Clone
    • In the dialog box, enter the Name for the cloned target market. 
    • In the right panel, make edits to your cloned target market. 
    • At the bottom, click Save Changes
  • To delete an existing target market:
    • In the table, click Edit next to the target market.
    • In the right panel, at the bottom, click More and select Delete
    • In the dialog box, click delete.

 

When reviewing your Total Addressable Market (TAM) and Target Markets section, the count of companies that meet target market profiles will display with the message: We’ve identified [x] companies in your Total Addressable Market (TAM).

If a specific company appears in more than one target market, the company will only be counted once. As a result, the total count of companies may be lower than expected. 
 

Buyer Intent - TAM Total Count

Set intent criteria

Companies that meet any of the configured intent criteria will be determined as showing intent. 
  • In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Buyer Intent.
  • At the top, click the Configuration tab. 
  • In the Intent section, click Add Intent Criteria or Edit Intent Criteria

Buyer Intent - Edit Intent Criteria

 

  • On the Pages indicating intent tab, set up your intent criteria: 
    • Page path: the page path of the website page to be included in intent criteria. For example, to include all companies who have viewed your pricing page on the page, you can set the page path to Path is equal to /pricing
      • Click the dropdown menu and select your Operator. You can select from the following:
        • Path is equal to
        • Path is not equal to
        • Path contains
        • Path does not contain
        • Path starts with
      • Enter your page path in the field. 
    • Enter your page path in the field. For example, to exclude all visitor that have visited your careers page, you can set the criteria to Exclude pages where the path is equal to /careers
    • Minimum number of visits: the minimum number of page visits from the same company to qualify as showing intent. 
    • Minimum number of visitors: the minimum number of unique visitors from the same company that have visited your page to qualify as showing intent. 
    • Time frame: the timeframe during which the website visits have occurred. 
       

 

  • To exclude pages, you can also set
    • At the top, click Pages to exclude (optional).
    • Page path: the page path of the website page to be excluded in the intent criteria. For example, to exclude all visitor that have visited your careers page rather than any product pages, you can set the criteria to Exclude pages where the path is equal to /careers.
      • Click the dropdown menu and select your Operator. You can select from the following:
        • Exclude pages where the path is equal to
        • Exclude pages where the path is not equal to
        • Exclude pages where the path contains
        • Exclude pages where the path does not contain
        • Exclude pages where the path starts with
      • Enter your page path in the field. 
    • Time frame: the timeframe during which the website visits have occurred.
  • To add another intent criteria, click Add a path. Then, set up the intent criteria to include or exclude. 
  • To delete an intent criteria, click Delete
  • After setting up your intent criteria, at the bottom, click Save
  • To delete all intent criteria, at the bottom of the right panel, click Delete. Then, select Delete

Confirm that your HubSpot tracking code is installed

After installing the HubSpot tracking code, ensure that your tracking code is receiving events:

  • In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Buyer Intent.
  • At the top, click the Configuration tab. 
  • In the HubSpot tracking code section, click Check Code Installation. If the code is working correctly, a Receiving events message will appear. If your code is not receiving events, learn how to troubleshoot the HubSpot tracking code
     

Manage user permissions

To add companies from buyer intent to your CRM records, the user account will need super admin or Enrich records permissions:

  • In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the top navigation bar.
  • In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Users & Teams.
  • In the user table, click a user record, then click the Access tab.
  • Under Permissions, click Edit permissions
  • In the left sidebar menu, use the search bar to search for Enrichment permissions. Then, click to toggle the Enrich records switch on or off. 

Set up and edit your cookie consent banner

By participating in the Buyer Intent Beta and adding the HubSpot tracking code to your websites, you'll be sharing the following data about your website visitors with HubSpot:

  • Domain;
  • Online identifiers, including visitor ID and IP addresses;
  • Timestamp of the website visit; and
  • URL path for the visit.

To comply with data protection laws, you may need to install a cookie consent banner. A cookie consent banner allows visitors to opt in or opt out of being tracked in your HubSpot account with cookies. This feature works for all HubSpot pages as well as any external pages with your HubSpot tracking code installed. See below for more resources on how HubSpot enables customers to comply with data protection laws.

Use buyer intent

After installing the Hubspot tracking code, company data will begin appearing in buyer intent. If you're using HubSpot's free tools, you will be limited to 20 companies per view. 

When adding a company to your CRM from buyer intent, the company will have a Record source property value of Buyer-Intent. Learn more about the Record source property

  • In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Buyer Intent.
  • In the left panel, you can filter your companies:
    • Time frame: filter by the timeframe when the company last visited your website. For example, you can filter by companies that have visited your website in the last 14 days. 
    • In my Target Markets: filter by companies that meet your Target Markets criteria. Learn more about adding target markets. 
    • Showing Intent: filter by companies that have met at least one intent criteria. Learn more about defining Intent. 
    • In my HubSpot CRM: include companies that currently exist in your HubSpot account. Companies currently in your account will appear with a HubSpot icon. When this option is toggled on, you can use the following additional filters. These filters will only apply to existing companies. 
      • Lifecycle stage: filter by the lifecycle stage of the corresponding company record, such as Customer or Subscriber
      • Deal Stage: filter by the Deal stage property of the company's associated deal records. 
      • Owner: filter by the company record's assigned owner
    • Specific pageviews: filter by companies that have visited specific pages. 


 

  • To save your filters as a view:
    • At the bottom, click Save view.
    • In the dialog box, enter a view name
    • Click Save
  • To access previously saved filters:
    • At the top left, click the Saved filters tab. Then, click the filter that you'd like to use.
    • To edit the view, click Edit view. After editing the view, click Save view. To dismiss your edits, click Dismiss
    • To rename a view, click More and select Rename View
    • To delete a filter, at the bottom, click More. Then, select Delete View
       


 

  • By default, companies in the buyer intent table are sorted by pageviews in descending order. To adjust the sort order, click Pageviews in the top right. Then, select Ascending or Descending
  • To review more details on a specific company:
    • Click the View company icon.
    • To review the most viewed pages for that company, click the Top pageviews tab. 
      • If you're reviewing companies that have shown intent, the specific page that qualified the company will be tagged with Intent
    • To review the most recent page views from a company, click the Recent page views tab.
    • To review additional details about the company, such as a brief description of the company, the company's industry, count of employees, or country, click the About tab. 
    • To review any existing contacts associated with a company, click the Contacts tab. You can also review the contact's last touch, last engagement, and any recently scheduled interactions such as planned meetings.
    • If the company has been added as a company record in your account, in the top right, click View record
    • If you have a Starter, Professional, or Enterprise subscription and you've purchased Breeze Intelligence credits, you can add companies to your CRM records and lists:
      • If the company does not currently exist as a record in your account, in the top right, click + Add to companies. to create a new company record. 
      • To add the company to an existing static list:
        • In the top right, click + Add to static list. If the company does not currently exist as a record in your account, it will automatically be added as a new record. 
        • In the dialog box, click the dropdown menu and select a list. Then, click Add
    • After reviewing the company details, click the X icon in the top right. 
       

 

Add companies to your CRM records and lists 

If you have a Starter, Professional, or Enterprise subscription and you've purchased the Breeze Intelligence credits, you can add companies from buyer intent to your CRM records and lists in bulk.
  • In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Buyer Intent.
  • To add an individual company to your HubSpot company records, click the + plus icon next to the company. 
  • To add multiple companies to your HubSpot company records in bulk, select the checkboxes next to the companies' names. At the top, click + Add to companies
  • To add multiple companies to an existing static list:
    • Select the checkboxes next to the companies' names.
    • At the top, click + add to static list. If any of the selected companies do not currently exist as a record in your account, they will automatically be added as new records. 
    • In the dialog box, click the dropdown menu and select a list. Then, click Add
  • In the dialog box, review the count of records to enrich, and the credits available in your account. At the bottom, click Add enriched records

Please note: the credit balance reflects the number of credits in your account. Depending on your enrichment settings or if other users are in the account using, this number may have changed between actions.

Analyze your buyer intent overview

From the Overview tab, you can analyze the penetration of your target markets and total addressable market. 

  • In your HubSpot account, navigate to Marketing > Buyer Intent.
  • At the top, click the Overview tab.
  • To change the timeframe for the Intent Funnel report, in the top right, click Last 7 days, Last 14 days, or Last 30 days.
  • After selecting your timeframe, you can review the following: 
    • Total Addressable Market (TAM): the count of companies that meet your target market criteria. Click View Target Markets to review these companies on the Buyer Intent tab. 
    • Showing Intent: the count of companies in your TAM that meet your intent criteria. Click View companies showing intent to review these companies on the Buyer Intent tab. 
    • Engaged: the count of companies in your TAM that also exist as company records and meet your intent criteria. Click View engaged companies to review these companies on the Buyer Intent tab. 
       

 

  • In the hot accounts section, you can review new companies in your target markets that have shown intent, but do not currently exist in your account as a company record. 
    • To add a hot account as a company record, click the + plus icon next to the account name. 
    • To review a list of all hot accounts on the Buyer Intent page, click Show me recent hot accounts. This will display all hot accounts from the last 7 days. 

 

  • In the market penetration section, you can review the following:
    • Total Addressable Market (TAM): the count of companies that meet your target criteria.
    • Market Penetration: the percentage of companies in your TAM that are currently in your CRM records. 
    • Market opportunity: the count of companies in your TAM that are not currently in your CRM records. 
  • To review the companies that have visited your site from each target market, click the rightarrow icon next to the category type. 

 

Use buyer intent in your company records

Add the Buyer Intent card to your company records to review buyer intent data directly from your company records. 

Add the buyer intent card to your company records

To add the Buyer Intent card to your company records, users must have Customize record page layout or Super Admin permissions.

  • In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the top navigation bar.
  • In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Objects, then select Companies.

  • At the top, click the Record Customization tab.

  • To edit the default view, click Default view or click the name of an existing team view (Professional and Enterprise only).
  • In the left or right column, click Add cards.
  • After adding your card, in the top right, click Save and exit. Learn more about customizing cards on your CRM records
     

 

Review the buyer intent card in your company records

After adding the Buyer intent card, you can review buyer intent data directly from your company records. If a company does not have buyer intent data, the card will still appear but display empty values. 
  • In your HubSpot account, navigate to CRM > Companies.
  • In your left or right sidebars, review your Buyer Intent card.
    • Website visits: the count sessions of website visits from this company. 
    • Unique visitors: the count of unique visitors that have visited your website from this company. 
    • Last seen: the date and time of the last visit from a visitor from this company. 
    • Top pageviews: the pages with the most visits from visitors from this company. 
  • To view all buyer intent activity, click View full visit activity. You will be redirected to the company profile on the Buyer intent page.

Buyer Intent - CRM card

 

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