# Buyer Intent Signals: What They Are, How to Act

Buyer intent signals show someone is close to buying. First party versus third party, the LinkedIn signals worth acting on, and how to score them.

URL: https://www.easeclaw.com/guides/buyer-intent-signals

Written by Pritesh Mann, Founder, EaseClaw. Updated September 2026.

## The tools, ranked

### Third-party intent data for account-based selling

Bought signal, pooled across many companies' research activity, sold as a list of accounts rather than named people.

#### 1. Bombora

- What it is: A cooperative that pools content-consumption activity from a large network of publisher sites, then reports which companies are reading heavily about a chosen topic right now.
- Pricing: Not published. Every plan starts with a sales conversation. (read from https://bombora.com/intent/)
- Key capability: Company-level research signal pooled across a wide publisher network, sold as an account list.
- Free tier: No free tier and no self-serve checkout.
- Best for: Account-based sales and marketing teams who want a third-party signal to prioritize the accounts they already target.
- Pro: The signal is genuinely third party, so it can surface a company that has never visited your own site or engaged with your posts.
- Con: It names the company, not the person, and the price is a custom quote you only see after a sales call.
- Link: https://bombora.com/intent/

#### 2. 6sense

- What it is: An account-based platform that layers its own predictive model on top of third-party research signals, then sells data credits to unlock the contact details behind an account it flags.
- Pricing: Not published. Three tiers are named by feature set, not by price, on its own pricing page. (read from https://6sense.com/pricing/)
- Key capability: A predictive score on top of the raw signal, plus credits to turn an account into named contacts.
- Free tier: No free tier named on its pricing page.
- Best for: Larger revenue teams running full account-based programs with the budget for an annual platform contract.
- Pro: Combining a model with the raw signal is meant to cut through noise a raw feed alone would not filter.
- Con: Nothing on the public pricing page tells you what it costs before a sales call, and reviews describe multi-year contracts as standard.
- Link: https://6sense.com/pricing/

### Website visitor and buying-signal alerts

You already get traffic. These identify who is behind it and add outside research signals on top.

#### 1. Warmly

- What it is: Identifies the companies, and where possible the people, visiting your own website, then adds outside research signals and job-change alerts on top so a rep knows who showed up and why it might matter.
- Pricing: $10,000 a year for the entry plan, rising to $30,000 a year for the plan that also runs outbound (read from https://www.warmly.ai/pricing)
- Key capability: First-party website visitor identification joined with third-party research signals in one feed.
- Free tier: No free tier on its current pricing page. Every tier is an annual commitment, with a quarterly billing option shown alongside it.
- Best for: Teams who already get meaningful website traffic and want to know who is looking before they reach out.
- Pro: It is the only tool in this lane that joins your own first-party traffic to third-party signals in a single view.
- Con: The entry price is a five figure annual commitment, well above every other tool on this page except 6sense.
- Link: https://www.warmly.ai/pricing

#### 2. Clay

- What it is: A workflow builder that pulls signals such as a job change or a hiring post from dozens of connected data sources into one spreadsheet-like table, then can trigger an outreach step from any row.
- Pricing: Free for 500 actions and 100 data credits a month, from $167 a month on the next tier (read from https://www.clay.com/pricing)
- Key capability: Combines many separate signal sources into one table you control, rather than one packaged feed.
- Free tier: Yes, a genuine free tier with a monthly credit allowance rather than a time-limited trial.
- Best for: Technical operators who want to wire several signal sources together themselves rather than buy one fixed feed.
- Pro: The free tier is real, and the credit-based pricing means you pay for what you actually pull rather than a flat seat fee.
- Con: It is a building tool, not a finished feed. Somebody still has to design the workflow before any signal comes out of it.
- Link: https://www.clay.com/pricing

### Public mention and brand tracking

A name or a phrase, read across a very wide set of public sources, for reporting rather than for one seller.

#### 1. Brand24

- What it is: Reads posts, comments and reviews across a very wide list of public platforms for a chosen name or phrase, then scores the sentiment and reports share of voice for a team that has to present the results.
- Pricing: $249 a month, or $199 a month paid for a year (read from https://brand24.com/pricing/)
- Key capability: Breadth and sentiment reporting across a wide set of public platforms, built for a team rather than one seller.
- Free tier: A 14 day trial, no card required.
- Best for: Marketing and communications teams who need a report on what is being said about a brand.
- Pro: Nothing else on this page reads as many public sources at once, and the reporting is built to hand to a manager.
- Con: It answers who is talking about a name, not who is ready to buy, and the entry price is the highest of the three tracking tools here.
- Link: https://brand24.com/pricing/

#### 2. Octolens

- What it is: Tracks a keyword across developer-heavy public communities and reports mention volume for a technical audience, aimed squarely at developer tool companies.
- Pricing: $159 a month, billed annually (read from https://octolens.com/pricing)
- Key capability: Mention tracking tuned for a developer tool audience, with published mention allowances by tier.
- Free tier: A seven day trial with the full feature set, capped at 5,000 mentions.
- Best for: Developer tool companies whose buyers gather in technical public communities.
- Pro: The published mention allowances make it easier to budget for than a vendor that only sells by quote.
- Con: Both tiers are quoted billed annually, so the real commitment is a year even though the number reads monthly.
- Link: https://octolens.com/pricing

#### 3. Mention

- What it is: Reads mentions of a chosen name across a very large set of public sources and adds social publishing and scheduling on top of the tracking.
- Pricing: Not published in the page text as of 15 September 2026 (read from https://mention.com/en/pricing/)
- Key capability: Tracking and your own social publishing from one subscription.
- Free tier: A free trial is offered; no terms were readable on the pricing page.
- Best for: Small marketing teams who want tracking and their own posting from one vendor rather than two.
- Pro: It is the only tool in this lane that also schedules and publishes your own posts.
- Con: Its price would not render to a page fetch, so nobody can compare it against this table without a sales conversation first.
- Link: https://mention.com/en/pricing/

### Turning a signal into LinkedIn outreach

The signal is the easy half. Somebody still has to write to the person and follow up until they answer.

#### 1. EaseClaw

- What it is: Finds warm buyers on LinkedIn from what they just did, writes the invite and the follow up in your voice, and runs the outreach inside the campaigns and limits you set. Review every message, or let it run.
- Pricing: Pro $99 a month, Business $199 a month. (read from https://www.easeclaw.com/pricing)
- Key capability: Works out who is worth writing to from your own website, then writes and runs the outreach to them.
- Free tier: 14 days free. No card.
- Best for: Founders and small B2B teams doing their own selling, who want the work of deciding who to write to taken off them.
- Pro: The list arrives already built, and the invite and the first message are written per person rather than filled into a template.
- Con: One connected LinkedIn account per member, and the outreach it runs is LinkedIn plus an email step from your own mailbox. It is not a contact database, and it does not post to public feeds.
- Link: https://www.easeclaw.com/trial?utm_source=guides&utm_medium=guide&utm_campaign=buyer-intent-signals

## Prices

| Vendor | Plan | Price | What it buys | Billing | Read on | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warmly | AI Web De-anonymization | $10,000 | per year, the entry plan | annual, quarterly billing shown alongside it | 2026-09-26 | https://www.warmly.ai/pricing |
| Warmly | AI Inbound Autopilot | $30,000 | per year, the plan that also runs outbound | annual, quarterly billing shown alongside it | 2026-09-26 | https://www.warmly.ai/pricing |
| Clay | Free | $0 | per month, 500 actions and 100 data credits | free | 2026-09-26 | https://www.clay.com/pricing |
| Clay | Launch | $167 | per month, billed annually | annual, billed yearly | 2026-09-26 | https://www.clay.com/pricing |
| Clay | Growth | $446 | per month, billed annually | annual, billed yearly | 2026-09-26 | https://www.clay.com/pricing |
| Brand24 | Individual | $249 | per month, or $199 a month paid for a year | monthly, annual shown beside it | 2026-09-15 | https://brand24.com/pricing/ |
| Octolens | Pro | $159 | per month, 15,000 mentions and 10 keywords | billed annually, as printed on the card | 2026-09-15 | https://octolens.com/pricing |
| EaseClaw | Pro | $99 | per month, one LinkedIn account per person | monthly | 2026-09-26 | https://www.easeclaw.com/pricing |
| EaseClaw | Business | $199 | per month, one LinkedIn account per person | monthly | 2026-09-26 | https://www.easeclaw.com/pricing |

## Our own data

- Genuine buyers found among posts scored for buying intent: **125 of 5,789 scored, about 2 percent**. Source: easeclaw.com/research/buying-intent-2026, as of 2026-08-04.
- Median comments on posts gated behind a stronger call to engage: **192 versus 92 versus 9, across a 220-post corpus**. Source: Reachium's published dataset, cited in marketing/research/comment-gate-playbook-2026-09-05/PLAYBOOK.md, third party, not an EaseClaw measurement, as of 2026-09-05.
- Public engagers who turned out to be a rival vendor, not a buyer: **286 of 1,672, or about 17 percent**. Source: EaseClaw's own engager ledger, marketing/harvests/engager-ledger.json, as of 2026-09-08.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is a buyer intent signal, in one sentence?

A buyer intent signal is an observable action a person or a company takes that makes them more likely than average to be in the market for what you sell right now, such as engaging with a competitor's post, changing into a role that owns the problem you solve, or a company publishing a job listing for it. The signal itself is not a sale. It is a reason to reach out sooner, and to a specific person, instead of sending the same message to everyone in your target list on the same day.

### What is the difference between first-party and third-party intent signals?

A first-party signal is something the person did on a surface you own or can see directly: they commented on your post, visited your site, or accepted your connection request. A third-party signal is pooled from other people's data, usually content someone read on a publisher network you do not own, and sold back to you as a company that appears to be researching your category. First-party signals are rarer but easier to act on immediately, since you already know the person's name. Third-party signals cover more accounts but usually name a company rather than an individual, leaving the job of finding the right person still to do.

### Which LinkedIn signals are actually worth acting on?

Five are worth building a habit around: someone engaging with a competitor's posts or pages, a job change into a role that now owns your problem, someone asking in public for a recommendation in your category, a company publishing a job listing for the problem you solve, and someone commenting on or following your own company page. All five are visible without paying for third-party data, and all five point at a specific person rather than a company, which is what makes them fast to act on.

### How do you score a buyer intent signal?

Weigh how directly the signal points at your problem against how recent it is. Someone asking by name for what you sell outranks someone who merely liked a post about the category, and a signal from this week outranks one from three months ago, since a role or a priority can change in that time. A simple, honest scoring habit beats an elaborate one: rank each signal type by how often it has turned into a real reply for you specifically, then work the list in that order rather than treating every signal as equally warm.

### What mistakes do teams make with buyer intent signals?

The most common one is treating the signal as the whole job and stopping there: a list of accounts or names sitting in a spreadsheet is not outreach, and a signal loses value with every day nobody acts on it. The second is skipping the check for who the person actually is, which our own numbers put at roughly 17% of public engagers on a set of posts turning out to be a rival vendor rather than a buyer, all of whom should be excluded before anyone reaches out. The third is writing the same message regardless of which signal triggered it, which throws away the one advantage a signal gives you over a cold list.

### Do third-party intent platforms replace first-party signals?

No, they cover different ground and most serious programs use both. A third-party platform such as Bombora or 6sense can surface a company that has never visited your site or interacted with your posts, which no first-party signal could ever show you. What it will not usually give you is a named person with a specific, recent reason to be contacted today, which is exactly what a first-party LinkedIn signal provides. Treat the third-party feed as a way to prioritize which accounts deserve more attention, and the first-party signal as the trigger for the actual message.

### How does EaseClaw use buyer intent signals?

It builds an ideal customer profile from your own website, then looks for the first-party LinkedIn signals in this guide, competitor engagement, job changes, recommendation requests, and hiring posts, and checks each one against that profile rather than a generic keyword. When someone matches, it writes the connection note and the first message per person in your voice and runs the outreach inside the campaign and limits you set. Review every message, or let it run. It does not sell third-party, company-level data of its own; the signal it acts on is what a real person just did in public.

## See also

- [LinkedIn cold outreach](https://www.easeclaw.com/guides/linkedin-cold-outreach)
- [Gojiberry alternative](https://www.easeclaw.com/alternatives/gojiberry)
- [Buying intent monitoring tools](https://www.easeclaw.com/guides/buying-intent-monitoring-tools)
- [Buying-intent conversations: the 2026 data](https://www.easeclaw.com/research/buying-intent-2026)

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## About EaseClaw

EaseClaw is an AI agent for LinkedIn outreach for founder led B2B teams. It reads your site, works out who your buyers are, writes the invite and the follow up in your voice, and sends from your own connected LinkedIn account at the pace you set. Review every message, or let it run. You work the replies. EaseClaw never posts to public feeds. Plans: Pro $99 a month, Business $199 a month, monthly only. The trial is 14 days free. No card. Nothing is charged during it.

- Website: https://www.easeclaw.com/
- Start the free trial: https://www.easeclaw.com/trial