How to Build a Signal-Based Engine Without Intent Data
The Problem with Off-the-Shelf Intent Data
Packaged intent data is a shared resource. When you buy access to a platform like 6sense or Bombora, you are acting on the same signals as your competitors, which leads to commoditized outreach. These platforms are also often a black box; the source, freshness, and methodology behind a signal can be unclear, making it difficult to trust or personalize around.
The cost is a significant barrier. Annual contracts for mid-market companies typically range from $30,000 to over $100,000, a major line item for any go-to-market team. For this price, many signals are low-fidelity. A website visit or content download is a weak proxy for genuine buying intent. As growth advisor Elena Verna notes, as much as 50-60% of third-party data is inaccurate when compared to first-party data. You can build a more effective, proprietary outbound engine by identifying and tracking unique buying signals from public sources.
Finding Your Unique Signals in Public Sources
The process starts with your Ideal Customer Profile. First, map the specific events that trigger a need for your product. Then, translate those trigger events into observable, public signals. These become your proprietary indicators of intent.
Hiring-Based Signals
A company's job postings are a direct reflection of its strategy and budget. A company hiring its 'First Head of People' signals a shift from ad-hoc HR to building a scalable people operating system. This move indicates a new budget and urgency for HR tools. Similarly, a company posting a job for a 'First Head of Security' signals a new focus on security tooling, creating an opening for compliance and security vendors.
Technology Signals
Job descriptions reveal the internal tech stack. A posting that lists 'Experience with Snowflake' indicates the company is a Snowflake customer, creating an opportunity for any product that integrates with it. A requirement for 'deep experience with AWS cost optimization' signals that cloud spend is a significant pain point.
Community Signals
Developers and operators often ask for product recommendations in public forums. A user on Reddit asking for 'alternatives to Segment' in r/dataengineering is a direct, high-intent signal for CDP competitors. A question on Stack Overflow about a specific API limitation can be a trigger for a tool that solves that exact problem.
Financial Signals
Corporate financial events often precede major investments in new software and headcount. A Series B funding announcement on Crunchbase is a classic signal. A more subtle one can be found in public company earnings calls. When a CFO mentions 'limited visibility' or the 'manual effort' required to produce forecasts, it signals their Excel-based models are breaking and they need modern FP&A software.
The Toolkit for an In-House Signal Engine
Building a system to track these signals can be done in stages.
- Level 1 (Manual): Start by validating your signals with manual searches on LinkedIn, Reddit, and job boards. This confirms the signal exists and is valuable before you invest in automation.
- Level 2 (Semi-Automated): Use tools like Google Alerts or Zapier to monitor keywords and get basic notifications. This is low-cost but can be noisy.
- Level 3 (Automated): A scalable system requires a dedicated stack. This typically involves a browser automation layer to find and extract data, a data orchestration tool to clean and enrich it, and a destination for the final lead list. A common stack includes Phantombuster for scraping, Clay for data enrichment and orchestration, and Outreach or Salesloft for engagement.
This is the work Drevon's AI assistants are designed to do. You provide a plain-English request, and the assistant executes the browsing, extraction, and formatting steps to deliver a clean list of leads based on your unique signals.
Example: Finding Customers for a Compliance Tool
Let's apply this to a specific product: an automation platform for SOC 2 compliance.
- Proprietary Signal: A B2B SaaS company with 50-250 employees hiring for a 'Head of Information Security' or 'Compliance Manager' for the first time. This indicates they are professionalizing their security program, and SOC 2 is an inevitable requirement.
- Source: LinkedIn Jobs and company career pages.
- Process: 1. Run a daily search for these job titles filtered by company size and industry. 2. Extract the company name and identify the likely hiring manager (e.g., the CTO or CEO). 3. Enrich the company and contact data. 4. Send a highly personalized message referencing their new focus on building a security program.
Your New Competitive Advantage
Building an engine around public signals is more work upfront than buying a list, but it produces a proprietary flow of leads that your competitors do not have. These signals are higher-fidelity because they are tailored to the specific trigger events for your product, not generic research behavior. Research shows that acting on a fresh, person-level public signal can produce a 3-5x higher reply rate compared to using cold lists.
This system creates a durable competitive advantage. While your competitors are caught in the 'sea of sameness' bidding on the same keywords and intent scores, you are acting on unique, verifiable intelligence. You can start by identifying one key signal for your business and manually searching for it this week. Once you validate its effectiveness, you can begin to automate the process.