How do I find companies that are actively looking for what I sell, right now?
Short answer: Intent data flags companies showing a surge in research activity around topics related to what you sell, even on websites that have nothing to do with you. Diginius's Intent Leads feature sources this from Bombora, a cooperative network monitoring content consumption across more than 5,000 B2B websites, and delivers a weekly list of companies matching up to 12 topics you choose. The honest limitation: the exact sourcing mechanics behind any intent-data vendor are opaque by nature, so treat the list as a lead-prioritization signal, not proof that a company is ready to buy.
You want leads who are already searching for what you sell, not names pulled from a generic business database that have never shown interest in your category at all.
I'm Ranjit, and I run Blur Studio: 15+ years building software, 120 apps taken live, and clients who have gone on to raise $10M+. I build AI systems and processes that help businesses do a lot more with a lot less time. I also work differently from most of what else is out there, more on that further down this page. Say hello.
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Most lead sources work backward from a company's size, industry or location, with no signal about whether anyone there is actually thinking about buying what you sell. Intent data flips that around: instead of starting from firmographic fit, it starts from behavior, specifically a measurable surge in how much a company's employees are researching topics related to your category, across the wider web, not just on your own site. Other ways to reach buyers who are ready to buy, with costs, sit alongside this one.
Where does this data actually come from?
Diginius's Intent Leads feature sources its data from Bombora, a cooperative network that tracks content consumption across more than 5,000 B2B websites, monitoring an average of roughly 4 million unique company domains a month and around 19 billion content-consumption events. The mechanics work like this: when employees at a company read articles, download resources or engage with content about a specific topic across that network of participating sites, Bombora's model detects a surge above that company's normal baseline and flags it as showing "intent" on that topic. Diginius lets you configure up to 12 custom intent topics relevant to what you sell, and delivers a weekly list of companies showing that surge, which can be automatically emailed to multiple people on your team.
The honest limitation here, and it applies to every intent-data vendor in the market, not just Bombora specifically, is that you can't independently verify the exact mechanics behind any individual match. You're trusting a cooperative network's modeling, not watching a specific person at a specific company search a specific term. Diginius's own page acknowledges this indirectly by framing the data as something to use alongside other signals, not instead of them: "don't rely solely on what your prospect tells you" is the kind of caveat that applies here too.
Step by step: setting this up well
- Pick your topics carefully, not broadly. You get up to 12 custom intent topics on Diginius; vague, broad topics ("marketing" rather than "email automation software") produce noisier, less useful matches.
- Start with 3-4 topics, not all 12 at once. Narrower topics closely tied to what you actually sell will surface more relevant matches than casting the widest possible net immediately.
- Check the weekly cap against your plan before you commit to it. Diginius structures this as 10 intent leads a week on Essential, 50 on Pro, 100 on Core, with a richer 100-a-week allowance during the trial period specifically.
- Cross-reference the weekly list against your actual target profile before acting on any of it. A company showing intent on your topic that's the wrong size or industry for you is still not worth pursuing.
- Combine the intent signal with something else you know, prior engagement with your content, fit with your ideal customer profile, before reaching out, rather than treating the intent flag alone as sufficient justification for outreach. A company reading your pricing page is a stronger signal, covered in following up with companies that read your pricing page.
- Track actual conversion from this list separately from your other lead sources for a few months before deciding how much weight to put on it going forward.
How is this different from identifying who visits my own site?
| Intent Leads (Bombora) | Lead Intelligence (visitor identification) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the signal comes from | Research activity across thousands of other websites | Visits to your own website specifically |
| Does the company know you exist? | Not necessarily, this is cold discovery of active researchers | Yes, they've already visited your site, so they're already aware of you |
| Weekly caps on Diginius | 10/50/100 (Essential/Pro/Core) | 10/25/50 (Essential/Pro/Core) |
| Best for | Finding net-new prospects actively researching your category before they've found you | Converting your own existing traffic into named follow-up opportunities |
These two features inside the same platform solve genuinely different problems, and a business running both gets a more complete picture: companies already aware of them and showing interest, plus companies not yet aware of them but actively researching the category. Treat them as complementary rather than redundant. Seeing which companies visit your website covers the second half.
A worked example
Say a small marketing agency sets up Intent Leads with three topics: "email marketing software," "marketing automation platform," and "CRM migration." In a typical week on Pro's 50-lead allowance, they might see 15-20 companies flagged across those three topics combined, weighted toward whichever topic has broader research volume across Bombora's network. Of those, maybe a third will obviously not fit (wrong size, wrong industry, a clear mismatch on closer inspection), leaving 10-13 genuinely worth a look. Running those through a quick five-minute qualification check against the agency's actual ideal customer profile, checking company size, industry and whether they already use a competing tool, might leave 3-5 companies a week worth real outreach time.
That's the realistic shape of this: a funnel that starts wide and narrows fast, not a direct list of ready buyers. Budgeting your own time around that shape, rather than expecting every flagged company to be worth immediate outreach, keeps the tool useful rather than becoming a source of wasted effort chasing weak matches.
What I'd actually tell you
Intent data is one of the more oversold categories in B2B marketing technology, and the honest framing matters more here than almost anywhere else in this pack. A company "showing intent" on a broad topic can mean many things that have nothing to do with buying soon: a competitor doing research, a student writing a paper, an employee reading unrelated industry news that happens to touch your topic. The narrower and more specific your chosen topics are, the more that noise gets filtered out, which is exactly why I'd start with 3-4 tightly defined topics rather than casting the widest net the 12-topic allowance permits.
The businesses I'd actually recommend this to are ones with a defined sales process that can absorb a weekly list of unqualified-but-interested companies and run them through proper qualification before committing real sales time. If you don't have that process yet, build it first; a pile of intent-flagged companies with no consistent way to qualify and follow up on them is just a bigger, more confusing version of the same lead-prioritization problem you already have.
I'd also push back gently on any sales pitch, from any vendor, that frames intent data as a replacement for understanding your market. The agencies and distributors who get genuine value from this already know their ideal customer profile cold, and use intent data to prioritize within a market they already understand, not to discover their market from scratch. If you're still figuring out who your actual best customers look like, that work comes first, and intent data will be far more useful once it does. After that, deciding which prospects to call today is the natural next step.
When this is worth skipping entirely
If your sales cycle is genuinely short and transactional, a simple local service business taking same-week bookings, for example, the lag between "a company shows research intent" and "you can realistically close them" rarely matters enough to justify the cost. Intent data earns its keep in longer B2B sales cycles, where knowing a company is in an active research phase weeks or months before a deal closes gives you a genuine timing advantage. For a short-cycle business, that advantage mostly disappears, and the weekly list becomes more noise than signal relative to its cost. It's also worth skipping if you sell something so niche that none of the 5,000+ sites in Bombora's network are likely to carry relevant content on your specific topic; intent data depends entirely on your category being well-represented in the underlying network, and a vendor page won't tell you upfront whether that's true for your exact niche. A 30-day trial, checking Diginius's own current terms, is the practical way to find out before committing to a paid plan.
How I'd approach this
For an agency or small business running this seriously, I'd connect the weekly intent list directly into whatever CRM or spreadsheet already tracks your pipeline, flagging matches that also fit your target customer profile so they surface automatically rather than requiring someone to manually cross-reference a list every week. Diginius's own dashboard and email delivery cover the basics well enough to start with no build at all; a custom connection becomes worth it once the manual cross-referencing step is genuinely costing someone real time every week.
The other place I'd get involved is topic strategy, deciding which 3-4 topics to actually track, reviewing a few weeks of results, and adjusting based on which topics produce genuinely qualified matches versus which ones mostly produce noise. That's less a technical build and more a quick calibration exercise, but it's the single factor most likely to determine whether intent data feels worthwhile six months in or gets quietly abandoned as "another tool that didn't work."
Questions people ask
What exactly counts as a company 'showing intent'?
Bombora's model, which powers Diginius's Intent Leads, flags a company when its measured research activity around a chosen topic surges above that company's normal baseline across its network of 5,000+ participating B2B websites. It's a statistical signal, not direct evidence of a specific purchase decision underway.
How many topics can I track?
Up to 12 custom intent topics on Diginius. Starting with 3-4 narrowly defined topics closely tied to what you actually sell tends to produce more useful, less noisy matches than using all 12 broadly from the start.
Does intent data mean the company is ready to buy?
No. Treat it as a prioritization signal, not proof of buying intent. Research activity can come from many sources unrelated to an active purchase decision, including competitors, students and employees reading unrelated content. Combine it with other signals before acting.
How is this different from website visitor identification?
Intent data surfaces companies researching your category across the wider web, who may never have heard of you. Website visitor identification surfaces companies that have already visited your own site. They're complementary, not redundant, if you're running both.
How many intent leads will I actually get each week?
Diginius caps this by plan: 10 a week on Essential, 50 on Pro, 100 on Core, with a richer 100-a-week allowance during the trial. The actual number of genuinely relevant matches also depends on how narrowly you've defined your intent topics.
Can I get the contact details of someone at a flagged company?
Diginius's Intent Leads supports contact enrichment, adding emails and phone numbers to flagged companies, which can also feed into customer-match-list targeting for programmatic advertising, separate from the weekly intent list itself.
Is intent data worth it for a small business?
Only if you have a defined process for qualifying and following up on a weekly list of unqualified-but-interested companies. Without that process, the list becomes noise rather than a usable lead source, regardless of how accurate the underlying signal is.