Ghost Intent Signals Explained: A Founder's Guide to Prioritising Your Pipeline

Ghost Intent Signals Explained: A Founder's Guide to Prioritising Your Pipeline

TL;DR: Ghost tracks every like, comment, and profile visit on your LinkedIn content, scores each signal across five dimensions, and surfaces the warmest prospects in your pipeline automatically. This guide explains exactly what each score means and how to act on it.

Ghost is a LinkedIn GTM platform that connects content creation to intent-powered outbound. The intent scoring system is the engine underneath that connection — it's what turns passive LinkedIn engagement into an ordered list of people you should actually be talking to.

Most founders treat LinkedIn engagement as vanity. Someone likes your post, you feel good, you move on. Ghost treats that same like as a data point — and when it's combined with four other signals, it becomes a buying signal you can act on today.

What Ghost's 5-Dimension Intent Score Measures

Ghost's intent score isn't a single number pulled from one action. It's a composite score built from five distinct dimensions, each weighted to reflect how meaningful that signal is in a real B2B buying context. Here's what each one measures and why it matters.

Engagement Depth

Not all engagement is equal. A comment requires more intent than a like. A DM reply requires more than a comment. Ghost weights engagement by depth — so a prospect who comments a substantive question on your post about outbound automation scores significantly higher than one who double-tapped the same post while scrolling.

This dimension rewards genuine interaction. If someone is taking the time to engage meaningfully with your content, they're not passively scrolling — they're paying attention.

Recency

A prospect who engaged with your content this morning is worth more than one who liked a post three months ago. Ghost applies a recency decay to all signals — recent engagement scores higher, older engagement fades.

This keeps your pipeline current. You're not chasing someone who was interested in Q1 when it's now Q3. The intent dashboard reflects where attention is right now, not where it was.

ICP Fit

Raw engagement from someone outside your ideal customer profile is noise. Ghost cross-references every engaging contact against your ICP definition — role, seniority, company size, industry, geography — and adjusts the score accordingly.

A VP of Sales at a 50-person SaaS company engaging with your content scores higher than a junior marketing intern at a 5,000-person enterprise, even if the intern engaged more frequently. Intent only matters if the person has the authority and context to buy.

Competitor Engagement

This is one of the more underrated dimensions. Ghost tracks when your ICP is engaging with content from competitors in your space — not just your own posts. If a Head of Revenue is actively liking posts from three outbound tools this week, that's a strong signal they're in-market, even if they haven't engaged with you directly yet.

Competitor engagement tells you someone is actively researching your category. That's a warm prospect by any definition, and Ghost surfaces them before your competitors reach out first.

Profile Visit Signals

When someone visits your LinkedIn profile after seeing your content, Ghost logs it. A profile visit following a post engagement is a meaningful compounding signal — it means the person didn't just passively scroll past, they actively wanted to know more about who was behind the content.

On its own, a profile visit is weak. Combined with a comment and an ICP match, it pushes a prospect into the top tier of your intent dashboard.

How to do this in Ghost: Navigate to the Intent Dashboard in your Ghost account. Open the Signal Breakdown view for any contact to see their individual scores across all five dimensions. Filter by ICP Fit score first to remove noise, then sort by Recency to find the most time-sensitive opportunities. Use the Competitor Engagement filter to surface in-market prospects who haven't engaged with you directly yet — these are often the highest-leverage outreach targets.

How to Read the Intent Dashboard

The Ghost intent dashboard is a ranked list of contacts, ordered by composite intent score. The highest-scored contacts sit at the top. But reading it well means understanding what you're looking at, not just acting on whoever is number one.

Each contact card shows you their name, role, company, and composite score alongside a breakdown of which dimensions are driving that score. A prospect with a high score driven entirely by ICP Fit and Recency but zero Engagement Depth is different from one with high scores across all five — the latter is genuinely warm, the former is a strong ICP match who hasn't engaged yet.

Look for multi-dimensional signals. The prospects worth prioritising are those scoring above threshold on at least three of the five dimensions. A single strong signal is a reason to watch someone. Three or more strong signals is a reason to reach out today.

Ghost also flags signal velocity — contacts whose score has increased significantly in the last 48–72 hours. A prospect who was cold last week and is now in the top 20% of your dashboard is showing a pattern change. Something prompted them to start engaging. That's the moment to act.

Hot, Warm, and Cold — What Each Tier Means

Ghost segments your intent-scored contacts into three tiers. Here's what each one actually means in practical terms.

Hot prospects have engaged deeply and recently, match your ICP tightly, and have often visited your profile or engaged with competitor content. These are people who are actively in-market and have already demonstrated awareness of your category. The window to reach out is short — act within 24–48 hours while the signal is fresh.

Warm prospects have engaged but either the signal is older, the ICP fit is partial, or the engagement depth is shallow. These contacts belong in a nurture sequence — keep them seeing your content, let the score build, and revisit them weekly. Don't ignore them, but don't burn a personalised outreach on them before the signal matures.

Cold prospects are in your database but haven't engaged meaningfully. They may be strong ICP matches who simply haven't seen the right content yet. Ghost's AI content engine is the tool for this tier — consistent, targeted content is what moves cold contacts into warm over time.

Founder's Take: The biggest mistake I see founders make is treating the intent dashboard like a to-do list and trying to work through it top to bottom. That's not the point. Hot prospects need a personalised message within 48 hours. Warm prospects need content and patience. Cold prospects need a campaign, not a cold call. The tier tells you the type of action, not just the priority order.

When to Reach Out vs When to Wait

Timing is the part of intent-based outreach that most tools ignore. They surface the signal but don't tell you what to do with it. Here's a practical framework.

Reach out immediately when a prospect is hot across multiple dimensions, has visited your profile in the last 48 hours, and matches your ICP tightly. This is the highest-leverage moment in the entire outbound cycle — they know who you are, they're in-market, and you have a genuine reason to reach out based on their engagement.

Wait and watch when a prospect has one or two signals but the score is still building. Adding them to a LinkedIn sequence too early can kill the relationship before it starts. Let them see two or three more posts. If the score climbs, act. If it plateaus, they're probably not in-market yet.

Use content as the bridge when a prospect is a perfect ICP match but hasn't engaged yet. Don't reach out cold — publish content specifically designed to address their pain points and let Ghost track when they engage. You've turned a cold outreach into a warm one without a single message sent.

Ghost's outbound sequences let you build LinkedIn and email steps in a single coordinated flow, so when the moment is right, you can move a hot prospect from intent signal to personalised sequence without switching tools.

Using Intent Signals to Personalise Your Opening Message

The intent score tells you who to contact. The signal breakdown tells you what to say. This is where most founders leave value on the table — they see a hot prospect and send a generic opener. Don't.

If a Head of Sales at a fintech company commented on your post about outbound sequence timing, your opener should reference that specific topic. Not vaguely ("I noticed you engage with content about sales") — specifically ("Your comment on Tuesday about sequence timing resonated — we've seen the same pattern with a lot of fintech teams"). That's a message that gets a reply.

If the signal driving their score is competitor engagement, you can reference the category without naming the competitor: "I've noticed you're actively researching outbound tooling at the moment — we've helped a few teams in your space cut their outbound build time significantly."

If the primary signal is a profile visit after a specific post, open with the post: "Glad the post on [topic] was useful — happy to share the full breakdown if it's relevant to what you're working on."

Ghost's Agentic Campaign Creator uses the intent signal data to inform the sequence copy it generates — so when you're building a campaign for hot prospects, the AI already has the context it needs to write a relevant opener rather than a generic one. See the full Ghost product overview for how the campaign builder and intent layer connect.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are Ghost intent signals?

Ghost intent signals are behavioural data points — likes, comments, profile visits, and competitor engagement — tracked across your LinkedIn content and scored automatically. Ghost combines these signals into a composite intent score for each contact, ranked across five dimensions, so you can see exactly who in your network is showing active buying interest right now.

How does Ghost's intent scoring differ from third-party intent data like Bombora?

Bombora and similar tools provide account-level intent data aggregated from third-party publisher networks — you learn that a company is researching a topic, but not which individual is doing the research. Ghost tracks first-party intent at the contact level, meaning you know exactly which person engaged, what they engaged with, and how recently. That's a fundamentally more actionable signal for a founder or small sales team.

How many dimensions does Ghost's intent score use?

Ghost scores each contact across five dimensions: Engagement Depth, Recency, ICP Fit, Competitor Engagement, and Profile Visit Signals. Each dimension is weighted independently, and the composite score reflects the combined strength of all five. Prospects scoring above threshold on three or more dimensions are the highest-priority outreach targets.

How often does Ghost update intent scores?

Ghost updates intent scores continuously as new engagement data comes in. The recency dimension applies a decay curve, so scores reflect current behaviour rather than historical engagement. Signal velocity alerts notify you when a contact's score increases significantly within a 48–72 hour window — these are often the most time-sensitive opportunities in your pipeline.

What does a "hot" prospect mean in Ghost's intent dashboard?

A hot prospect is a contact who has engaged deeply and recently with your content, matches your ICP tightly, and has often exhibited multiple compounding signals such as a profile visit following a comment. Ghost flags these contacts at the top of the intent dashboard. The recommended action is personalised outreach within 24–48 hours while the signal is at its strongest.

Can Ghost track intent signals from people who haven't connected with me on LinkedIn?

Ghost tracks engagement on your public LinkedIn content, which includes interactions from people outside your immediate network. If someone comments on or likes a post and their profile is accessible, Ghost can score them against your ICP and surface them in your dashboard — even if you haven't connected yet. This is particularly valuable for identifying warm prospects before your first outreach.

How do I use intent signals to write a better cold message?

The signal breakdown for each contact tells you exactly what they engaged with — a specific post topic, a comment thread, a profile visit. Use that context to open your message with a direct reference to their engagement rather than a generic opener. A message that references the specific content someone interacted with consistently outperforms templated outreach, because it demonstrates you're paying attention rather than running a spray-and-pray campaign.

Does Ghost's intent scoring work if I'm not posting content regularly?

Intent signals are generated by content engagement, so a consistent posting cadence is essential for the system to work well. If you're not posting regularly, Ghost's AI content engine can help you maintain a consistent LinkedIn presence without writing every post manually. More content means more engagement events, more engagement events mean richer intent data, and richer intent data means a more reliable pipeline signal.

If you're spending time on LinkedIn without a clear signal for who to contact next, you're leaving pipeline on the table. Ghost's intent scoring turns every post into a prospecting tool — and the dashboard tells you exactly who's ready to hear from you. Start your free 7-day trial of Ghost — no credit card required — and see your first intent-scored prospects within 48 hours of your first post.