Every day, your ideal customers are telling you they're ready for a conversation. They're commenting on posts about problems you solve. They're engaging with content from your competitors. They're liking takes on the exact challenges your product addresses. These are LinkedIn intent signals, and most B2B founders completely ignore them.

Instead, they're doing what everyone else does: building cold lists, writing generic sequences, and hoping for a 2% reply rate. Meanwhile, the warm prospects are right there in their notifications. They just aren't looking.

Here's how to change that.

What LinkedIn Intent Signals Actually Are

Intent signals are actions people take that suggest they're thinking about a specific problem or topic. On LinkedIn, these show up as engagement: comments, likes, shares, saves, and profile views.

Not all engagement is equal, though. Someone liking a meme about remote work isn't an intent signal. But someone commenting on a detailed post about outbound conversion rates? That person is actively thinking about outbound. If they happen to match your ideal customer profile, that's a prospect raising their hand.

The key distinction is relevance. An intent signal only matters if the content being engaged with connects to the problem your product solves. A VP of Sales commenting on a post about LinkedIn outreach strategy is a far stronger signal than the same person liking a post about leadership lessons.

Think of it this way: intent signals are the digital equivalent of someone walking into a shop and picking up a product. They haven't bought anything yet, but they're clearly interested.

Where to Find Intent Signals on LinkedIn

There are three places to look, and they're hiding in plain sight.

Your own content. This is the most obvious one, and it's where most people should start. When you publish a post about a topic your product addresses, everyone who engages with it is giving you a signal. They cared enough to stop scrolling and interact. That's meaningful.

Pay attention to what people say in the comments, not just that they commented. Someone writing "we're struggling with exactly this" is a much stronger signal than someone writing "great post." The specificity of the comment tells you how deep the pain runs.

Competitor and peer content. Your prospects aren't just engaging with your posts. They're engaging with posts from people in your space, including your competitors. If someone comments on a Lemlist post about cold email deliverability, they're clearly thinking about outbound. That's relevant to you.

This is harder to track manually, but it's incredibly valuable. Someone engaging with competitor content is further along in their buying journey than someone engaging with yours. They're already exploring solutions.

Industry conversations. Broader discussions about trends in your space are also signals, just weaker ones. If a SaaS founder is commenting on posts about content-led growth or signal-based selling, they're at least problem-aware. They might not be looking for a tool yet, but they're thinking about the right topics.

How to Turn Signals Into Booked Demos

Finding signals is one thing. Acting on them is where the money is. Here's the process that actually works.

Step one: filter for ICP fit. Not every person who engages with relevant content is a prospect. Before you reach out, check whether they match your ideal customer profile. Right role, right company size, right industry. If they don't fit, move on. Reaching out to someone who'll never buy is a waste of both your time and theirs.

Step two: reach out within 48 hours. Timing matters more than most people realise. An intent signal decays fast. Someone who commented on a post about outbound strategy on Tuesday is thinking about outbound on Tuesday. By Friday, they've moved on to something else. The window for a warm message is narrow, so act quickly.

Step three: reference the signal. This is what separates warm outbound from cold outbound. Don't send a generic pitch. Reference what they engaged with. Something like:

"Saw your comment on [person]'s post about LinkedIn outreach. Sounds like you're rethinking your approach. We've been helping [type of company] turn LinkedIn engagement into booked meetings. Worth a quick chat?"

That message works because it's specific, relevant, and timely. You're not interrupting them with something random. You're following up on something they already care about.

Step four: keep it conversational. The goal of the first message isn't to book a demo. It's to start a conversation. Ask a question. Share a relevant insight. Make it easy for them to reply without committing to anything. The demo booking comes naturally once you've established that you understand their problem.

Why This Beats Cold Outbound

The numbers speak for themselves. Cold outbound reply rates have been dropping for years. Most SDRs are now seeing 1 to 3% reply rates on cold sequences. That means you need to message 100 people to get 2 replies, and most of those replies are "not interested."

Warm outbound, where you reach out to people who've already shown intent, flips this entirely. Reply rates of 15 to 25% aren't unusual when you're messaging someone who was just thinking about the problem you solve. You need fewer messages, you get better conversations, and you close faster.

The challenge is scale. Manually tracking who's engaging with what content across LinkedIn is a nightmare. You'd need to check every comment on every relevant post, cross-reference against your ICP, and somehow keep track of it all. It's not sustainable for one person, let alone a team.

This is exactly what we built Ghost to solve. Ghost tracks intent signals across LinkedIn, surfaces the prospects who match your ICP, and shows you who to reach out to and why. Instead of spending an hour scrolling through comments, you log in to a ready-made list of warm prospects with context on what they engaged with.

Start With What You Already Have

You don't need any tools to test this approach. This week, look at the comments on your last three LinkedIn posts. Find two or three people who engaged meaningfully and match your ICP. Send them a personalised message that references their comment. See what happens.

If you're already posting content, you're already generating signals. You're just not using them yet.

Once you see the difference between cold outreach and signal-based outreach, you won't go back. And when you're ready to do this at scale, that's where Ghost comes in.

See how Ghost surfaces warm prospects from your LinkedIn content →

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