Buying signal

A buying signal answers the question "why now?". Your ICP says who could buy. The signal says who has a reason to think about it this week. A company opening three sales roles will soon need to train them, equip them and find them meetings. A marketing director who just joined often reviews their suppliers during the first months.

There are two families. News signals concern the company or the role: hiring, appointments, funding, a new office, a move into a new market. Interaction signals come from the person, who made a move toward you or your topic: visiting your profile, reacting to a post, sending you an invitation, leaving a comment.

A signal has to be dated and verifiable. "Seems to be growing" isn't a signal. "Posted a developer job last week" is. Until you can point at the fact, you have a hypothesis, not a signal.

The useful ones touch your offer directly. If you sell sales training, a company hiring salespeople matters. A funding round means nothing to an accountant who works with tradespeople. Start by writing down, for your offer, the three or four events that genuinely create a need for your customer.

Interaction signals are rarer but stronger, because the person has already shown interest. Someone who visits your profile knows who you are. Someone who comments on a post about prospecting is thinking about the topic when you reach out.

Freshness matters as much as the type of signal. A comment should be handled within days. A hiring signal stays useful while the role is open. A funding round from last year says little about today's priorities.

Within the same target, compare prospects with and without a signal on reply rate, then on meetings. The MimikFlow 2026 Observatory gives an order of magnitude: a job change, a funding round or an open role lifted the reply rate to 40.9%, against 37.1% with no news, and observed meetings to 6.8%, against 5.8%. The effect is real, and modest.

Direct gestures weigh far more. In the same study, people who had reacted to a post replied 74.6% of the time and booked a meeting in 18.7% of cases, against 35.6% and 4.6% for strangers found through search. An important caveat: those warm sources were only 1,547 prospects out of 23,399, and part of the gap comes from the interest those people already had.

The practical takeaway: a news signal mostly helps you order the queue and pick the angle of the first message. Interaction signals deserve priority, and speed.

The first is turning the signal into a required filter. You shrink your target to companies that published something recently and miss every silent buyer. A signal ranks prospects. It doesn't decide who is allowed to be contacted.

The second is quoting the signal in a flattering or intrusive way. "Saw your funding round, congrats!" is a line founders get over and over after an announcement. Tie the fact to a useful question instead, such as what the new hires will change for the team. And don't tell someone you noticed their visit to your profile: it makes people uncomfortable.

The third is mistaking a guess for a fact. An AI that "guesses" a company needs you has produced no signal. Without a dated event behind it, your message rests on nothing, and the prospect can tell.

MimikFlow cross-checks hiring, new roles, funding rounds, expansions and LinkedIn activity for the profiles that already match your target, then moves up the ones that combine the right profile with a recent signal. Every signal stays tied to a real, dated interaction or event. A guess from the model never counts as a signal.

People who visit your profile or react to a post can also enter the campaign, after the same relevance check as every other prospect. The first message then starts from a specific fact rather than a generic opener.