Many B2B companies don’t struggle to generate leads. The real challenge is ensuring the leads that do come in are qualified, engaged, and ready to buy. To build a true lead machine, you need a process that combines data-driven insights, automation, and structured workflows that don’t just attract leads but move them through the funnel and into sales conversations.
HubSpot, used strategically, moves beyond being just a platform; it becomes the engine for this process. Here are five strategic tactics to shift your focus from collecting contacts to engineering a predictable, high-velocity pipeline.
1. Advertising audience sync: Higher-quality leads with CRM-driven ad targeting
Why rely on broad, demographic targeting when your CRM holds the exact list of who you want to reach?
The strategic play is simple: leverage your existing data to talk only to your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
Using HubSpot’s advertising audience sync, you continuously update custom audiences (LinkedIn, Google, Meta) not just with new leads, but with contacts who have fallen out of relevance or completed the desired action. This ensures your ad budget drives higher relevance, a stronger ICP fit, and a measurable reduction in your Cost Per Qualified Lead (CPQL).
2. Multidimensional lead scoring: The fusion of Fit and Intent
In B2B, not all leads are created equal. Some look like a perfect fit but show little interest, while others engage heavily but come from companies outside your ICP. HubSpot’s lead scoring tools help you cut through this noise by combining multiple signals into a clear, actionable model.
At the core, you’ll want to work with three types of scores in HubSpot:
Fit Score - Measures how well a contact or company matches your ideal customer profile (ICP). Typical properties include job title, seniority, company size, industry, and location.
Engagement Score - Tracks how actively a lead interacts with your marketing and sales activities — from website visits and form fills to webinar attendance and email engagement.
Combined Score - A weighted mix of fit and engagement that gives sales a holistic view of who is both a good match and ready to talk.
The real value of HubSpot’s scoring model isn’t in looking at each score in isolation, but in how you combine them. By layering fit and engagement, you get a more complete picture of both who the lead is and how ready they are to buy:
- Leads with high fit + high engagement are ready for sales outreach.
- Leads with high fit but low engagement should be nurtured until intent rises.
- Leads with low fit but high engagement may be deprioritized to avoid wasting resources.
This multidimensional approach ensures your sales team focuses on the right opportunities at the right time — while marketing can keep others engaged until they’re truly sales-ready.
3. Buyer intent: Uncover hidden buying signals
Up to 95% of B2B research happens anonymously. While your competitors might lean back and wait for a form fill, you shouldn’t. Instead make the strategic move to act on pre-conversion intent.
HubSpot’s Buyer Intent tools track known company IPs visiting specific high-value pages (e.g., pricing, specific product pages) to identify businesses actively researching your solution.
This data must feed directly into your CRM records and ad audiences, enabling your team to engage proactively or launch targeted campaigns before your prospects even know they need to talk to sales.
You define intent signals based on criteria like:
- Industry, size, or geography
- Visits to specific service or product pages
- Minimum number of pageviews within a set timeframe
4. Lead nurturing with marketing automation: Turn interest into conversion
Only a fraction of your leads are ready to buy when they first convert. The majority need structured nurturing to move through the funnel.
HubSpot workflows allow you to build both generic nurturing flows, designed to keep leads warm with broadly relevant content, and progressive nurturing flows, triggered by specific actions like repeated visits to your pricing page.
The benefits are clear:
- Shorter sales cycles
- Higher conversion rates
- Stronger long-term relationships
- A better ROI on marketing activities
5. AI Agents: Boost efficiency across marketing and sales
Repetitive tasks consume hours that should be spent on strategy and closing deals. By incorporating HubSpot’s AI agents (currently in Beta) you get help with all the heavy lifting across the pipeline, which frees your human team to focus exclusively on building trust, nurturing key accounts, and accelerating deal closure.
Social Media Agent: Generates and publishes posts tailored to your brand, audience, and best posting times.
Content Agent: Produces landing pages, blog posts, and case studies at scale — optimized for SEO and conversions.
Prospecting Agent: Researches companies and contacts that match your ICP, then creates personalized outreach emails.
Together, they make your lead machine run more efficiently - with AI handling the heavy lifting and your team focusing on building trust and closing deals.
Getting Started
These five moves aren’t just “nice to have.” They’re the building blocks of a modern B2B lead engine. Experiment with each HubSpot tool, test quickly, and ensure these strategic moves are tightly aligned between your marketing and sales teams to capture the biggest impact for your organization.
