Market radar & Signals
Market radar: how to see which B2B companies are shortlisting you before they call.
Pick a moment that works for you.
A few weeks ago we wrote about the Day One List: the LinkedIn and Bain research showing that 86% of B2B buyers already have a shortlist of three brands in their head before they start searching. By the time they call, the choice is made. That piece landed well, because it confirms something many B2B owners felt but hadn't yet put into words.
The question we've been getting most since then is practical. Okay, my clients apparently choose before they call. So how do I see that? How do I know which companies in my sector are now exploring? How do I measure whether my name is on the right lists? That's the question this guide answers.
A short warning up front. What follows below is not a list of magic tools that solve all problems. A market radar is a habit, not software. But there are concrete signals, data points and methods you can use to see what moves before it shows up in your pipeline. I'll point them out.
The classic marketing funnel always started with awareness. Someone didn't know you, you introduced yourself via an ad, they came to your site, they downloaded something, you nurtured them, they called, you closed the deal. A funnel you fill at the top and squeeze at the bottom. Predictable. Measurable. Steerable.
That funnel no longer works the way it used to. Not because it's conceptually wrong, but because the first 70% of the journey falls outside your view. Your prospect looks at LinkedIn for who writes about their problem. They ask ChatGPT which parties specialise in this. They call two former colleagues and ask who they use. They scan LinkedIn profiles, read your last two posts, click through to your website. Maybe three times over a few weeks. All without filling out a form, sending an email or identifying themselves.
By the time they land in your CRM, they already know who you are and what you do. The choice is largely made. The pitch is a formality.
What you used to see as your funnel is now the end. The real work happens out of your sight. A market radar gives you that sight back.
A market radar is a combination of data, tools and habit with which you structurally look at what moves in your market: which companies are exploring, which shortlists are growing, how your visibility in Google and ChatGPT changes, and who quietly visits your website without identifying themselves. No vanity metrics. Just signals that predict who shows up in your pipeline within three to six months.
Three things distinguish a market radar from a regular analytics setup. First, it works at market level, not just at website level. You don't only look at who comes to your site, you look at your whole Total Addressable Market and how much of that market shows movement. Second, it's focused on shortlist position, not on conversions. You measure whether your name is in the right heads, not whether a lead came in this week. Third, it's compounded. It gets a little more accurate each week as you gather more signals.
That sounds abstract. Concretely it looks like this. You know which 200 companies in your sector are your ideal client. Your radar shows that 47 of those 200 companies were on your site this past month. Three came back more than twice. You see ChatGPT citing you on two new queries. You see a specific LinkedIn post reached 23 people from your audience of which 4 reacted. All before any one of those people called you.
A well-working market radar operates on three levels. Take one away and you still see something. But only with all three do you see the pattern.
The top layer. Here you look at your whole market. How many companies in the Netherlands fit your ICP? What share of those is showing intent signals right now? Which sectors move more than others? Tools like TAMtracker do exactly this: they capture your ICP, link it to business databases and show how much demand signal runs through your market. Not "who visited my site" but "how healthy is my market".
The middle layer. Here you focus on companies that touched your presence: a visit to your website, an interaction on your LinkedIn, a download. The trick here is that you don't need IP tracking to see company names. Tools like Stairoids and Leadinfo identify companies via pattern recognition, not via cookies. You see that a specific company came back four times, viewed six pages, and on the last visit spent three minutes on your services page. That's intent.
The bottom layer, and the hardest. Who within the company is looking? The director? The marketing manager? An outsider who will run the project? You see this partly through LinkedIn engagement data, partly through what they do on your site (which pages, which content), and partly through signals on platforms like G2, Capterra or similar sites in your industry. Some companies buy intent data here from providers like 6sense or Bombora. For Dutch SMBs that's usually overkill, but the concept is the same.
Three layers, one radar. What you're looking for are patterns where all three levels show something. A specific company active on your site (layer 2), a person within that company who likes your LinkedIn content (layer 3), while you simultaneously see your whole sector showing increased movement (layer 1). Those are the companies most likely to show up in your pipeline within 90 days.
Not every data point is a signal. A visit to your homepage usually isn't worth anything. A market radar only works if you know which behaviours are predictive. Based on what we see with our clients, these are the signals that really matter.
Repeat visits in a short time. One visit is chance. Three visits in two weeks is intent. Especially when visits go deeper the more often they come: first homepage, then services page, then pricing, then case studies. That's a prospect convincing themselves.
Visits to comparison or due-diligence pages. A services page is awareness. A pricing page, an about page, a case study, a comparison blog: those are the pages people land on when they already know what they want and are deciding.
Engagement on specific LinkedIn content. A like on a generic branding post says little. A save or comment on a tactical how-to post that exactly hits your solution says a lot. People remember where they learned it. If they learned from you, you're in their shortlist.
Citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini. When someone asks "which parties in the Netherlands are good at X" and your company gets mentioned, then you're visible in the phase where most shortlists are made. Tools that do GEO monitoring, like Otterly.AI or Profound, show this.
Branded search volume. How many people per month literally search for your company name? This isn't as glamorous as the other signals, but it's one of the purest. Rising branded search volume means your name is circulating. Stagnation means you're doing nothing more than maintenance.
Not a technology list, but an honest map. No tool covers all three layers. Most B2B SMBs need two or three. Here's what we see working in practice for the Dutch market.
For market level (layer 1): TAMtracker lets you capture your ICP and shows how much demand signal runs through your market. Suitable if you want to map your whole Total Addressable Market.
For company level (layer 2): Leadinfo for Dutch visitor identification. Stairoids for signal-based prospecting with intent scoring per company and per person.
For visibility (overlap with layer 1): Morningscore for SEO tracking, Google Search Console for performance, and GEO tracking via tools like Otterly.AI to see when you get cited in ChatGPT answers.
For LinkedIn engagement (layer 3): LinkedIn's own analytics are good enough as a starting point. For deeper signals you can use tools like Shield Analytics or Inlytics.
More important than which tools you pick is that you don't try to set them all up in one month. Start with layer 2 and visitor identification. That gives you the most direct feedback and the least implementation work. Build layer 1 on top, and only later layer 3.
Tools without habit are expensive wallpaper. The method we give our clients is deliberately simple: a weekly 30-minute check in which you answer three questions.
What did my market do this week? Look at your TAM data or, if you don't have TAM tooling, at branded search volume and your visibility tool. Is movement in your sector going up or down? Which trends do you see in the queries you rank for? Which new questions are being asked that your content doesn't answer yet?
Which companies did something this week? Open your visitor identification tool. Which companies from your ideal audience were on your site? Which came for the first time, which came back for the third time? Which pages did they visit? Make a list of five to ten companies that stand out.
Which people did something? Check your LinkedIn engagement on your most important posts. Who reacted, saved, forwarded? Match it with your list of companies. Pattern recognition between layer 2 and layer 3 is where the real signals lie.
Document what you see in a simple spreadsheet. Not to make reports of it, but to see patterns over time. A company that came by once is noise. A company that does something three weeks in a row is a case.
A signal without follow-up is a report that stays in a drawer. What you do with the information is just as important as collecting it. Three tactics that work without scaring off the prospect by going in too cold.
Connect via LinkedIn, not via a sales pitch. If you see someone from a target company liked your content, connect with them on LinkedIn. No pitch message. No connection request with a sales line. Just a connection. People accept connections from people whose content they already like. From that moment on your content is visible in their feed every week. You build without building.
Content adjustment based on what your market searches. If your radar shows a specific question coming up in your sector, you pick it up in your next industry blog or LinkedIn post. Not because the keyword scores well, but because it's exactly the topic your audience is dealing with this week. That's how you end up on shortlists.
Account-based outreach with context, for the known three or four hot companies. For the top of your radar, the companies that are truly exploring, you can proactively reach out. But with substance. "I saw you're launching a new department this month, we have a case of a similar company that went through the same journey, happy to share it if it's relevant." No pitch. No call invite in email one. Just something relevant.
With clients who try to set up a market radar themselves, we see the same pitfalls again and again.
Mistake one: too many tools, too little habit. People buy three tools at once and stop checking them after month two. The habit matters more than the stack. Start with one tool and a weekly 30-minute check. Add something only when you notice you really miss it.
Mistake two: confusing signals with leads. A signal is not the same as a lead. A company that comes to your site three times is not a sales opportunity. It's an indication that you exist in their head. If you jump in too quickly with a sales call, you break the process. Treat signals as input for your content and your positioning, not as a sales trigger.
Mistake three: only looking at the top. The temptation to only look at the three hottest companies of the week is large. But the real value of a radar sits in patterns over time: which sectors move, which content gets traction, which questions recur. The macro pattern matters more than any individual dot.
Mistake four: no link to your content strategy. A radar without a content strategy is a nice monitor, not a growth instrument. What you see in your radar should give feedback on what you write, how you position your service, which trade publications you contact. If that loop isn't there, you're looking at your market without responding to it.
Building a full radar is a journey. But you can set something in motion this week. Three steps that deliver concrete output within one work week.
From there you build further. TAM tooling later, GEO monitoring later, LinkedIn tracking later. No race against the stack, just a growing view of your market.
The Day One List is made before you get called. A market radar gives you back what you'd lost: sight of the part of the journey that escapes classic marketing. Not to hunt. To build presence, while the choice is being made.
In a 30-minute call we show what a radar can look like for your sector. Which signals count, which tools fit, and how to build it in without it piling up into extra work.