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Sentiment vs Intent: The Difference That Drives Revenue
Max Mitcham
June 02, 2025
👋 Hey Team!
Quick quiz:
A prospect posts on Reddit, "I hate how expensive {competitor}, anyone got any good alternatives?"
Is that sentiment or intent?
(It's both… and most teams only catch one.)
The Million-Dollar Misunderstanding
Most teams treat social listening like a feelings detector. Happy mentions = good. Angry mentions = bad. Done.
Don't get me wrong: sentiment matters. It's crucial for brand health, crisis management, and understanding how your market feels about you.
But here's what they're missing: Positive or negative feelings don't equal action until an explicit next-step verb shows up.
The companies that track both sentiment AND intent signals? They're building stronger brands while capturing deals their competitors never see coming.
What's the Real Difference?
Sentiment Listening | Intent Listening | |
|---|---|---|
Goal | Brand health, PR alerts, NPS clues | Pipeline, churn rescue, competitive grabs |
Signal words | love, hate, disappointed, awesome | switching, looking for, replace, cancel |
Owner | Marketing / Comms | Sales / RevOps / CS |
Metric | SOV, sentiment index | SQLs, closed-won $ |
Key insight: Feelings are nice. Social Signals are nicer.
Two Live Examples
1. Sentiment-only: "Great webinar, loved the speaker!"
Nice ego boost, but zero buying intent. Tag to marketing for nurture, then move on.
2. Sentiment + Intent: "Fed up with {competitor} pricing, looking for alternatives."
Negative feeling + action verb = hot lead. Route to SDR now.
The difference? One mention makes you feel good. The other makes you money. How Smart Teams Separate the Streams
At Trigify, we help teams build different capture workflows for different signal types:
How Smart Teams Separate the Streams
At Trigify, we help teams build different capture workflows for different signal types:
Intent Signals:
("pricing" OR "too expensive" OR "hate" OR "frustrated")
AND
("looking for" OR "switching" OR "alternatives")→ High intent score → Slack #hot-leads → SDR assigned within 30 minutes
Sentiment Signals:
"love" OR "great" OR "awesome" OR "disappointed"→ Lower intent score → Marketing nurture list → Thank-you campaigns
The Revenue-Driving Workflows
Signal Type | Auto-Response |
|---|---|
Intent + negative sentiment | Create HubSpot deal → launch "Switch & Save" sequence |
Intent + neutral tone | Assign SDR → send ROI calculator |
Sentiment only (positive) | Route to social team → public thank-you |
Why This Matters Right Now
Every day you're treating buying signals like brand mentions, deals are slipping through the cracks.
Your prospects are broadcasting their intent in real-time. The question is: are you listening for feelings, or are you hunting for revenue?
Want to test this on your own market?
Until next week,
Max Mitcham
Co-Founder & CEO, Trigify
How to build How to Build an AI Personal Assistant
Really excited to share this with you! I've been working on this assistant agent for a few weeks now, and it's honestly been a huge help with all those everyday tasks that usually bog me down.
This one's definitely worth checking out. Looking forward to seeing everyone on Wednesday!
We're already got a lot of people booked, so grab your spot quickly
