How to Get More Out of HubSpot's Lead Segmentation Tools

Follow these steps to segment your leads:

Step 1: Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are fictional representations of your target customers. You can create them by researching your past and present customers. You can also conduct surveys, research online, or post on business forums.

Build personas out of multiple elements which make a whole. For example, they’re defined by typical lead intelligence items like industry and company size, but also by information like the needs, wants, and personality.

Once you answer all these questions, you’ll have a good representation of who you’re marketing and selling to. It’s important to create buyer personas before segmenting your leads.

Personas will inform all of your segmentation efforts down the line. And in order to even use HubSpot’s lead segmentation tools, you need to enter a minimal amount of buyer persona data.

Here’s an example of how it works: let’s say you sell a product to purchasers at manufacturing companies and distributors. Even if you segment your leads by, say, their lifecycle stage, you’ll still be sending the same messaging to both of these personas.

If you segment them by persona first, you can create more effective messaging that speaks to purchasers in both of these industries at every stage of their lifecycle.

Step 2: Lifecycle Stage

The lifecycle stage refers to where a lead is in the buyer's journey. Are they just becoming aware of your company, are they considering their options, or are they ready to purchase? Knowing this information helps you tailor appropriate content and communications that address your lead’s needs.

Here’s an example: let’s say someone subscribes to your blog. It’s reasonable for that person to expect a regular newsletter or blog updates in their inbox. If you’re about to embark on an email campaign for a discounted product, you’ll be sending the same message to all your contacts if you aren’t segmenting by lifecycle stage.

That blog subscriber will be met with product information instead of your latest blog posts. They may decide to unsubscribe.

By contrast, if you segment your leads by lifecycle stage, you can present useful tools and information based on your contacts’ immediate needs. People in the awareness stage will receive useful content. Those who are ready to make a purchase will receive information to help them decide.

Hubspot’s lead segmentation tools make it easy to create these segments. They have built-in rules governing which lists your contacts populate. All of these rules are based on the behaviors of your contacts, like whether or not they opened and clicked an email, downloaded an eBook, or filled out a form.

Step 3: Combine the Two and Define Your Segments

Now that you have an understanding of buyer persona and lifecycle segmentation, it's time to learn how the two work together. When you combine personas and lifecycle stages, you can segment your leads even more.

It all depends on the number of buyer personas you create. Once you create a buyer persona in the HubSpot CRM, it will automatically create lifecycle stage lists for that persona.

If we go back to the example with manufacturers and distributors, you could potentially have eight segments for your leads. That’s based on whether or not they are a contact, a lead, a marketing qualified lead, or a sales qualified lead.

Again, HubSpot’s lead segmentation tools make the process of identifying leads almost effortless. Once a contact converts on one of your marketing materials, they automatically become a lead.

If they convert again on one of your opportunities designed for leads, they’ll automatically move to the marketing qualified lead list. All the while they’ll stay within the lists for your target persons. So you’ll have lists of marketing qualified manufacturers as well as marketing qualified distributors.

Use HubSpot’s Lead Segmentation Tools to Get More Conversions

Lead segmentation is the ideal way to organize leads and develop strategies based on collected data. There are plenty of tools available to help you segment your leads, but HubSpot’s lead segmentation tools make the process easy and straightforward.

If you find that your marketing messages are falling on deaf ears, lead segmentation can help you communicate more effectively. Use lead segmentation to convert more qualified leads and acquire more customers.