How We HubSpot: Buyer Persona Differences

[danmoyle]

Story time! I was working with a client recently as they kicked off their HubSpot onboarding journey with us. 

In their business, they work with consumers and businesses. So when we talked about buyer personas and the persona property in HubSpot, they had questions. 

At our agency, we teach clients to use the persona property in forms. Whether it’s a hidden field on a form you know only Persona A ever uses, or you’re allowing contacts to self-select the persona that best describes them, adding this property to your forms helps organize your CRM. We love it. 

Their question, “But we don’t want both kinds of buyers seeing each other’s choices do we?” got me thinking. 

Here’s how we think about it. 

First, while B2B and B2C have their differences, it does come down to human interaction. This is why it’s fine for viewers to see all whom you serve. 

Sure, you don’t want 50 personas (you don’t want that, anyway), so you’ll want to keep them high level. Then you can further segment with other custom properties. 

Now, imagine a list of B2C personas and a list of B2B personas mixed together, but on the backen you have two custom properties that ask them what problem they’re solving. 

Then when the viewer chooses a B2B persona, the dependent field in HubSpot offers the business problem question. You can do the same for the corresponding consumer persona. 

In addition to this segmentation, you could ask about other differentiators. 

Maybe you serve clients choosing an accessory for their car. It might matter which brand they drive. Tesla, Ford and Mercedes drivers all have different brand affinities. Knowing which brand they own might matter greatly. 

In addition to the consumer side, maybe you work with dealerships. Knowing if they deal in new vehicles, used, or both would be helpful. Brands may also matter here, but less than on the consumer side. 

With that in mind, your personas may be Driver DeShawn, Dealer Dana and Broker Betty. Your custom properties could then include brands for the DeShawn, inventory for Dana and dealership sizes Betty deals with.

Once you’re gathering this data, you can segment your database with lists so you know which Drivers love which brands, which Dealers sell new vehicles of a specific brand… and email that crossover segment when Mercedes has an amazing new advertising push to remind them that you’re a valuable connection. 

When you’re thinking about getting to know your buyer personas and putting HubSpot to use, it’s important to think about the why behind your vision. This is how we think about HubSpot and the buyer persona tool.