At its core, inbound marketing is a data-driven approach. All incoming leads are funneled through your company's website, providing you with a roadmap to respond to customer needs, expectations, and engagement behaviors in real-time. But in order to truly reap the benefits of an inbound marketing strategy, segmenting your customer database by buyer persona and lead source is key.
We've laid out four ways that database segmentation influences your ability to hone your marketing strategy, scale through automation and see the greatest impact on your bottom line.
1. Tailor and Target Your Communication to Specific Audiences
One of the greatest benefits of segmenting your database by persona is the ability to target your messaging to specific audiences. If you use your defined buyer persona characteristics to segment incoming contacts into corresponding persona lists, then you'll be able to tailor your messaging to address the unique needs and pain points of each group. Using HubSpot, you can create persona-specific email campaigns and craft smart content that will appear to visitors based on their identified persona segment to effectively deliver personalization at scale.
2. Understand Engagement Behaviors for Core Buyer Personas
In addition to targeting your communication, different buyer personas will engage with content and move through your funnel in unique ways. Segmenting your database by persona will also allow you to track engagement behaviors, conversion rates and other key funnel metrics as they relate to each of your primary audiences and optimize your engagement strategy in a way that makes sense for each group. If one buyer persona is churning more than others toward the middle of your funnel, then it may be an indication that you don't have enough contextually-relevant content or conversion points for this persona and funnel stage. Knowing this will help focus and inform your content strategy moving forward.
3. Gain Insight Into Marketing Campaigns and Channels
Segmenting your database by lead source will also help you identify how different marketing campaigns and strategies are contributing to your pipeline. If you execute a social media or PPC campaign and want to track how your strategy has influenced lead traffic and quality from that particular channel, all you need to do is look at campaign metrics for that defined source.
Along with tracking specific campaigns by channel, segmenting your database by lead source will allow you to compare the performance of all your existing marketing channels and pivot your strategy accordingly. If your PPC campaign isn't contributing as many qualified leads as organic search, for example, then you may want to: a) consider refocusing your time and budget on improving organic traffic and keyword ranking and b) rethink your PPC strategy.
4. Establish a Framework for More Granular Reporting
Segmenting your database by persona and lead source will provide the structural framework necessary to execute more sophisticated and granular reporting down the line. If you'd like to build more complex reporting mechanisms that use existing lists as building blocks, then it's vital that your baseline segmentation structure and criteria are accurately configured and maintained. If not, then any reporting that leverages this segmentation will be inherently flawed.
For example, if you're interested in leveraging HubSpot integrations to prove marketing attribution by channel, campaign and touchpoint, you'll need to start from a solid segmentation framework.
Want to learn how to choose the right marketing attribution model for your business? Check out our B2B marketing attribution guide below.
