In today’s digital world, businesses face increasing challenges in capturing and converting quality leads. This is especially true for B2B companies, where turning website visitors into customers is more difficult than ever.
In fact, 45% of businesses reported struggling to generate enough leads in the past year, and nearly half of vendors say they’ve faced rising competition in 2024.
Despite investing in various marketing strategies—ads, emails, cold calling, and social media outreach—many companies still see minimal returns.
Why?
Why generic content fails in B2B lead generation
Many potential clients visit your website, browse your content, and show interest in your products, yet leave without taking action. This is because generic content fails to address their specific needs and challenges. Visitors often feel disconnected from the message, leading to missed opportunities.
The key issue is understanding who your visitors are and delivering tailored content that resonates with their unique needs and challenges.
Personalization solves this by dynamically adapting your website's content—showing relevant case studies, product recommendations, and calls to action—which significantly increases engagement and conversions.
By delivering targeted messaging, you position your business as a solution rather than just a service, helping to build trust and move prospects smoothly through the sales funnel. With the right personalization strategy, B2B companies can optimize the buyer journey, generate higher-quality leads, and accelerate the sales process.
Improving content personalization with headless CMS and CRM integration
To make this possible, companies need a system that dynamically adapts website content to visitor data. A headless CMS with built-in personalization, like Prepr, enables this by leveraging real-time insights and AI-driven content recommendations.
Prepr collects behavioral data—such as page visits, content engagement, and user actions—and uses it to tailor content to each visitor’s industry, company size, and buying stage.
When integrated with a CRM and marketing automation platform, like HubSpot, Prepr becomes even more powerful. By syncing customer data between Prepr and HubSpot, businesses can:
- Segment visitors based on CRM insights
- Deliver personalized content based on lead status and sales funnel stage
- Align marketing and sales efforts with unified customer data
Together, they provide a powerful solution for marketing teams, allowing them to deliver personalized content and streamline lead management and follow-up. This integration helps companies improve operational efficiency and create a more customized experience for their clients.
Industry, persona, company size, buying stage: Understanding B2B visitor segmentation to personalize content
Before diving into how HubSpot and Prepr can work together, it’s important to understand how B2B marketing works and how visitors are segmented.
In B2B marketing, delivering personalized content is essential because businesses often face a more complex decision-making process than in B2C environments. Unlike individual consumers, B2B buyers typically involve multiple stakeholders—often from different departments—each with their own set of priorities. Additionally, the decision cycle is longer and more deliberate, which means content needs to be tailored not only to the visitor’s company but also to the specific personas and roles within that organization.
Personalization is most effective when it takes into account the unique needs of different audiences. In the B2B space, we can break down the segmentation into different approaches:
- Industry: What sector does the company operate in (e.g., healthcare, retail, finance), and what specific challenges or goals come with it?
- Persona: Who is the individual visitor? What is their role and their specific needs within their organization (e.g., marketing, IT, operations)?
- Company size: Is the company a small startup or a large enterprise?
- Buying stage: Where is the company in their purchasing decision?
Let’s explore each in more detail.
1. Industry-based segmentation
Different industries have unique goals, challenges, and regulatory requirements. Tailoring content to a visitor’s industry helps demonstrate domain expertise and relevance. For example:
- Healthcare companies might prioritize compliance and data security.
- Logistics and transportation firms may focus on efficiency and fleet optimization.
- Financial services often seek scalability and risk management solutions.
2. Persona-based segmentation
In B2B marketing, different personas within a company require very different types of content, even if they come from the same industry or company size. For example, a Marketing manager and an IT director will have completely different concerns when evaluating a solution. Here are some common personas in B2B marketing and the type of content they might be looking for:
- Marketing manager: These professionals are focused on driving leads, improving conversion rates, and executing marketing campaigns. They are looking for solutions that support lead generation, customer engagement, and marketing automation.
- IT director: IT professionals are concerned with how new solutions integrate with existing infrastructure, data security, scalability, and technical specifications. They need to know if a solution is easy to deploy, maintain, and scale as the business grows.
- Sales leader: Sales leaders care about tools that will help their team close deals faster, increase productivity, and improve the overall customer experience. They prioritize solutions that improve CRM integration, streamline sales workflows, and help manage the sales pipeline.
3. Buying stage-based segmentation
Understanding where a visitor is in the buying process helps you deliver the right content at the right time. Each stage requires a different approach.
- Discovery phase: Visitors exploring general industry solutions and looking for information.
- Awareness phase: Visitors comparing different providers and evaluating options.
- Decision phase: Visitors ready to make a purchase and looking for specific product details, pricing, and testimonials.
4. Company size-based segmentation
Company size plays a critical role in shaping their purchasing decisions. A small startup has very different requirements from a large multinational corporation. Personalization can reflect these differences.
- Small & Medium Businesses (SMBs): Focused on affordability, flexibility, and ease of implementation.
- Enterprise-level companies: Require comprehensive solutions, deep integrations, and advanced compliance features.
By leveraging these segmentation strategies, businesses can create a truly personalized experience that speaks directly to their visitors’ needs, guiding them toward conversion.
How HubSpot and Prepr work together for personalization in practice
Now that we’ve outlined the key ways to segment your visitors, let’s explore how this segmentation is applied in practice using tools like HubSpot and Prepr.
When you combine the right data with automation, your website can adapt to each visitor’s needs, providing the most relevant content at the right moment.
Real-world example: Fred Fleetmanager’s personalized journey
Follow Fred’s path and see how personalized content influences his decision-making process.
Meet Fred Fleetmanager
Fred is a fleet manager at a large company (1,000+ employees). He’s in charge of sourcing fleet management solutions and is exploring different providers. One company he finds is Acme Lease, which offers leasing solutions for corporate fleets.
Here's how Fred’s journey unfolds.
Step 1: Fred visits the Acme Lease website
Fred arrives on the Acme Lease homepage and starts browsing. At this point, he’s an anonymous visitor, so the website presents general content that could apply to anyone interested in fleet solutions.
Step 2: Fred requests a demo
Impressed by what he sees, Fred clicks the “Contact Sales” CTA and fills out a form to request a demo. This allows Acme Lease to track him as a lead.
Step 3: The sales team conducts the demo and updates HubSpot
Anton, an Account Manager at Acme Lease, schedules and conducts a demo with Fred. During the call, Anton learns more about Fred’s company, including:
- Industry: Logistics
- Persona: Operations manager
- Company size: Enterprise-level companies (1,000+ employees)
- Interest level: Still in the discovery stage
After the demo, Anton updates Fred’s contact profile in HubSpot with this information.
Step 4: HubSpot & Prepr sync the data
With the HubSpot integration, customer data is automatically synced with Prepr. By leveraging HubSpot lists, the data is organized and segmented within HubSpot, which then flows directly into Prepr for personalized content delivery. Fred’s profile is now tagged with:
- Industry: Logistics
- Persona: Operations manager
- Employees: 1,000+
- Stage: Discovery
Now, Prepr has the necessary data to personalize Fred’s experience the next time he visits the site.
Step 5: Fred returns to a personalized website
A few days later, Fred returns to the Acme Lease website. This time, the content is tailored to his needs:
- Hero image: Instead of a generic fleet management image, Fred sees a corporate-focused design emphasizing enterprise-level leasing solutions.
- Featured content: The homepage now highlights case studies from enterprise clients in the logistics industry.
- Calls to Action (CTAs): Instead of generic CTAs like “Learn More,” Fred sees a more relevant message: “Download our guide to fleet leasing for large enterprises.”
This personalized experience makes Fred feel understood, increasing the chances that he will continue through the sales funnel.
In conclusion: Personalization drives B2B lead generation
Today personalization is no longer optional, but it's essential to drive meaningful engagement and lead generation. By combining Prepr and HubSpot, you can create a dynamic, tailored website experience that resonates with your prospects at every stage of their buying journey.
For example, instead of showing Fred and other visitors a generic website, Acme Lease provides dynamic, customized content based on their industry, company size, and stage in the buying process. This means every time Fred returns to the site, the content he sees is relevant to his needs, making him more likely to engage further and move down the funnel.
With Prepr and HubSpot working together seamlessly, your sales and marketing teams stay aligned, always working with the most up-to-date data to nurture leads effectively. Ultimately, this personalized approach not only boosts engagement but also drives higher conversion rates, helping you turn more visitors into high-quality leads and clients.
If you'd like to dive deeper into HubSpot and how a headless CMS can boost your marketing efforts, we’ve created a complete guide to help you choose the best CMS for your needs.
