Using Form Fields to Identify Buyer Personas in HubSpot

You've created your buyer personas. Now how do you know which persona each lead matches? How do you segment your contacts so you can serve them content tailored to their specific needs?

Your forms hold the answer. Every time a visitor fills out a form, you have an opportunity to learn something about them—including which persona they fit.

The Challenge

You can't just ask "which persona are you?"—visitors don't know your internal categorizations. You need to ask questions that reveal persona characteristics without being awkward or creating excessive form friction.

The key is designing questions that:

• Feel natural to the visitor
• Provide information useful beyond persona identification
• Can be mapped to persona categories automatically

What to Ask

Role-based questions. "What best describes your role?" with options that map to your personas. A marketing manager might indicate one persona; a CFO indicates another. This feels natural—people expect to identify themselves professionally.

Challenge-based questions. "What's your biggest challenge right now?" with options aligned to persona pain points. This simultaneously identifies the persona and reveals their priority, which helps sales prioritization.

Industry or company size. If your personas vary by industry or organization scale, these standard questions do double duty—useful information that also indicates persona fit.

Decision-making context. "Are you researching for yourself or for a team decision?" can distinguish between personas with different buying contexts.

Progressive Profiling

You don't need to identify personas on the first form submission. HubSpot's progressive profiling lets you ask different questions each time a contact converts.

First form: basic contact information. Second form: role and company size. Third form: challenges and goals. Over time, you build a complete picture without overwhelming any single form.

This approach reduces friction while still gathering the information you need.

Mapping to Personas

In HubSpot, create a custom property for persona assignment. Then use workflows to automatically set this property based on form responses.

If someone selects "Marketing Manager" for role and "Growing website traffic" as their challenge, the workflow can automatically assign them to your "Growth-Focused Marketer" persona.

Once assigned, you can segment communications, trigger persona-specific nurture sequences, and give sales context about who they're talking to.

Testing and Refinement

Your first attempt at persona-identifying questions probably won't be perfect. Monitor:

• Form completion rates (are questions creating friction?)
• Distribution of responses (are you getting useful variation?)
• Sales feedback (do the persona assignments feel accurate?)

Refine your questions based on what you learn. The goal is a system that accurately identifies personas with minimal visitor friction.