How to Use Hubspot Data with Custom Affinity Audiences

Hubspot marketers can dramatically improve ad performance by pairing their first-party data with Google Ads custom affinity audiences that closely match the interests and behaviors of their ideal customers.

This how-to guide is based on the concepts covered in the original article on custom affinity audiences from HubSpot's marketing blog, adapted to help you connect these ideas with your Hubspot strategy.

What Are Custom Affinity Audiences?

Custom affinity audiences in Google Ads let you build interest-based groups tailored to your brand instead of relying only on broad, prebuilt segments.

These audiences are built using signals like:

• Users' most frequent search topics
• Apps they use regularly
• Websites they browse
• Places they visit in the real world

By defining these elements, you can create a tight, relevant audience that mirrors your ideal customer profile and then align that audience with your Hubspot segments and lifecycle stages.

Why Pair Hubspot with Custom Affinity?

Using Hubspot with custom affinity audiences gives you both rich CRM intelligence and precise media targeting.

Benefits include:

• Better targeting: Use Hubspot lists as the basis for audience research and messaging.
• Higher relevance: Align your ad creative with email and website content nurtured in Hubspot.
• Improved ROI: Spend more on the segments that behave like your best Hubspot contacts.
• Stronger attribution: Track form fills and deals back into Hubspot for closed-loop reporting.

Core Components of a Strong Custom Affinity Audience

The original HubSpot article outlines four core inputs you can use when building a custom affinity audience. Here is how they relate to your CRM strategy.

1. Interests & Keywords from Hubspot Insights

Google Ads lets you add interests and keywords to describe your ideal audience. Pull ideas from your Hubspot data such as:

• Top-performing blog post topics
• Common search terms driving organic traffic
• Recurring themes in sales notes or deal descriptions
• FAQs collected via Hubspot forms or chat

Turn these insights into keyword clusters that define what your ideal user is actively interested in.

2. URLs Related to Your Offer

You can add URLs that your ideal audience might visit. These do not have to be your own pages.

Ideas sourced from Hubspot data:

• Competitor product pages mentioned in deals
• Industry blogs that send referral traffic to your Hubspot-hosted content
• Partner or comparison sites your leads mention

These URLs help Google understand the overall content themes your audience consumes.

3. Apps Your Audience May Use

If your product connects to other tools, your Hubspot contact properties and integration data can reveal popular apps.

Use this information to add:

• Productivity or project management apps your customers rely on
• Industry-specific tools commonly present in your Hubspot deals
• Companion apps that signal a similar user profile

4. Places Your Audience Visits

The original HubSpot article highlights that Google Ads can even use real-world locations as a signal.

Brainstorm places based on your Hubspot personas, such as:

• Trade shows and conference venues
• Retail environments where your product is sold
• Offices, co-working spaces, or local business hubs

Step-by-Step: Build a Custom Affinity Audience Using Hubspot Data

Use these practical steps to turn your Hubspot insights into a focused custom affinity audience.

Step 1: Define Your Ideal Segment in Hubspot

1. Create or refine a smart list in Hubspot for your highest-value contacts, for example:
   • Customers with the largest deals
   • Leads with the highest lead score
   • Contacts that consistently engage with your content
2. Document basic attributes: job title, industry, company size, location, and lifecycle stage.

Step 2: Extract Behavioral Clues from Hubspot

1. Review which blog posts, landing pages, and knowledge base articles get the most views from your best contacts.
2. Compile repeated topic patterns to form your initial keyword list.
3. Check referral URLs in Hubspot traffic analytics to find influential external websites.

Step 3: Build the Audience in Google Ads

1. In Google Ads, navigate to Audience Manager and choose to create a new custom audience.
2. Name the audience clearly, for example: Hubspot High-Value Leads – Custom Affinity.
3. Fill out fields using your Hubspot-driven research:
   • Interests & keywords: Add 10–30 tightly related phrases.
   • URLs: Add competitor sites, industry resources, and product comparison pages.
   • Apps: Add tools your ICP frequently uses.
   • Places: Add relevant physical locations when applicable.

Step 4: Align Creative with Hubspot Messaging

To maintain consistency across channels:

• Review your best-performing Hubspot email subject lines.
• Reuse winning angles in your ad headlines and descriptions.
• Mirror the value propositions from your top Hubspot landing pages.

This ensures prospects experience a coherent journey from ad impression to website to nurture emails.

Step 5: Track Performance Back in Hubspot

1. Set up UTM parameters on all Google Ads campaigns using a consistent naming convention.
2. Make sure Hubspot is capturing these UTMs in forms and contact records.
3. Build reports and dashboards in Hubspot that show:

• Leads generated by each custom affinity audience
• Lifecycle stage progression (Lead → MQL → SQL → Customer)
• Revenue influenced or closed-won deals originating from these campaigns

Best Practices for Using Hubspot with Custom Affinity

To get the most from this combination, follow these ongoing best practices.

Continuously Refine Your Hubspot Segments

As your database grows, refresh your core lists in Hubspot:

• Exclude low-engagement contacts from key segments.
• Update firmographic filters based on your best customers.
• Align ad targeting with new lifecycle stages or product lines.

Test Multiple Audience Variants

Do not rely on a single custom affinity audience. Instead:

• Create separate audiences for each major Hubspot persona.
• Vary interest keywords and URLs to find the best match.
• Pause underperforming audiences and scale those with strong Hubspot-attributed results.

Integrate Learnings into Your Wider Hubspot Strategy

Insights from your custom affinity tests should loop back into Hubspot:

• Add new topics that resonate in ads to your content roadmap.
• Adjust lead scoring rules based on high-intent behaviors you discover.
• Refine workflows that nurture leads from custom affinity campaigns.

Next Steps and Additional Resources

To dive deeper into the original methodology behind custom affinity audiences, review the full guide on the HubSpot marketing blog.

If you need hands-on help connecting your ad strategy and Hubspot implementation, you can also explore specialist services from Consultevo, a digital consultancy that supports CRM-driven growth.

By combining the precision of custom affinity audiences with the rich contact data in Hubspot, you create a feedback loop that continually sharpens your targeting, improves conversion rates, and increases the overall impact of your marketing spend.

Need Help With Hubspot?

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