Okay, so you know that website visitor tracking is important, but what exactly can you do with it? You might be surprised to find that visitor tracking can provide you with a wealth of information. When most people think of visitor tracking, they think of tracking the number of pageviews their website receives. While it is certainly beneficial to know how many page views you’re getting, website visitor tracking can actually tell you much more than that, including information about visitor behavior, companies and people visiting your site.

The Importance of Behavioral Lead Scoring

Marketing automation has developed significantly in the last few years and visitor tracking now has the ability to give you tremendous insight into the online behavior of your website visitors. Behavioral lead scoring is an incredibly effective method for understanding the potential for converting a lead. But, in order to understand that potential for conversion, you need to understand exactly what a prospect is doing on your site. Some common examples of online, trackable visitor behavior includes:

• Which keywords were used in a search engine to locate your website
• Whether the visitor read press releases while on your site
• Did the visitor participate in a website chat?
• Did the visitor click on multiple pages during one visit?
• Did he or she visit a specific page multiple times?
• Were relevant articles, tutorials, or ebooks downloaded?
• Did the visitor complete an online survey?
• Did they view or share videos?

All of this information is a veritable goldmine when it comes to understanding visitor behavior. The more you are able to understand about precisely how a visitor spent his or her time while on your website, the more you will be able to understand the visitor’s conversion potential and tailor your follow up to the visitors interests.

The goal of marketing automation is to make it easier for you to identify and reach your target audience. Website visitor tracking gives you the insight you need about visitor behavior to do precisely that.

For more posts from this series see:

1. Uncovering lost opportunities with website visitor tracking
2. Getting the most from website visitor tracking
3. Going beyond page views and gaining insight into online activity
4. Actionable data from tracking visitors
5. Understanding when to follow up, the importance of tracking
6. Using website visitor tracking over time to build higher quality leads

In the next series of posts, we’ll be talking about website visitor tracking. The topics we’ll cover will span the following:

1. Uncovering lost opportunities with website visitor tracking
2. Getting the most from website visitor tracking
3. Going beyond page views and gaining insight into online activity
4. Actionable data from tracking visitors
5. Understanding when to follow up, the importance of tracking
6. Using website visitor tracking over time to build higher quality leads

In this post, we talk about topic #1, uncovering lost opportunities from visitor tracking.

Are you losing out on valuable opportunities? The sad reality is that if you aren’t taking advantage of website visitor tracking, you probably are. Many people think they don’t have time to delve too deeply into website visitor tracking, but the truth of the matter is that you can’t afford not to do so.

Perhaps the most important reason for tracking who visits your website is the fact that you cannot target an audience you don’t know. You also can’t make adjustments if you don’t know there is a problem.

By implementing a website visitor tracking system in your website, you can uncover a wealth of actionable data that can be used to improve your website and ultimately increase sales. If you have ever wondered why people are leaving your site, and more specifically, why they are choosing to leave your site at specific junctures, website visitor tracking can give you the insight you need. If your goal is to improve your website and make it more appealing to visitors, you need to find out exactly what visitors are doing once they are on your site, and at what point they choose to leave.

Without tracking visitors, you’re playing guessing games; you will have no idea what is going on in the minds of visitors. The good news is that you don’t need a crystal ball to figure it out.

While an online operation can provide an incredible number of benefits, there is one significant drawback. In a brick-and-mortar store, you would have the opportunity to hear a customer’s objections. You would have the chance to ask questions. You might even be able to find out what it would take to persuade them to stay and maybe even make a purchase.

That is an opportunity you simply don’t have when visitors come to your website and then leave without leaving a trace. You have no way of knowing what it is that they wanted when they arrived or why they left. Website visitor tracking can help to eliminate that disadvantage and give you the tools you need to uncover lost opportunities.

You just bought a shiny new car, or website visitor tracking, which might be around the price of that new car (if you’re buying a Tata). Now that you’ve got some power under the hood, how can you use that power to infuse excitement into your organization and energize your sales and marketing efforts?

Here are some ways you can use visitor tracking to introduce exciting new opportunities across your organization. Note, some scenarios may not be possible based on vendor limitations.

1. As a sales tool to excite your sales force, increasing employee satisfaction and decreasing turnover.
2. To create unique filters for each sales person based on territory, so they see only activity relevant to them.
3. To get more out of email marketing. Integrate your email campaigns (Mailchimp, Constant Contact, etc.) with visitor tracking to get a long-tail view of what happens after recipients click through.
4. To find new leads. Identify companies you would have never known about. It won’t close the deal for you, but it will point you in the right direction.
5. For sales efficiency. Sales people will know who to follow up with and when.
6. For marketing ROI. Use it to measure results of your retargeting or PPC efforts.
7. To build rich profiles that identify prospective buyer’s interests. For example, connecting anonymous visit activity to a web form submission where the person is identified.
8. To know how to tailor a follow up discussion based on a person’s digital pattern across your website.
9. To identify which partners or ads are referring the most visitors to your website.
10. To identify which pages people commonly enter into or exit from.
11. To track which documents are performing the best (most downloads, by who, etc.)
12. To track which videos are performing the best (most views, by who, etc.)
13. To help convert website visitors by gating videos and documents.
14. To track 1:1 sales emails.
15. To identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities for existing customers.
16. To find key people who work at a company that visited your website.
17. To share leads with your colleagues.
18. To distribute leads to your colleagues.
19. To import leads directly into your CRM.
20. To enrich lead profiles with social information.

For more insight into visitor tracking check out the other posts in this series:

1. Why Visitor Tracking Technology Exists
2. What is Website Visitor Tracking?
3. How Visitor Tracking Works
4. Benefits of Website Visitor Tracking
5. What Questions Should you Ask your Visitor Tracking Provider when Evaluating a Solution?

Visitor tracking gives salespeople the ability to monitor site visitors by name/company/location so that they can better identify prospects and their thoughts.   Progressive companies are beginning to understand that visitor tracking is the foundation for all digital marketing and sales efforts.

Here are 5 key signs that you should be using individual visitor tracking on your website:

1) You invest in SEO, PPC, or retargeting campaigns

These technologies draw people to the “door” that is your digital presence.  If you don’t have a way to “hear” who is at your door, and what they are thinking; it kills your ability to develop a relationship with each individual buyer.

Now consider how much you are spending for SEO/PPC/RC campaigns.  If you spend $5 per visitor, and only 1 in 40 site visitors identifies themselves; then you are paying almost $300 per lead.  A quality visitor tracking system will help you triple the effectiveness of turning your SEO/PPC/RC investment into leads that can close.  Our clients find that on average, their company gets 9X more bang for its buck when using visitor tracking with SEO/PPC/RC campaigns.

 2) If your company has a sales team

Why would you pay for a sales team, and not help their success?  Gone are the days of “pounding phones”.   The trends in digital marketing revolve around self-education and timing.   If you are able to identify WHO is investigating you, it allows you to intelligently approach potential customers AT THE RIGHT TIME.  Bottomline: visitor tracking helps you work smarter and more efficiently.

3) Your salespeople will go to a tradeshow or networking event in the next 12 months

Only a small percentage of your prospective clients are ready to buy at any given point in time.  You have two options.  You can use visitor tracking as a way to highlight when contacts are ready to talk or you can have your salespeople call everyone every two weeks and hope they stumble upon something good.  The latter is a very costly strategy, that will kill your reputation of potential buyers.

 4) You use email

It doesn’t matter if your email is coming from Gmail, Outlook, a CRM, a marketing automation platform, or a third party “email blaster” provider.   90% of your emails will never be responded to.  That doesn’t mean that they aren’t effective.  Instead, it means that your emails are simply planting seeds for future action in the minds of your prospects. You need visitor tracking to give your salespeople the necessary information to have a “green sales thumb”.  That means that they know:

• When a prospect is interested
• What they are interested in
• Their potential concerns with approaching you.

 5) You have a website

Most companies see value in tools like Google Analytics that will tell you things like “ 155 people were on my website today”.  How does that help salespeople?   True sales value comes from giving your salespeople the name, company, location, and interests of the visitor.