In the last two lessons we looked at the ways that Sales and Marketing could work closer together when promoting your business. In this I talked about the importance of having both functions working together and understanding exactly whom you are targeting and updating on any activity….which begs the question of what activity should you be looking for?
Not A Buying Signal
Let me start off by re-iterating a previous point. I don’t consider any sort of interaction online as a clear buying signal. Generally any interaction online is easier, faster and therefore has less value associated with it. This is not to say that online marketing is not a good indication of who might be looking to buy from you.
ROI
One of the trickier aspects when it comes to market is that it’s often done in a vacuum and although there are a variety of tools which can give you a general overview trend…but figuring out if individual from one company is interested is perhaps a little trickier.
Who’s looking at your website?
One of the tools you might use to give your information a little more depth would be a reverse IP lookup tool. This is essentially code that sits on your website and can lookup the whereabouts, domain and location of your visitors. Before anyone panics, this information is only available for company records and not private citizens, making this only suitable for B2B. This doesn’t come cheaply though, but if you were in a business with a niche product of high value it might be worth an investment, I knew a financial services company this worked well for. It gives you a general overview on businesses that have visited your site and the pages they have looked at, and with a little common sense you can figure out who is interested in what.
What Products Are They Looking At?
I would liken someone visiting your website to being akin to someone visiting a shop. We all browse our favourite shops, often on a weekly basis and may rarely buy anything, and yet for many years many business owners had this bizarre idea that “if they are purposefully visiting our site, then they must be customers” it takes a lot less effort to peruse a website then a physical shop. I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in a high amount of visitors looking through your website.
What is more useful is looking at your content marketing and finishing out what messages/angles are getting people interested in a particular product or service. Also with email opens you can normally gauge which people might be interested in a specific product although remember that any content higher up the email is much more likely to be read.
Testimonials/About us
Probably the number one action other than actually putting something in a cart etc is when people look at testimonials/about us page. This is something that is massively under-rated I feel. Many people will visit your website just to see you are who you claim to be and can do what you say. This is why having a portfolio/feedback session can be very beneficial. Some businesses are scared that putting their clients’ names or logos on their website will give their competition ideas. You could always have some generic ones with industries and an email link to one that will give people more details.
Social Media Activity
On their own a like or follow or a connection is not worth much, but if someone regularly is contributing to what you’re putting out it’s certainly worth feeding back to sales. It can be a little tricky though, sometimes your marketing team might have that personal connection with a prospective customer that your sales team doesn’t. Let’s talk more about this in next week’s lesson….