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written by Derrick English Jr.
Finding better leads is a challenge that all sales people have. The amount of work it takes to identify and qualify leads, takes away from the work that your sales people really want to do. Luckily, there are digital tools that your marketing team can use to ease the pain.
Google Analytics is one of those important digital marketing tools, but it’s seriously underused by most businesses. It allows you to measure the results of individual campaigns in real-time, compare the data to previous periods, and so much more.
Here is how you can utilize the tool to find more warm leads for your business, and connect with them to build a relationship and improve your sales.
What is Google Analytics and why your business should use it
Google Analytics is a free web analytics tool offered by Google to help you analyze your website traffic, online advertisement and social media accounts. Google Analytics gives you the tools you need to better understand your customers. You can then use these business insights to take action in improving your website, content, and user experience so that you attract and convert your web traffic.
Google Analytics allows you to track many key performance indicators (KPIs) that covers all aspects of your business and is important for your growth. You can monitor the effectiveness of your digital marketing strategies, website content, brand awareness, customer engagement and behavior, and device functionality. All these metrics show you what is working well, and more importantly, what isn’t. Once you identify any issues your online presence may have, you can create the appropriate solution to help you reach your goals.
Google Analytics tool > Acquisition > Overview report
Google Analytics provides you the information needed to improve your website, and make it the best it can be. Besides Google Analytics, Google offers other tools that can boost your business growth. The best selling point for utilizing any of these tools are that they are free!
The Google Analytics Network report shows warm leads
The Network report has been around a long time, yet we don’t see clients use it very often. However, this report has a huge benefit, especially for B2B companies who could benefit from knowing which other companies or organizations are viewing their site.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”The #GoogleAnalytics Network report is a huge benefit, especially for B2B companies who could benefit from knowing which other companies or organizations are viewing their site. #inboundmarketing” quote=”The Google Analytics Network report is a huge benefit, especially for B2B companies who could benefit from knowing which other companies or organizations are viewing their site.”]
To be clear, Google will never give you the IP address of your visitor. However, they do report on the internet service provider of your website’s visitors. This means that universities, municipalities, larger companies and even some small ones, may pay to have their name branded by the internet service providers. Thus you will see their name listed as the internet service provider even though they may use Comcast’s telecommunication services.
To find this report, you must log into Google Analytics and then click on Audience, then Technology and lastly Network on the right-hand menu.
Once in the report, you should filter by the metrics “pages per session” or “average session duration” to find warm leads who have engaged with your content. Make sure to ignore adding any of the internet service providers to your contact list because it was one of their customers who visited your website.
For example in the report screenshot below, we would add “Volvo Information Technology” and “Ljungby Municipality” to our contact list of warm leads from October.
Google Analytics tool > Audience > Technology > Network report
We recommend adding in the secondary dimension of “landing page” to see which website content brought the lead to your site so that you can understand their intent. You can only have one additional dimension, if you want to see leads from a specific campaign, filter by a specific country or exclude these telecommunication companies – then we recommend that you create a custom Google Analytics report instead of using the advanced filter each time.
If you would like to see other webpages or articles that the warm lead viewed and see the visitor’s name instead of the company, then a marketing automation tool would do wonders for your sales team. Marketing automation tools, such as SharpSpring or HubSpot, would allow you to identify anonymous web visitors and track every action they took on any of your online channels. However, as for this article, we are only going to continue to focus on the manual steps to find and close a warm business lead.
Find your lead’s contact details using LinkedIn
Before you go clicking through the potential customer’s company website, you can be more efficient by finding the appropriate contact with LinkedIn. We all use LinkedIn to grow our network and find business opportunities, so leads active on LinkedIn are probably more willing to connect with you.
You should have in place a buyer person to help you focus on your ideal customer and the role they have at a company. If your buyer persona’s role is a HR Manager, when you search LinkedIn for the company, you would then focus on employees who have this role or is in this department.
For example, we found that one of our warm leads came from “Volvo Information Technology” in the network report. Now we would use LinkedIn to find HR Managers who work for this company. Once we have a potential name such as “Betty Butterworth”, we can easily Google “Betty Butterworth at Volvo Information Technology” to see if a webpage with her contact information comes up. If not, you can easily introduce yourself to her through LinkedIn.
Connect with your warm lead using Inbound Sales techniques
In today’s society, potential customers know that they can get more information by doing an online search rather than by taking a call from a salesperson. So instead of answering your call or email, they will delete your message as soon as they realize it’s just another salesperson.
Traditional sales focus on using the same generic script on every prospect. When it pertains to inbound marketing, there exist inbound sales techniques that you should use to focus on the potential customer’s unique needs, challenges, and goals. If you want to move your warm leads to hot ones, it’s essential to prioritize their needs before your own.
As an inbound salesperson, you would need to reach out to the customer by leading with a message that’s personalized to the customer’s context. Your goal would be to practice active listening and seek to understand the potential customer’s challenges and needs, and offer to help where you can. There is no offer being mentioned because the warm lead is still in the beginning stages of the customer journey. It’s up to you to provide helpful service to them at every stage of the customer’s journey in order to build trust and close more sales.
Here’s an example on how a conversation might occur when you call your warm lead with help from the inbound sales technique:
[Lead] “Hello, this is Betty Butterworth.”
[You] “Hi, Betty. This is Derrick from ABC Water Labs.”
[Lead] “OK?”
[You] “We have received a few inquiries from people at your company for information on water purification systems.”
[Lead] “Really? From who?”
[You] “That’s what I was hoping you could help me with. They didn’t leave their names. Is there someone in your company that might be focused on this topic?”
[Lead] “Maybe Tommy in research.”
[You] “Do you know why he may be looking for information on water purification systems?”
[Lead] “We’ve had some problems there.”
[You] “Problems, can you tell me what problems specifically?”
As you continue the conversation, make sure to ask the potential customer about their specific situation, provide help where you can, and continue to guide them through the customer journey either on this call or during a follow-up call. If the lead isn’t ready to move to the next stage – then share content with them from time to time to maintain that relationship. They’ll come around eventually.
Conclusion
Don’t let warm business leads hide in your Google Analytics Network report. These leads visited your website for a reason, and it’s possible that the only thing keeping them from buying your product or service is not 100% knowing if you are the right company to satisfy their need.
Give your sales team the opportunity to work with qualified leads by using the Google Analytics tool to find and understand your warm business leads’ needs.
What other reports in Google Analytics do you use to understand your potential customers, and methods do you use to start a conversation with them? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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