What if your marketing organization had NSA-level
surveillance and reconnaissance skills to gather real-time marketing
intelligence that could help your C-Suite make actionable decisions with the
same Command-Control approach practiced by super-spies? Well, it’s a rhetorical question. If your business’ marketing department isn’t
able to currently tell in real-time
who is visiting your web site, what their purchase intent is and provide ‘Caller
ID-like’ intelligence to Business Development, you might as well declare
yourself a relic of the Cold War and use a shoe-phone to present postmortem Google
Analytics that show what happened yesterday.
Right now, as you’re reading this blog, savvy corporate
marketers are embedding ‘Caller ID’ like visitor marketing intelligence
technology services that allows them to link a visitor to any corporate
communication objective from branding to public relations to reputation
management to sales and business development. And all of this information is sent via email
straight to their inbox in real-time.
Moreover, these savvy marketers, can
even design and profile (score) each digital corporate visitor and customize
the reporting so your C-Suite (Command Control) is informed of any and all new
potential business leads.
You might think that it might seem a little creepy to
collect this information before a sales prospect actually called or filled out
a form on your site, right? WRONG. Implemented correctly and acted upon ethically,
‘Know Your Visitor’ is not just a pre-sales intelligence tool but a powerful
strategic communications overlay that can help your entire brand communications
operations succeed and remain in-the-know.
Some of real business application scenarios that we advise B2B
clients to engage this technology with:
1.
Real-Time
Competitive Marketing Intelligence: A Big RFP is out and your business
development team is trying to figure out what the competition is doing and who
is checking you out. With visitor intelligence software, you can send that
intelligence in seconds to your BD Capture team and allow them to adjust their
strategic messaging for the ‘win theme’ accordingly.
2.
Real-Time
Crisis Communications: Wouldn’t you like to know if a reporter visited your
web site before they ambushed your CEO to dig up dirt? In fact, wouldn’t you
like to know what media groups are snooping around your corporate site
repeatedly?
3.
Real-Time
Recruitment Communications: When you are seeking candidates with certain
demographics, for instance looking to hire someone currently working for your
competitors, a huge lead for your Human Capital chief lies in the knowledge of which
companies seem to be visiting your Career page repeatedly. Or perhaps use this
information to form a preemptive strike to avoid the competition poaching from your
talented team?
4.
Real-Time
Business Impact & Metrics for Communications Campaigns: With visitor
intelligence at your fingertips, you don’t have to wait until a campaign is
over to see which content marketing campaign actually is driving traffic and
creating buzz. Campaign performance can be analyzed in real-time and reported
to your C-Suite to maintain corporate buy-in and real value of NSA-Grade
marketing intelligence.
You might be wondering what are the best
Visitor Intelligence technologies out there. In my experience, after evaluating
multiple platforms with a variety of clients, it appears that many of the
providers are using publically-available data links that interface with their
software. With these types of mixed-source software platforms, a visitor
logging in from a corporate domain that has a profile on LinkedIn and/or been
captured by Dun & Bradstreet or Data.com is highly likely to come with a
high level of detailed information, down to an accurate email address of the
top decision makers at the visitor’s company. Three solid options to consider
include Optify, LeadFormix,
as well as SalesForce.com.
So how do you become an NSA-Grade analyst
for your marketing organization and reap these incredible business benefits?
Step 1
– Select a marketing communications agency that can help identify and
prioritize the critical marketing intelligence data points that provide instant
value to your C-Suite. Ask them to audit your existing CRM system so which
Visitor Intelligence Technologies out there could be integrated with minimal
costs and maximum business value.
Step 2 – Select a Visitor Intelligence technology provider and ask
them for a trial period so you can actually validate and compare your Google Analytics
dashboard data to their newly provided analytics. During this trial period,
verify that the contact information provided about the corporate visitors is
accurate and up-to-date.
Step 3 – Create a Strategic Dashboard and ‘profile’ the most
important data points, mapping out an efficient process to get the intelligence
to the right hands so it is fresh, actionable, and relevant. Sales often looks
down at marketing because they feel you are wasting their time with bad
information and this is a chance to prove them wrong by providing hot leads in
real-time.
Step 4- Engage the entire C-Suite and share the top-line reports to
demonstrate the measurable value your marketing department provides as the ‘real
time pulse’ of the new information age.
Now don’t be shy, be a spy! It’s a
good thing for your business.
