The Ultimate Guide To Website Visitor Identification: ... and How It Can Power Your B2B Lead Generation
The Ultimate Guide To Website Visitor Identification: ... and How It Can Power Your B2B Lead Generation
The Ultimate Guide To Website Visitor Identification: ... and How It Can Power Your B2B Lead Generation
to Website Visitor
Identification
...and how it can power your B2B lead generation
TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
4
What is Website Visitor Identification?
7
How Website Visitor Identification Works
11
How Does It Enhance Your Growth
Marketing Strategy?
16
6 Practical Uses for Marketing Departments
24
7 Practical Uses for Sales Teams
32
Final Thoughts
2
INSIGHT
You’ll need to make sure the people you’re working so hard to attract are actually converting, and maximize the
value you’re able to extract from the 98% of website traffic that doesn’t.
If you’re able to understand your traffic, and get more value from the people already visiting, your marketing
department instantly becomes more efficient. Why? Because they know where to focus their efforts.
Sales teams, on the other hand, will have more quality leads coming from your current lead generating efforts.
They won’t need to constantly invest in new channels to drive new leads; they’ll be able to nurture potential
customers they already have.
So, how do you stop missing sales opportunities, and nudge people visiting your site towards making a purchase?
Website visitor identification software will shine a light on the anonymous 98% of non-converting website
traffic. It’s the best way to find (and close) opportunities you never realized you had.
• How to use the software to build on existing growth, sales and marketing strategies.
• The step-by-step process two companies have used to close more deals using
website visitor identification.
3
SECTION ONE
The software used to identify website visitors reveals information about the people visiting your website that
isn’t easily available in analytics platforms, such as Google Analytics. You’re able to view company names and
contact information for key people at the company, which enables sales and marketing teams to build accurate
profiles of customers.
That, in turn, gives you the ammunition you’ll need to generate and convert more high-quality leads.
Why? Because:
• Marketing teams have data to build a stronger strategy. They can view which content their top prospects
are engaging with and learn which traffic sources bring more ideal customers to the site while also
generating more leads from current traffic, and implementing more robust ABM campaigns.
• Sales teams are given company names of people browsing, enabling them to find warm leads that are
already looking for the product or service you provide. This reduces the need for aggressive sales tactics
(like cold calling), and slashes the time they’ll spend finding their own leads to reach out to. Instead,
they’re more efficient with their time--and able to focus on leads that are going to improve revenue.
(And, truth is, companies where sales and marketing teams work together see 36% higher customer retention,
and 38% higher sales win rates.)
Well, your marketing team can generate quality leads without the need for increasing media spend. By fine-tuning
your process with feedback from your sales department, you’ll just need to refine your marketing strategy and focus
more on channels which bring those dream customers to your site.
That’s bound to help shorten the gap between the 2% of website visitors who convert, and the 98% who don’t.
5
Here’s how we uncover your hidden leads.
We use Google Analytics to identify Your leads are prioritized based on what
companies visiting your site. they do on your site.
We enrich your leads with company and Automatically update your CRM or get
contact information. emails with lead data.
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SECTION TWO
Forward DNS
It’s 216.58.211.142
User DNS Server
Forward DNS
Who is 216.58.211.142?
It’s google.com
User DNS Server
8
Script vs. Google Analytics
Website visitor identification software typically works using one of these techniques:
• Syncing your Google Analytics data with the software, and extracting relevant data.
• Installing a script on your website which will collect the data directly.
Whichever technique you’re using, your website visitor identification software will then connect the dots,
and reveal which companies are browsing your site.
Then, the data collected is typically enriched with information already publicly available on the company, such as:
PRO TIP
Leadfeeder is powered by
connecting to your Google
Analytics, taking only 2
minutes to set up. You can
also install an additional
script, which provides
some extra data when
used in conjunction with
your Google Analytics.
9
Syncing your toolstack
Do you store data about current leads? Whether it’s from your PRO TIP
CRM, marketing automation software or communication
tool you use to speak with potential customers, you can Leadfeeder has a number of
integrate your toolstack to get more information on the native integrations with CRM and
people browsing your website.
automation systems, including
For example: If you’ve noticed a dream customer visiting Salesforce, Pipedrive, MS Dynamics,
your website (“Company A”), you’ve got two options: Zoho, Mailchimp and Hubspot.
You can also use Zapier to connect
• Create a new organization in your CRM,
Leadfeeder to over 1,000+ other
where your sales team can begin monitoring
systems in your toolstack.
them and marketers can use this data to build
better ABM campaigns.
Is it GDPR compliant?
A very valid question to ask--especially when not meeting
GDPR rules could land you a hefty fine of up to €20 million,
or 4% of your company’s annual turnover.
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SECTION THREE
However, you’re probably relying on CRO tactics, content marketing and paid media to generate leads from your
website. That’s a great place to start.
But you can supercharge the ROI from each lead generation tactic when you add website visitor identification
into the mix, because you’re able to:
• See the exact profile of companies browsing your website--including key details like industry,
employee size, location, and the names of employees who can be targeted.
• View typical pre-purchase behaviors, and prioritize nurturing new site visitors who demonstrate
the same behaviors.
• Analyze the companies clicking on your PPC campaigns, and track exactly what they do on your website.
• Locate the exact page a target lead converts (or exits) on your website.
In short: With website visitor identification, you can identify high-value potential leads who’re passing through
your funnel, sync them to your CRM, and pass them along for sales teams to nurture.
The best part? It can be done even if they don’t actively fill-in a lead capture form (such as an eBook download)
on your website.
TESTIMONIAL
By using Leadfeeder for online lead generation we’ve increased the amount of qualified sales leads by 34%.
We send website leads directly to our Pipedrive using Leadfeeder’s Pipedrive integration.
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The marketing funnel
Unfortunately, it’s tough to convince a first-time visitor to convert.
People go through a journey before handing over their hard-earned cash in return for a product or service, which
is why you’ve likely got a marketing funnel to nurture each lead as they flow throughout each five stages:
Awareness
Consideration
Conversion
Loyalty
Advocacy
But where does website visitor identification software fit into the mix?
Collecting data on your customers’ website activity at each key stage of the marketing funnel before making a
purchase, means you can use it to your advantage.
By knowing the exact companies who are progressing through your marketing funnel (as opposed to generalized
traffic numbers and conversion rates) can help you plug holes. You’ll know where previous leads drop-off, and fix
those issues to move them through the entire funnel much faster.
TESTIMONIAL
My role is to generate leads that fill up our sales funnel—or the top of the marketing funnel. The way that
we use Leadfeeder is really to figure out which prospects are visiting our website and figuring out the best
way to reach out to them. Maybe they haven’t yet reached out to us either, but now we can be proactive in
marketing to them and getting them into our sales funnel.
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Here’s how I might use that if I’m a B2B SaaS company, and want to understand how people travel through my
website on their journey from anonymous visitor to customer:
Awareness: I’ve just published a new blog post on my website, and it’s already driving a decent amount
of traffic via organic search. But I want to understand which companies are viewing it, so I use website
visitor identification. Based on the data being fed back, I can see the industry and company size of each
visitor, and build up a more accurate profile of the type of company suffering with the pain point my
blog post targets.
Consideration: I’ve built a landing page that explains how my SaaS solution solves the pain problem
discussed in my blog post. Now, I’m able to create an ABM advertising campaign on LinkedIn, targeting
the exact companies who viewed the initial blog post, and push them towards the landing page. Based
on my data, I can also build a list of similar sized companies in the same industry, and target them--
giving me a large pool of high value potential prospects to target.
Conversion: I set-up custom feeds and alerts in my visitor identification platform to send my sales team
an email (or Slack message) when each target company visits the landing page. Then, they’ll check the
lead’s previous website activity, sync the data to our CRM, and find the best person to contact via the
visitor identification platform. It’s only a matter of time before we make the sale!
Regardless of how you’re using data shown within website visitor identification software, your overall growth
strategy becomes less of a numbers game based on anonymous traffic. You’re shining the light on people already
browsing your website, and using their activity to target them with personalized campaigns.
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Account-based marketing (ABM)
You’re already one step ahead if you’ve started to implement ABM into your marketing strategy.
87% of B2B marketers have agreed that ABM delivers a higher return on their investment than other marketing
activities, and companies already using ABM generate 200% more revenue for their marketing efforts.
You’re able to use the data inside your website visitor identification report to improve your ABM campaigns even
further by:
1. Building more accurate profiles of your ideal companies, and targeting them through ABM
campaigns, based on the types of companies visiting key pages on your website.
2. Assessing the performance of your current strategies by identifying the companies browsing your
site from various campaigns.
3. Powering ABM campaign targeting across several platforms, such as LinkedIn and display
advertising, using the data you’ve collected on each company.
Let’s say you want to get started with ABM, but you’re not entirely sure who your ideal target should be. You use
visitor identification to view which companies are visiting the pricing and product pages on your website, since
those are pages people view when they’re closer to a conversion.
You build a profile for each company visiting those pages, and begin targeting similar companies with the same
qualities (such as industry, company size or location) through your marketing.
Two weeks pass, and you check the data in your visitor identification software again. Boom! You can see which
companies have engaged with your campaign and visited your website.
You know your ABM campaign is paying off because Company A has visited your pricing page, so your sales team
reaches out to the decision maker at Company A via LinkedIn. They already know the content and campaigns
their target has engaged with, so the sales reps can personalize their outreach.
Then, after warming up the prospect, they send a personalized pricing plan for a company of their size, and book
a software demo--with the intention of converting them into a customer.
TESTIMONIAL
We use the data from Leadfeeder to build ABM campaigns across LinkedIn and Google. By targeting job
functions within the company, and not just the individual website visitor, we get the opportunity to influence
multiple stakeholders in the buying process. We automate the process via Leadfeeder’s Zapier integration
and for high value accounts we dive even deeper and create specific messaging based on job titles and the
individual pages they have visited on our website. So far we’ve reduced the length of our sales process by 20%
and the marketing team is generating substantially more targeted leads for sales than before.
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SECTION FOUR
Buyer personas are documents that define your ideal customer. They include key traits like their age, job title,
interests, location, and pain points, and allow you to understand exactly who you’re targeting.
(Not convinced? Consider this: Buyer personas make websites 2-5 times more effective, and helped one
company to increase the volume of leads sent to sales by 10%, while also reducing their lead conversion time
by 72%.)
You should have buyer personas for each “type” of ideal customer that you’re looking to attract. If you have
multiple--like agency owners and in-house marketers, for example--create a different buyer persona document
for each one. Over 90% of a company’s sales come from 3-4 buyer personas, so don’t be afraid of creating more
than one.
But where does website visitor identification fit into buyer personas?
The answer: When you’re creating them. All buyer personas you’re creating should be data-driven--not based
on guesswork.
Presuming that your target customers have a certain quality is dangerous because you might spend hours
targeting people that fit the mould, but don’t actually end up converting. That won’t do any favors for your
conversion rates (nor make sales departments very happy).
INSIGHT
56% of companies have developed higher quality leads by using buyer personas.
Source
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Adding website visitor identification into the mix will strengthen your buyer personas even more. Why? Because
you’re able to view the characteristics (such as industry, employee count, and location) of each company visiting
your website, and learn how they move through the buyer journey to conversion.
Start by taking a look at the people who’re visiting your website and give them a lead score.
For example:
• Company A has a lead score of 8: They work for LinkedIn (one of your dream customers), have
visited your services page, and read three relevant blog posts.
• Company B has a lead score of 1: They work for a smaller company with three employees, and only
read one blog post before hitting the exit button of their browser tab.
You’re more likely to focus your lead generation efforts on Company A, right?
If you find a similar pattern across the board (such as content consumption, company size and referral website),
build them into your buyer persona documents. Your marketing team will then have a better understanding of
the leads they’re trying to bring in--and focus on strategies that’ll make it happen.
You’re able to view both company and individual browsing data to understand how people flow through their
journey to purchasing, and answer key questions like:
3. Which marketing channels are driving leads to our website at each stage of the buyer journey?
That data is invaluable for marketers because it helps you boost conversion rates through improving buyer
journeys for your potential customers.
INSIGHT
Engaging users with relevant content at each stage of the buyer journey
yields 72% higher conversion rates.
Source
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Let’s put it into practice using the questions above:
1. 95% of my converting website traffic views 5+ pages before purchasing, so I’ll add more internal
links in my content and improve my navigation bar to make that easier for future visitors.
2. People who convert spend a lot of time viewing my About page (4.5 minutes), so I’ll improve the
overall design and use storytelling on that page to build relationships.
3. 30% of my conversions come directly from Google AdWords, but only 3% come from Facebook
Ads. However, 20% of conversions clicked on one of my Facebook Ads earlier in their journey, but
the lack of conversions shows they’re not ready to purchase yet. So, I’ll change the focus (and
content) of my Facebook ads to educate buyers in the middle of their journey, as opposed to trying
to drive a direct sign-up.
Remember: Each conclusion is based on facts and hard data, not guesswork. That’s the aim with any new
marketing strategy.
But with website visitor identification software and data from Google Analytics, you can make your entire
process more streamlined by understanding exactly which content you should be focusing on.
For example: Look at how the companies you’d love to work with are engaging with your current content, and
ask yourself the following questions for each target lead:
• Who’s reading what content? Focus on whether certain types of companies are reading particular
types of content--whether that’s listicles, long-form content or text based around infographics
Then, create more of the content your target companies are reading.
• How long do they typically spend on a piece of content? If it’s not much time, consider shortening
the length or formatting the page so it’s scannable.
• How do they find these blog posts? If a huge chunk of them arrive from organic search, focus on
SEO and put more effort into optimizing each page for a highly-converting keyword.
• How many blog posts do they typically read before converting? If it’s more than one, add internal
links to other assets in your library to encourage further reading for new website visitors.
INSIGHT
47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.
Source
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INSIGHT
For example: You know the type of companies downloading your lead generation content, but do you know the
ones that aren’t engaging--and you wish were?
Figure out the type of companies coming to your website and not becoming leads using website visitor
identification, then search for a way to start turning those companies into leads. That could include:
• Creating downloadable content, such as eBooks or whitepapers, more specifically tailored to those
companies’ industries, interests or pain points.
• Adding more specific calls to action on your website that speak to those companies pain points,
rather than generic buttons like “sign-up”.
• Building different landing pages for each stage of those companies’ buyer journeys, and experimenting
with other lead generation tactics--such as using live chat software to open a conversation when
they’re actively browsing your website.
If your target customer is similar to QuickBooks (who’ve already visited your website), take a look at where
they arrived from. Was it organic search, through a Facebook Group, or from an external blog post you were
mentioned in?
Alternatively, if a company hasn’t downloaded a lead generation asset, but fits your target customer and is
showing a high level of intent (such as visiting a product or pricing page multiple times), send them directly to
your sales team. They’ll be able to source the ideal contact at the company using data in your visitor identification
platform, and reach out to them directly, with the hopes of bringing them on as a customer.
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Build stronger ABM campaigns
Account-based marketing happens when you’re taking an uber-
INSIGHT
personalized approach to bringing them on as a customer. It provides
each target customer (or “account”) with marketing material that’s
tailored to their budget, company and individual requirements. On average 6.8
different people are
Let’s say you’re attempting to get an ABM program off the ground,
involved in the B2B
for example. You aren’t entirely sure where to start, or you’re looking
buying process.
for a way to improve the ABM strategy you’ve had in-place for a
while that isn’t getting as many results as you’d hoped. Source
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By creating Custom Feeds (filtered lists of companies who perform a set of actions) in your visitor identification
platform, you can identify specific companies that view certain content, or engaged with specific campaigns.
This will then give you the chance to target anyone who works at those companies by:
Firstly, unlike generic website retargeting, you’re not wasting money to advertise to website visitors that don’t
fit your ideal customer profile (and are unlikely to convert).
Secondly, you can target anyone from the company who’s visited your website--not just the individual user
who actually visited. That’s fantastic when multiple people are involved in the average B2B buying process
(6.8 people, on average).
Finally, you can get more personal with the accounts you’re targeting, and display advertising messages based
on their on-site behavior. Speak to specific industry pain points and opportunities with your messaging to guide
your target account to the next stage in their buyer journey.
Let’s say you want to know the exact route your current customer (Customer A) has taken from being a stranger
to making a purchase.
In Google Analytics, we can see 50 visitors came from a LinkedIn PPC campaign. Using the source/medium
filters to create a custom feed of those visitors in your website visitor identification software, you can view the
actual companies browsing your website from that exact LinkedIn campaign.
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How Triuvare identified (and contacted) ready-to-convert leads
It’s all well and good for us to explain how you can use website visitor identification in marketing, but you want
to know how other marketing teams have used it successfully, right?
Enter: Triuvare, an agency who provide IT-specialist services for small and medium-sized organizations, and use
Leadfeeder’s data to improve their content marketing strategy and convert more website visitors.
Johanna Rytkonen, their Marketing and Communications Manager, sums up perfectly the need for personalized
content:
Triuvare identified their ICT Tendering Guide was a key piece of content read by target customers who were
much closer to making a final purchasing decision.
So, they used Leadfeeder to collect the company names of people viewing that page, and prioritized contacting
them since they understand “it is very important to contact them as soon as possible, as that has proven impact
on which provider the customer will choose.”
The result?
Triuvare were able build a more refined content creation and promotion process by understanding what content
attracted their best customers, improving the ROI of their entire content marketing strategy.
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SECTION FIVE
7 Practical Uses
for Sales Teams
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Now we’ve covered how
your marketing team
can use website visitor
identification software,
let’s move onto sales teams.
From identifying high-quality leads to pitching your services to
them, here are seven practical tips for sales reps to make the most
out of website visitor identification.
For example: Your sales representatives might know that your ideal
customer works for a mid-size company. They know your customer
base is usually a company with 100-200 employees, and are based
in the U.S.
But it’s almost impossible to find and target every company that fits
that criteria--unless you spend hours upon hours trawling through
the internet.
INSIGHT
You can actually get every piece of vital information on each
company directly from your visitor identification platform, including
the number of employees and their industry. There’s no need to leave 37% of sales people
and head to Google, spending hours manually scraping information say prospecting is
about them from several sources. the hardest part of
From there, you can start to identify key contacts your sales team
the job.
should be targeting. Source
25
TESTIMONIAL
26
“Warm-up” cold outreach INSIGHT
By making your first contact with them less sales-y, you can get on
their radar before pitching. Then, when you do make the ask for a
sale, they already know who you are.
Now you’re able to identify which companies are visiting your website
and find a decision maker through LinkedIn, why not use LinkedIn’s 83% of people trust
contact features to ask a mutual connection for an introduction? a brand or product
recommendation
That could be as simple as this LinkedIn message to your shared from friends or
connection: family.
Hey! I noticed you’re connected with [prospect name]. Someone Source
from [company] recently viewed our website, and I really think
they’d benefit from our [product/service]. I’d really appreciate an
intro to [prospect name], if you have the time. Thanks!
90% of decision makers say they never respond to cold outreach emails.
27
But by reducing the “stranger” feeling that your leads associate with
a cold outreach email, and swapping that with an introduction from
someone they trust, it’s a surefire way to make sure your pitch is
opened--leaving potential for a conversion.
• 3-5 employees
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A company who’ve only visited one page on your website might not
be ready to purchase, but a company who are further along (and
have browsed your service, product and about pages) might be.
You should follow-up with every dream customer who visits your
website. It’s the approach that matters--not whether or not you PRO TIP
make the effort.
For example: If Company A only visits one page on your website, Get alerts sent straight to
reach out to them via LinkedIn without the intention of selling. They your email when prospects
aren’t likely to be far in their purchasing decision after only viewing you’re tracking visit your
one page, but getting yourself on their radar is a great way to drive website, or use Leadfeeder’s
them back to your site to learn more. native integrations with
Slack and Google Hangouts
Company B (who view your product, about and service pages), on the
to get an alert sent to your
other hand, might be worth outreaching to via email. They’re much
favourite chat app.
further along in their purchasing decision, and could be more prone to
opening a pitch if they recognize the brand behind the email address.
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Personalize sales messages
Personalization is a fantastic way to build trust with sales prospects--a feeling they’ll need to experience towards
your brand before making a purchase.
Don’t believe us? A report by Deloitte found 36% of consumers want to purchase personalized products or
services, and 48% said they’d be willing to wait longer in order to receive a personalized product or service.
Website visitor identification is a fantastic way to personalize your sales pitch, with the hopes of closing more
deals with your leads.
That’s because you’re able to understand the problems individual prospects are facing (through browsing
which company has viewed which piece of content), and tailor your outreach for that pain point.
Let’s put that into practice, and say Business A had viewed these three pieces of content:
A shared pain point (or the problem those blog posts solve) relate to understanding their customers. So, my sales
reps personalize their outreach messages for Business A, and include “struggling to understand your customers?”
as their email subject line.
This works because we’re solving a pain point they’ve explicitly searched for a solution for (or expressed an
interest in), and tailoring our messages to each lead. That proves we’ve taken time to understand them, and
guarantees a personalized solution.
In a nutshell: Think less “spray and pray”, and spend more time using data you already have to personalize your
outreach emails to boost both open and conversion rates.
INSIGHT
Personalized email
messages improve
click-through rates by
an average of 14% and
conversions by 10%.
Source
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How AlertOps increased sales demo rates by 700% using Leadfeeder
Prior to using Leadfeeder, AlertOps--an IT alert management platform built for enterprise DevOps teams--
were doing some cold outreach with very little success. They struggled to connect with the leads their sales
department were working, mainly because they didn’t have a process in place to guide website visitors through
their sales pipeline.
So, they started using website visitor identification to view what their customers were doing on-site, and
personalized their outreach approach accordingly.
AlertOps sent information on prospects identified by Leadfeeder to their CRM (Pipedrive). That allowed them
to personalize their approach to prospects: “Now when we reach out to prospects, we are able to frame the
conversation around their interests and provide value up front based on their behavior on our website.”
That solved the sales pipeline issues, and subsequently improved their connection rates.
So much so, that within just 30 days of using Leadfeeder’s Pipedrive integration, they were able to increase
their sales demo rate by 700%--and even booked a sales demo with a Fortune 500 company.
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SECTION SIX
Final Thoughts
32
We’re steering into a world where customers
are becoming increasingly demanding about
the brands they’re purchasing from.
They want personalized marketing, and if you fail at providing them with value to solve individual problems,
you’ll have a tough job making the sale.
Website visitor identification can bridge that gap--both for marketing and sales departments.
Whether you’re:
...you can use website visitor identification software to take someone from “stranger” to “customer” quicker than
ever before.
Remember: The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing--it’s personal. Use the data collected by website
visitor identification software to make the connection today.
33
Drive your growth with Leadfeeder
Wondering if website visitor identification can help your growth?
Then take a 14 day free trial of Leadfeeder and find out.