Even in the fast moving online space, concepts and trends can take time to gather momentum. Certainly the more savvy B2B online marketeers among us have pioneered customer and web intelligence, but the pace has been variable. There’s no doubt that older generation web marketing practices still prevalent in many businesses. So how best to embrace the new world of customer and web intelligence?
In a three part feature we’ll move from early digital strategies to the present day challenges of customer and web intelligence, big data and social media. What impact are they having on our strategies and how do we plan for them?
Beyond those ‘early insights’
There’s a whole new and emerging generation of smart online marketeers who may well be blissfully unaware of early basic insights once gleaned from the fundamental off-the-shelf tools that revealed website visitor behaviour.
Today’s web marketeers are moving beyond the simple capture of information from their websites. New generation tools – and the rise of a new generation of professionals and disciplines that accompany them – are breaking ground in analysing and interpreting customer and web intelligence in order to impact the bottom line and customer relationships.
With disciplines such as ‘web or lead forensics’ marketeers now get deep and revealing insights into the behaviours of websites visitors. It’s these insights that marketers can turn into plans, tactics and strategies that build customer relationships and target sales, including the right way to further engage prospects and customers.
Bring it on-board
As the market and practices evolve, embracing this new world of customer and web intelligence will no longer be an option. It will become the accepted school of business thought. Customer and web intelligence have arrived and the trend in its adoption is irreversible.
Consider these examples: one company, Octlink, say they have grown revenues by £30,000 – £40,000 a month. Big 4 UK Bank said they achieved a “300% ROI.” And a firm of solicitors saw ROI within one month. Many more examples exist.
So the business case is compelling. Embracing customer and web intelligence as part of the sales and marketing mix, and driving business development, is the new way forward for many online savvy companies.
The technology behind the scenes
Underpinning the discipline of customer and web intelligence is IP (Internet Protocol) addressing. An IP address is the address where the machine you’re using connects to the internet.
Basically, from IP addresses, with the right tools and know-how organisations can build profiles of customers and prospects, including information about the name of an organisation, their servers, number of visitors from that organisation, their online behaviour, dates, times and a lot more.
Using the right tool, skills and interpretation, savvy B2B marketers can use this intelligence to build company profiles, which can evolve to a sophisticated view that offers actionable insights to help further develop the business and better manage customer relationships.
Irreversible
B2B marketers may be aware of a few important facts about website behaviour that will help in interpreting customer and web intelligence. The first is that people will of course research before they buy. In fact, 83% of B2B buyers research online before making a purchase decision. Without web intelligence, you’d simply not be aware that this research was going on.
Two more interesting facts are that fewer than 1% of people do something to communicate with the website owner when they visit a website. And 99% of people who visit your website never pick up the phone.
This is critical. B2B sites are part of a relationship building process, and with web intelligence you know who is researching on your site and what they’re looking for.
You can use that information. You can measure campaign responses and the distribution of your campaign messages internally. You can assess who is interested in what products or services. And you can target your marketing and customer relationship activity towards those organisations who you know to be interested in you.
So again, the trend is as clear as it’s irreversible. Online savvy organisations are increasingly embracing customer and web intelligence. This gives them the means to make sure their websites engage effectively with customers and prospects.
More than that, it means they as a business can engage more effectively, using their tools and skills to determine the best approaches to interested customers and prospects. Ultimately, that means ROI and better customer relationships.
But it goes further, as we’ll see in our next two articles. You can complement customer and web intelligence with an analysis of your social media strategy. Taking that further you can begin to develop marketing and business strategies based around this new intelligence.
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Next issues:
Gaining insights? Having understood the need to embrace customer and web intelligence tools and techniques, how do you gain the insights you need?
Charting new territory. How will powerful trends like Big Data and social media impact your customer and web intelligence activities?
