Inbound marketers work hard developing personas to characterize their target customer, define what motivates them, and create an image that depicts to whom they are writing and selling every day. Prospect personas are a crucial component of a well-rounded inbound marketing strategy, but doesn't it sometimes feel a little...generic? We speculate about our prospects' wants and needs, but doesn't it seem like our inbound marketing process should back up speculation with something more concrete?
Inbound marketers who incorporate lead intelligence as part of their marketing funnel and conversion processes have fortunately found that personas are just the beginning, and online behaviors that marketing automation software tracks and records for sales follow up takes a prospect from a persona to a living, breathing, buying person.
Gathering and making use of lead intelligence gathered from on site and off-site behaviors can help increase conversions, enhance user experience, shorten your sales cycle, and gauge the effectiveness of your content and site design.
So what exactly should you track, and once you have the information, how do you use it? This guide outlines the type of lead information that will help your sales organization be more effective, and how salespeople can use inbound marketing intelligence to make their sales cycle shorter and yield more revenue.
8 Prospect Behaviors to Track and How to Use Them
1.) Lead Nurturing and Email Marketing Campaign Details - Lead nurturing through personalized email marketing is a crucial tactic for reducing the length of a prospect's sales cycle. In fact, Lonely Brand found out that 64% of companies that use email marketing to nurture leads close their business in 3 months or less, while only 43% of companies can boast a 3 month or less sales cycle that don't use email lead nurturing.
But it's important to make sure your email marketing efforts don't interfere with lead nurturing campaigns that your marketing automation software is running. Take a look at the email campaigns your leads have clicked through, and catalog the subject matter of those emails. This information provides insight into what content a prospect finds helpful, and what offers entice them. You should also check to see if a lead is currently a part of a nurturing campaign to ensure any emails you send don't overlap with what they're already receiving (or due to receive) from your automated campaign.
2.) First and Subsequent Conversion Events - Consider what top of funnel offer interested your visitor enough to fill out a form and become a prospect and what on your site keeps them converting. Monitoring each conversion events tells you which topics interest that particular lead so you can tailor your conversation to their needs. Take a look at this lead, for instance:
A salesperson who sees this lead history should notice that this prospect has downloaded multiple offers about social media for business and SEO and may be considering outsourcing their SEO services. A good conversation starter during the salesperson's first interaction with this lead would be around the way LinkedIn and Twitter are used, and questioning what they're doing for SEO and why they might consider outsourcing it. Knowing that these topics interest this lead, the salesperson could also conduct a pre-emptive audit of the prospect’s website, evaluate how well optimized it is for search, and note how the prospect is performing on social media before a conversation takes place so they're prepared with tips for improvement.
3.) Lead Source - How did the lead find your website? Are they coming from a PPC campaign? One of your social media accounts? A competitor's site? An organic search query? If you know how your lead arrived at your site, you can evaluate how well aligned that lead is based on past purchase history from other leads that arrive at your site in the same manner. Not only does this give marketing insight into which sources are driving the most qualified leads, but it also enables the sales organization to prioritize their time working with the leads to optimize for the highest close rate and shortest sales cycle.
4.) Pages Visited On Your Site - The more pages a lead has viewed on your site, the more interested they are in your company. After all, if you had the choice between talking to someone who visited 4 pages on your site and someone who visited 50, which person would you engage?
But you should also consider which pages a prospect visits on your site, as there are certain pieces of content and areas of your site that indicate a lead is closer to sales readiness. For example, a lead who visits your product and pricing pages may be more prepared to buy than someone visiting your 'About Us' page.
5.) Site Return Notifications - In sales, rapid response time is paramount. Harvard Business Review released a study that shows companies that contact prospects in an hour or less are 7 times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker than those who delay. Provide your sales organization the insight to know when leads are coming back to the site so they can prioritize their day and escalate leads in their queue. When you combine this information with knowledge of which pages they are visiting on your site -- like pricing pages, for example -- you know you should engage promptly to help them, answer any questions, and move the deal toward closure.
6.) The Stage in the Buying Cycle - What can you learn about a prospect’s stage in the marketing funnel based on the offers they are downloading? Are they at the top of the funnel and simply researching possible solutions, somewhere in the middle of the funnel downloading case studies and getting more information on your solution, or signing up for free trials, indicating a higher likelihood of purchase readiness? Knowing a prospect’s stage in the marketing funnel can help you prioritize your time, nurturing prospects that are in the middle of the marketing funnel and closing those that are near the bottom.
7.) Social Media Profile Information - Populate pictures of your prospects for a more personalized sales engagement, and get their Twitter handles and LinkedIn profile information so you can learn more about your prospect. By doing a little social media snooping, you could determine a prospect’s company and industry, investigate common connections, learn about their role in their business, determine their level of education on what you're selling, and even find out some of their hobbies and interests to make your conversation more personal.
8.) Social Mentions - Select important keywords -- like your brand name, competitors names, or product specific words -- and track when your prospects (or future prospects!) mention them on social media networks. Remember, response time is key, and if you can catch someone asking about an opinion on your product or service, you can get in touch with them and offer testimonials and case studies to support your brand promise. Alternately, if you find someone ranting about a competitor of yours, you can jump in and turn them into a new customer!
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