One of the largest components of a marketer’s job is to funnel high-quality leads to the sales team. But in today’s world, where the internet offers website visitors a cloak of anonymity, it can be difficult to generate leads by traditional means.
As an example, consider that on average only 2 percent of website visitors identify themselves by submitting a form or placing a phone call after browsing a website. 2 percent! Imagine how much value your sales team could generate if only they knew who the other 98 percent were.
That’s where these two free tools come in—Google Analytics and HubSpot Sales. Using them will help you identify the companies that are stopping by to check out your website, which will allow you to identify potential leads and also keep an eye on competitors who are looking to emulate you or do something different.
Using Google Analytics To Identify Website Visitors
Many companies already use Google Analytics to track and report traffic to their websites, but the insights that it offers are usually “big picture” insights, especially if the user isn’t aware of some of the custom reports that can be used to dive deeper into the information. Though these big picture insights—website sessions, new vs. returning visitors, etc.—are important, it’s the specific information hidden underneath that is especially helpful for your sales team.
B2B businesses, especially, benefit from knowing who is actively viewing their website, as this allows them to research potential buyers and, eventually, reach out to them.
Google typically makes it difficult to access this information, but you can get to it by creating a custom report. You can create all kinds of custom reports, but try this free custom report template that we created specifically to identify leads through Google Analytics.
By running this report, you will be able to identify the service provider of all of the visitors that have come to your website. Because this information is location based, if someone is visiting your website from a computer hosted by their company, this will tell you the company name of any visitor to your site. (Visits from mobile devices and from personal computers will likely include things like “Comcast” or some other internet service provider that you’ll need to filter out.)
By scanning this list of companies, you can see if any recent visitors to your site fit your image of an ideal buyer. And by digging deeper into the data with the tools built into Google Analytics, you can discover which pages were viewed, how long sessions lasted for, and a lot of other helpful information.
The one thing that you won’t get, however, is the name of the actual individual. But knowing the company that they work for is a great first step in conducting research that may eventually lead to a new customer.
Identify Hot Leads with HubSpot’s Free Prospects Tool
If you are an adherent to HubSpot, then you’re in luck: As long as you use the free CRM or HubSpot Marketing Free, you have access to a report that is similar to the Google Analytics one explained above—only even better.
The Prospects Report in HubSpot will tell you the service provider for any visitor to your site, just as the custom report in Google Analytics does, but HubSpot takes it a step further by auto-populating certain information so that you have an easier time understanding who your visitors are and what they are doing on your site.
Once you’ve completed these steps, navigate to Sales Tools > Prospects.
In addition to telling you the company name, HubSpot will also tell you the industry they work in, an estimate of the number of employees they have, an estimate of their annual revenue, the state/city they are located in, the source of their traffic, related companies, and a complete breakdown of the pages that they viewed on your site.
Just like the Google Analytics custom report, though, this won’t be able to tell you an individual’s name or contact information.
To streamline your efforts to connect with these companies, you can also favorite accounts or add the company to your CRM for future reference.
The Bottom Line
To effectively target the people who are visiting your website, you’ve got to know who they are. If they aren’t submitting forms or otherwise contacting you then you’ve got to get creative in your identification efforts. These two free tools are a great place for your sales or marketing teams to start their research.
