In the good ol’ days you’d probably be running a small business like a Mom ’n’ Pop store. Your customers would be your friends and neighbors. You’d know what they like, what they don’t like, what they buy and when they buy it. Chances are you’d have everything bagged up and run through the register by the time they’d got to the counter.
It was a simpler time back then, when if we wanted to know about our customers, we’d just ask them. There was no need for CRM, profiling or visitor tracking.
But guess what. Now isn’t then!
If you run an online store or use e-commerce in any way then you’ll know the importance of knowing your customers and repeat visitors in an impersonal online world. Your website is probably hemorrhaging customers like a bucket with a hole in it as repeat visitors come to your website every day but never seem to spend a dime. Fortunately, you’ll be surprised to know what you can find out about them and how you can use that knowledge to your advantage.
It’s time to lock them down and plug up those leaks.
Building a profile
If you have a website then you probably use a landing page with a sign-up sheet or another compelling call to action. While these are great strategies for qualifying leads, they’re fundamentally flawed simply because so few people take action. Using a platform like Visual Visitor can allow you to catch the 98% of visitors who don’t bother to respond to your call to action or fill in your sign-up sheet.
Think of a visitor as a digital browser rambling through your online store, perusing shelf after shelf of your products. You’d probably get a fair idea by looking at which shelves they stopped at and for how long they looked. It would probably give you a pretty good idea of what they’re interested in and likely to buy even if they’re not here to make a purchase today.
Using a marketing automation platform enables you to do exactly that, giving you access to useful and actionable information including:
Seeing which pages are most popular and generate the most leads.
Identifying existing customers and leads when they visit your site (and alerting sales teams).
Seeing what your existing customers are looking at / browsing.
Seeing what pages viewers keep coming back to allows you to quantify their interest and convert them into a lead.
Turning visitors into qualified leads
Most companies are so busy thinking about their qualified leads and converting them into qualified leads that they neglect the unqualified leads that will one day be your loyal, repeat customers. It’s important to keep them engaged and coming back to you so that you’re at the forefront of their minds.
This is where content marketing becomes your new best friend. By posting regular content and promotions that are attuned to their product preferences and tracked habits, you’ll ensure that they keep coming back to you again and again as visitors, as leads, as customers and eventually as advocates.
