What Sales & Marketing Teams Should be Tracking: Big Data Part 3

In Big Data Part 1 we discussed the power of Big Data and how companies are using it to grow profitability. In Big Data Part 2 we presented the three most common misconceptions about embracing a big data strategy. In Part 3 we present what you should be tracking to improve your sales and marketing efforts.

Simple & Easy to Collect

From a sales and marketing perspective, we can now collect and process data in such a way that we can tell you exactly what your customers are thinking, what they want and what they are doing. As an example, if someone is at work and visits your website, you can attain the following data, all without the visitor willingly providing this information:

• The business the visitor to your website works for
• Where the business is located, including address, phone number, revenues, employees, etc. (See map image below)
• What the visitor typed into a search engine to find your website
• Which ad the visitor clicked on (if any)
• What website the visitor came from
• What pages the visitor visited on your website, what information they consumed and on what days
• How many times they have visited your website, by date
• How many employees from that same company visited your website, on specific dates

The screen shots below show an example from our website. On December 17, 2012 someone from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation visited our website at SyncShow.com. Our technologies tracked the following information.

You may be saying; "That's great but I need names of prospective customers and not just companies". Well, you can often get that information too. Many other companies are already employing these tactics to run circles around their competition. You can attain information about an individual when they visit your website including:

• Person's name and email address
• Company name and phone number
• How they found your website, what search term they may have entered or ad clicked
• What pages they visited on your website, how often and on which days
• Whether they read your emails or and what website pages the visited after opening your email
• If they downloaded your awesome content, watched a video or signed up for a demo
• When they converted from a visitor to a lead
• …and more

The information in the image below has been modified to ensure no personal information has been shared.

Let’s take all of this a step further. As referenced in Part 1: What if you could track a sale at your company all the way back to the initial contact that customer had on your website or corporate social media presence. What if you could track how many sales dollars you generated from your Facebook page or LinkedIn account? What if you could take all of this data, identify patterns and make informed, educated decisions about how to optimize your entire marketing and sales effort? With a little effort you can. First off you will need to implement two key integrated systems: Marketing Automation Software and CRM Software. My preferences are HubSpot or Act|On for marketing automation and SalesForce.com or Microsoft Dynamics for CRM. Second, you may want to sit down with your marketing and sales teams to discuss your strategies for lead generation and sales processes. When properly set up and integrated you can begin to harness the real power of big data. If you are not leveraging a big data approach to marketing and sales you are missing the majority of your opportunities.