More effective online marketing with B2B website visitor recognition
B2B Online marketing encompasses a variety of dimensions and measures: CPC campaigns (SEA / SEM) e.g. via Google Ads, search engine optimisation (SEO), content marketing, social media marketing, public relations (PR), lead generation, email marketing or marketing automation. Especially for SaaS companies and companies that sell products and services via their B2B website and deliver directly measurable campaign results, online marketing with all its facets is one of the most important disciplines for company growth. Successful SaaS companies pursue integrated and performance-driven online marketing strategies whose disciplines are optimally coordinated and can also be fine-tuned and optimised using key performance indicators (KPIs). The identification of B2B visitors on their own website is an instrument used by more and more B2B companies to increase the leverage and effectiveness of the other traffic-generating online marketing instruments.
Example of integrated B2B online marketing campaigns
For example, SEO and content marketing measures serve to generate organic traffic and direct it to specific landing pages. In order to make the best possible use of the incoming traffic in terms of the company's goals and to lead B2B website visitors to specific activities with so-called call-to-actions (e.g. newsletter registration, whitepaper download, webinar registration, trial registration, etc.), landing pages are designed to be as conversion-optimised as possible. Once B2B website visitors have decided to step out of their anonymity and register for a newsletter or whitepaper download, for example, the most important basis for guiding the user through the sales funnel on their "buyer's journey" has already been created via the subsequent double opt-in procedure. With context-sensitive contents of email marketing (newsletters, lifecycle mailings, marketing automation), which are adapted to the respective phase of the purchase decision process and his specific need for information (so-called lead nurturing), the interested party is successively guided through the marketing or sales funnel in order to support or shorten the decision-making process.
Social media campaigns can improve traffic flows by targeting specific groups and channels with context-sensitive content and increasing referral traffic to landing pages. With the help of UTM parameters, which are attached to the target URLs as tags and allow simple but targeted click tracking of campaigns, sources and media, the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns can be transparently and conveniently tracked across all channels.
But what about B2B website visitors who don't convert?
Conversion rates of 1 - 3 percent of B2B website visitors are quite common in the SaaS environment. Based on these and other insights (conversion rates "visit-to-trial", "visit-to-purchase", "trial-to-purchase", etc.) that can be gained with data analytics dashboards and SaaS metrics, the important levers of online marketing for performance-driven campaigns are evaluated. How high may the Customer Acquisition Cost for sign-ups be? Is it sufficient to increase traffic? Or does the lifetime value per customer need to be increased or lead generation costs reduced for campaigns to pay off economically and budget increases can be justified (keyword "scaling" online marketing)?
Identify and analyze B2B website visitors
But what about the 97-99% of B2B website visitors who don't convert? Are they lost to marketing? We say no. On the one hand, remarketing and retargeting campaigns can be used to target former B2B website visitors via ads. On the other hand, lead trackers and visitor recognition tools such as Leadinfo can identify and analyze B2B website visitors based on their static and, increasingly, dynamic IP addresses, at least up to a certain percentage (estimated at 10-30%, depending on the size of the provider database, industry affiliation and origin of the B2B website visitor). From which countries and which industries do my B2B website visitors come from? Referral or organic traffic? Which pages were visited by whom and how often? How long was the dwell time? Was it different people from the company or a single visitor? Some of this data can also be collected via targeted analyses from Google Analytics. But unlike Google Analytics, there is now the possibility to associate this data with specific company data, completely legally and DSGVO-compliant. Via a LinkedIn integration, which many of the tools for B2B website visitor identification already have as a standard feature, suitable contact persons including a LinkedIn profile are output immediately in order to establish an initial contact and evaluate the need.
Especially for SaaS companies that are mainly active in the B2B segment and allow online purchase or subscription, tools for identifying and analyzing B2B website visitors offer great added value to increase the effectiveness of online marketing and sales campaigns and to target specific visitor segments.
Is the use of B2B website visitor identification tools compliant with GDPR?
Leadinfo compares the identified IP address of the B2B website visitor with publicly available databases such as those of the chambers of commerce or their country-specific counterparts. It is true that IP addresses, such as those identified by B2B visitor recognition and lead tracking tools like Leadinfo, are considered private data for the purposes of the GDPR, the use of which requires a solid justification. A reason may be - according to Article 6 (Lawfulness of processing; Section 1f)) for example an own legitimate interest. The areas of "marketing" and "analytics" are commonly considered legitimate interests. In addition, private data is only used to a limited extent, IP addresses are not stored, and only publicly available company data is shared with users. Moreover, the first-party cookies deposited by Leadinfo, which are intended to provide information about how users use the website, are not linked to other information. Nevertheless, it is necessary to inform B2B Website users about the use of website user identification tools and related processing operations, e.g., as part of the website's privacy policy and cookie policy.
Integrating B2B website visitor identification tools like Leadinfo into the sales process
However, user recognition and lead tracking tools such as Leadinfo are not solely dedicated to identifying B2B website visitors, but also to segmenting identified B2B website visitors according to certain criteria in order to make it easier and more effective for the sales team to follow up on B2B website visitors and leads. For example, Leadinfo allows you to set up so-called triggers that automatically trigger certain actions when, for example, companies of certain industries, countries and regions, sizes or legal forms are identified. For example, if a B2B company with a certain industry code has accessed a specific subpage, the data of the identified company can be shared with the respective sales team, e.g. via email or via Slack. In addition, the assignment of arbitrary tags facilitates the further tracking process within the team, for example by assigning specific statuses to B2B website visitors. Important details such as the websites visited, the length of stay or the integrated lead rating of Leadinfo make it easier for the sales team to specifically track down needs and potentials and to align the sales approach with the interests of their digital footprint. Thanks to numerous interface connections to collaboration and CRM tools such as Hubspot, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, Zapier, Pipedrive and other software solutions, leads can also be integrated directly into existing sales tools and processed further.
If you need assistance with the identification and automated tracking of B2B website visitors or have questions regarding the use of Leadinfo, one of our consultants will be happy to assist you.
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