How You Can Leverage Data Analytics to Create Better Leads

Lead generation is ultimately the beating heart of a business. While of course, sales are what sustain business operations, leads are what bring in those potential customers that might make a purchase.

Whereas leads in the past might have come from appealing to foot traffic, advertising in the local paper or on the radio, or not too long ago on the T.V, these methods are no longer as effective. Most of the world’s customers have moved online, bringing effective marketing with them. As such, to put your brand in front of a prospective audience, you need to make the move onto the internet.

But it isn’t as simple as merely slapping up an online presence and leaving it at that, at least for any business that isn’t already a household name. The potential audience for your business is scattered across a plethora of different areas of the internet, each with its own niches. This poses the problem – if your potential audience has moved online, yet it is fragmented and difficult to reach, how can you possibly conduct an effective marketing campaign?

This is where data analytics can help. By tapping into the pool of data available online, examining what people search for, what they buy, and many other aspects of the customer journey, you can better identify what demographics match your target audience and where best to find them. But this is a simplistic summary of one benefit to employing data analytics. Let’s take a more in-depth look at exactly how it can boost your business’ lead generation.

Increase traffic to your business

We’ll start with the most obvious benefit to using data analytics – increasing the amount of traffic, and therefore customers, your business gets. By using data analytics, you can determine exactly where your leads come from. For example, how many come from your social media platforms, advertising campaigns, which browsers are used, and so on. With this data, you can plan your advertising campaigns better, in addition to saving resources wasted on platforms your audience doesn’t frequent.

Know your customers

Data analytics provides useful information not only on how your customers reach your site, but what they do when they get there. You will be able to track how long they stay on a page, what they interact with, and what products or services they express an interest in. This information is invaluable to your marketing team, as they will be able to use the behaviour of your customers to inform their actions.

One key area this information can affect is the usability of your website. Ultimately, you could offer the best products or services in the world, but if your site is a nightmare to navigate, very few will be willing to stick around. By using data analytics, you can see how your customers navigate your site, in addition to how long they stay. If you have a large number of your customers leaving your site or a given page immediately, you might have an issue. This is often referred to as the “bounce” rate, with a high rate indicating disinterest in many of your users, or an inability to understand the layout of your site. By collecting this data, you can tweak your site to be more accommodating to your customers’ wants and needs, helping with retention and ultimately, with conversions.

When you have a better understanding of your audience, you can market more effectively. For example, by knowing what parts of your site your customers frequent, you can create better offers, packages, or supply more relevant information. By doing so, you increase the likelihood of a successful conversion.

Data analytics shows where your audience comes from

Knowing the types of people that use your website, and how they use it, is incredibly important. However, of almost equal importance is knowing what areas of the world your audience come from.

There are several reasons behind this importance. SEO has different effects depending on the region. Certain search terms will be easier to rank for in some regions compared to others, while some search terms are simply a waste of time and resources. Advertising on social media also has differing outcomes depending on the area, in ways similar to SEO. By collecting this data, your sales and marketing teams will have the necessary knowledge to mount effective marketing campaigns, and make reliable plans for the future.

Know what sells and what doesn’t

It goes without saying that knowing which of your products or services perform well with your audience is good. Similarly, knowing what doesn’t is good to know too. By using data analytics, you will have easy access to this information, allowing your sales team to be more persuasive regardless of the situation.

Take, for example, a construction company.  One of their customers might be interested in a  conservatory extension, and so browses pages of that nature. They interact with some pages more than others, then reach out for a quote. By taking a look at the journey of this customer, a sales representative will be better equipped to give the customer satisfactory answers to their questions. By providing a good quality service, and making an effective sales pitch, of course, the customer is more likely to use the service.

Obtaining this data can be easier said than done, however. You’ll need to track your customers yourself, as the most readily available tools for data analytics do not delve into this much detail. There is certain software that makes it easier to gather this data, by logging what pages the customer was browsing beforehand. Whether you would like to use software, or a different method, is up to you.

Data analytics makes marketing more efficient

Marketing can be expensive. You often must set aside a considerable marketing budget if you expect to see a good return, which makes an unsuccessful marketing campaign quite the bitter pill. Data analytics can make marketing more efficient, allowing your marketing budget to reach further.

Tracking your customers’ journeys allows you to see what they engage with, showing what works and what doesn’t. This identifies wasted areas of the budget, which can be tweaked to increase performance, or scrapped entirely. Additionally, data analytics makes it easier to achieve successful conversions. With a more informed sales team providing a better service, more conversions are soon to follow.

This all works to increase efficiency, through means of cutting out fruitless costs, and through maximising performance. Whether you choose to cut down on your marketing spend, or invest more and reap greater rewards, is your choice. Either way, the benefits of data analytics are demonstrable, and certainly worth implementing into your business today.