For new Hubspot users the Prospect Tracking Tool may not seem to have a lot of value as the tool only gets down to the Internet Service Provider level. For example, when a prospect logs in at a location other than the office, it is probably going to log their visit as Verizon, Sympatico HSE or Starbucks. You may not be sure what you can do with that information or even if it has any value at all. It can be pretty vague.
So what IS the value of this tool?
If you're just starting out with Hubspot and inbound marketing, try not to get too hung up on the Prospect Tracking Tool, especially after only a few weeks or months of results. It is just the beginning of the whole inbound marketing process. When your business first starts with inbound marketing, many of the major sources of organic search traffic that land on your site have "[your company name]" in the search terms. This doesn't give you a full picture of the potential of the traffic that will come to your site and where it originates.
At this point, most companies have not fully optimized their website pages, completed on-page and off-page SEO, built external links to drive traffic, created a blog or crafted any offers and calls-to-action that will really build organic search traffic. The Prospect Tracking Tool only shows you what your site traffic is at that point in time and where it's coming from. Inbound marketing is really about driving conversion of traffic into leads and leads into customers. Once you get rolling with inbound marketing, you'll see this change.
The Prospect Tracking Tool is the first step in the process that allows you to know which companies are viewing your website, even when they haven't filled out a form. If you listen carefully to what your prospects are telling you through this tool, it can provide you with the roadmap you need to follow that will ultimately make your inbound marketing efforts a resounding success. Here are 4 great uses for HubSpot's Prospect Tracking Tool:
1. See Who is Landing on Your Website
Most visitors to your website will not end up converting into leads. Who are these visitors and what originally brought them to you? The primary value of this tool is to analyze the data presented and use it to craft better content that will encourage visitors to convert into leads. You can identify the companies that are visiting your website and understand what content brought them to you and what content they viewed. Once prospects convert on an offer and become leads, then you have a more complete profile of your leads. This alone makes it a very powerful tool.
2. Get a Deeper Understanding of Your Prospects
Not all of the traffic landing on your site will come from general ISP's such as Sympatico HSE, Verizon or Starbucks. Many companies have their own IP addresses, so those companies will show up on your Prospects tool. For each company that shows up in the Prospect Tab, this tool will show you valuable data such as: when did they first landed on your site; what search term they used to land on your site; how many different pages they viewed; and how many different visitors from that company have looked your website.
3. See What Matters to Your Prospects
The Prospect Tracking Tool is also a very powerful analytical tool. Because the Prospect Tracking Tool shows you the search term used by the visitor, the pages they visited and how much time they spent on each page, this lets you see what questions they may have and products or services they may need. This is a great way to figure out what blog posts and other content you should be producing to answer their questions. Your prospects are telling you what your value proposition is to them. The more time visitors spend on a particular page or topic, the more priority you should put on developing content around that topic.
4. Export and Share Company Information With Your Marketing and Sales Team
You can share all of your prospect information with others on your marketing and sales team. From a sales perspective, you will find that this is a great source of company intelligence that your sales team can use to follow up with their customers. Sales people are always looking for good reasons to call on their prospects or customers and strike up another conversation that will lead to another sale. The Prospect Tracking Tool will give them great insight into what the hot button topics are within that company and help them identify other potential contacts within that company. We have used it effectively in the past to get referrals from known contacts in the same company where an 'anonymous' prospect performed the search that landed on our site. By asking questions relevant to the topic being searched, we were able to get introduced to the 'anonymous' prospect through our existing contact. The sales process was accelerated and instantly, the prospect became a lead.
Regardless of where an anonymous prospect logs in, whether it be at home, the office or Starbucks, listening to what questions or interests they express through the Prospect Tracking Tool will provide you with the ammunition you need to create relevant content that will engage your prospects and convince them to begin a conversation with you that can ultimately turn into a sale.
