Uncover Hidden Leads with Google Analytics
The following article is describing one of the best lead generation tips for B2B websites, taking advantage of a less know report in Google Analytics. Please note that this is an advanced technique involving creating profiles, custom filters, custom reporting and the use of advanced filters. You should be familiar with all of them before or learn how to use them before you start implementing it.
I will share how to uncover those leads who are coming to your website but are not submitting their contact details (sign up for a white paper, inquire about your products, etc). I am calling these leads the hidden leads or missed leads. Sounds interesting already?
Once you’ve identified someone from a certain company who came to your website searching for a particular keyword (usually you can associate keywords with your services/products), do your homework and discover a contact name from that company, pick up the phone and start selling hard (by asking if, by chance ;), they need the services you’re selling). Some of them will be amazed how you’ve found them, some will be upset, but you’ll be happy with the results.
Using Google’s Analytics profiles, filters and custom reporting you will:
- be able to identify the company the lead came from, even if he didn’t submit his contact details
- discover the service that “mystery shopper” is interested in
- call and ask is he is interested in my services (the cherry on the cake!)
Your website is converting at a low 1-5% and you’re paying big bucks to drive quality traffic to your website, with SEO, PPC or banner campaigns. Some of the organic traffic will not be relevant since search engines may rank your website for strange search phrases. But what about the traffic coming from you highly targeted, core keywords like your service/product name (i.e. hospital management software)? What is happening with those 95 out of 100 people coming on your website, using your targeted keywords and not contacting you? Who are they?
This tip uses, one of the probably least used GA report, network location. You can find it under Visitors–>Network Properties –>Service Providers
Step 1
Create a new profile for your GA account, since you are going to filter data and you don’t want to alter the original data.
Step 2
Add the following custom filters to the newly created profile:
Filter 1: Since I am targeting only leads from North America, I will include only traffic from Canada and US
Filter 2: Exclude some generic words used the most by common ISPs
For this filter I am using the following pattern, but you should use your own: network|earthlink|telecom|ip|pty|cable|communications|broadband|university|embarq|
allstream|college|university
You can you can add more filter words (use “|” as OR delimiter) by analyzing your Network Location report and searching for the organization name to check it it’s an ISP or not
Filter 3: Exclude specific ISP names from your reports
I use this filter pattern :shaw|communications|kintiskton llc|road runner holdco llc|comcast cable communications inc.|nib (national internet backbone)|telus communications inc.|rogers cable communications inc.|verizon internet services inc.|deutsche telekom ag
Again, you can and should add more filter words (use “|” as delimiter) by analyzing your Network Location report and identifying local ISPs.
If the ISP list is bigger than Google’s filter pattern limit of 1024 chars (and it will) you will need to add other filters with the same settings as filter #3, only that the filter pattern will be different.
Step 2
Create a custom report with the following settings
Then apply the report and have fun and with data. Each keyword will tell you the kind of service the hot lead is interested in. If you have too many unrelated keywords in the report use the advanced filters at the bottom of each report table, to look at specific keywords only:
Step 4
Once you identified the company name and the services (keywords) they are interested in, create a free Jigsaw (or other sources ou use to get business contacts data) account and search for the marketing manager of that company.
Step 5
Call the guy and ask his is he is not (by chance) interesting in the targeted service ;)
Note: there are services out there selling similar services in the $2500+ per year, which I would recommend you to buy if you can, but I thought you might enjoy some food for the brain (of which Google Analytics is providing more than enough)
Pitstop Media offers ROI based internet marketing services results oriented web analytics services. With the use of Google Analytics we’ve helped companies reduce paid advertising cost by 148% while we increased their conversion rates by as much as 410%. Let us increase your conversion rates, too!










