What’s the Difference between Tracking Website Visitors and Identifying Website Visitors?
By Joy Morales
Not too long ago, I was meeting with a client, and I asked what are your goals for 2022 in terms of sales? His answer was we want to rule the world. I laughed, and I said that reminded me of Madonna and her interview back in the day. Ok, now I have dated myself.
Anyway, our conversation moved on to the avenues they are going to use to increase sales to recover from the pandemic. We went through what they currently do. All great things.
But then I asked, if you could identify who was coming to your website, would you reach out to them? He said of course, we already do that. And then I patiently listened to his explanation of what they did. I agreed with him. When he was done, I said but that is reaching out to people filling out the form or conversing on the chatbot. What about people that are just looking at the website? What if they haven't made any effort but just shopped or were looking around. If you could identify those people, would you reach out to them? Now, I got his attention.
You see, most people get a Google analytics report that describes how many people visited the website, what pages were the most visited, how much time was spent. This is tracking the visitors' actions. All that information is excellent as foundational data for the marketing efforts put forth. The company tracks what a visitor is doing when they come to the site—pretty standard data.
Now, a tool can put a name, address, and email address to that visitor. Pretty amazing technology. Now a company can know WHO. The visitor can be identified when they come to the company website.
It’s the difference between tracking and Identifying. Big difference. Game changer, actually. When you know who is coming to the website, then initiating a connection can take place. What a great way to make a connection. No more waiting for Facebook interaction, or behavioral traits guessing…It’s actual data of who is visiting the website.
That's the difference between tracking and identifying website visitors.
Reach out to Joy at Joy@npmarketinggroup.com