In the “olden days”, a website was part of an SMB’s collateral; you had one because it equaled credibility, or because everyone said you had to have one.  It was part and parcel of the main “all or nothing” goal of marketing; get them to call your phone number.  You were skeptical of anyone who came near you wanting to talk about Web Marketing because the ROI from your website was terrible.

Since the “olden days” Google has fundamentally changed the landscape.  How many of us recycle the last version of the yellow pages unopened when the new one comes out? Search Engine watch found the following in their article titled “The Business Case for Expanding B2B SEM”

“The study found an overwhelming number (85 percent) of business buyers go online during the purchasing process, and 83 percent found the vendor from which they eventually purchased online. Of those using the Internet, over 70 percent start with a search engine.”

So the new goal is to get found by Google through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), driving potential customers to your website.  Other tools drive traffic to your site; PPC and banner ads, email campaigns, link referrals, and drip or nurture email campaigns, are all ways to increase the number of visitors and eyeballs looking at your website.

But instead of just pushing these visitors to do what the brochure of old asked them to do (call your business phone number), a new breed of software – Marketing Automation Software –  is letting your website be much more than a brochure.

This new breed of Marketing Automation software, of which ActiveConversion is one example, uses a well-designed SaaS-based solution as a heart rate monitor, measuring which of your potential customers have a faster pulse.

By faster pulse, I mean which ones spend a lot of time on your site and visit a lot of pages vs those that see one page and leave.

Which visitors are so interested that they come back a second time, view key pages, sign up for your newsletter, or fill out forms?  Which among your anonymous visitors exhibit the same behaviors, and are worth cold calling?

This class of SaaS-based solution keeps a long-term history of the heart rate read-out for your website, they spot trends, show buy signals by showing historical click streams, and announce when a potential customer is worthy of one of your limited sales cycles, worthy of a phone call from you, instead of passively waiting for them to contact you.

Strap a heart rate monitor on your website!