If you’re using IP tools for website visitor identification, you’re getting ripped off
Website visitor identification
You know what these IP tools are without even realizing it. They’re masked with names like:
- Leadfeeder
- Lead Forensics
- Visual Visitor
- Lucky Orange
- LeadLander
- Visitor Queue
- Visitor Track
- WebSights
- Netfactor
- …and honestly, probably a hundred more
They are the website visitor identification tools you always hear about. Marketers — especially B2B marketers — understand the importance of being able to see who was recently on their website. Being able to see who is actively shopping you offers a huge competitive advantage because a website visit is a key trigger in the buying journey and sales process.
It does not mean that this person is ready to buy just because they visited your website. But it does give you a way to see who they are, where they work, and what they are looking for. If you know what someone is interested in buying, you know how to open that conversation. You know how to help them.
How are you getting ripped off?
So, how in the world are you getting ripped off by these so-called website visitor identification tools?
Because a website visitor is a person. People visit websites. And the very best these tools can do is tell you the name of the company that visited your website. Companies don’t visit websites — people visit websites.
When someone visits your company’s website, the IP address of that person can be tracked. Once you have that IP address, you can do a reverse lookup and see which company that IP address is registered to.
Very few companies actually register their IP addresses
The biggest problem is that only about 11% of companies even register their own IP addresses. And an overwhelming number of these companies are enterprise level. So, if you only do business with small to medium-sized businesses, you’re pretty much out of luck.
If you are doing business with these enterprise-level companies — let’s say IBM — what good does knowing IBM visiting your website do when they have over half a million employees?
Honestly, even if it was ABC Company with only 50 employees… what good would it do to know the company name if you have no idea which person at that company was the one checking you out?
Just go over to G2 or Capterra. Check out the different reviews. There’s a lot of good things being said about these website visitor identification tools, but there’s one, glaring common issue…
People want to know who the actual website visitor was. They want to know the person — not just the company — that was on their website. And until recently, that was never possible.
These tools don’t tell you who is actually visiting your website
The website visitor identification tools that use reverse IP-lookup technology are able to sometimes tell you the name of the company your recent website visitor works at. So how in the world are you getting ripped off if they can tell you who’s visiting your website?
Because they are not telling you who’s visiting your website. PEOPLE visit websites — companies do not. And they are unable to tell you which PEOPLE are visiting. They will tell you the name of the company and some (not all) will give you suggested contacts from their database.
If IBM is “visiting your website” and you are selling to the CMO or Marketing Directors, Lead Forensics, for example, will simply give you the contact info of these executives. Sounds awesome in theory, right?
The executives at enterprise-level companies are very often not doing the research. They ultimately are the ones doing the buying. But they’re not doing the shopping. It’s the lower-level employees who are doing the shopping and those contacts aren’t offered to you. You’re getting the CMO’s contact info… not the Marketing Intern’s (the one who was actually on your site).
And since early 2020, most companies have shifted towards WFH (work from home). If you’re not on your company’s WiFi or Internet connection, these website visitor identification tools will not be able to identify which company your website visitors work at.
Now what?
Reverse IP-lookup tools do not work the way you want them to. They were a huge step in the right direction a few years ago, but you and I both know how fast technology moves. You know how fast innovation moves. There are advancements every single day and no industry is immune to these changes.
You’re not getting what you were promised
If you’re paying for these website visitor identification tools, you’re getting ripped off. The price tag might not give you sticker shock, but you’re definitely not getting what you’re promised. They will tell you they can identify your website visitors when they can’t. They will often guess (yes, guess) which company that website visitor works at.
In those G2 and Capterra reviews, you will see a lot of people also talking about how the data was incorrect and inconsistent… yet most of the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. This is only because 99.9% of marketers have no idea there is technology that exists that’s able to identify, by name, the people visiting your website… not just the company name.
They just don’t know this exists.
And if you don’t know if something exists, you have no way of knowing to do a little research on it. You have no way to know to look for something like this. In your head, the best it can get is being able to identify the companies that were on your website.
Imagine being an IT service provider selling an awesome cybersecurity solution. Because these clients and accounts can be so fricken lucrative, you’d want to know who was on your website recently. You’d want to know who was recently shopping YOU and YOUR SOLUTION. You don’t need to know the company name — companies don’t buy things. People buy things. Even though it’s B2B, you’re still selling to people.
If you’re paying for a website visitor identification tool and you’re not getting the names of the people actually visiting your website, you’re getting ripped off. If you want an unfair competitive advantage, I’ve got a tool that can give you the names of the people who were on your website so you can reach out to them and get the deal closed. This tool is called SiteVisitor. Remember this name because it’s going to make waves. 🙂
Most don’t even know this kind of technology exists yet
The behemoths of your industry don’t even know our tool exists yet.
This would be your chance to get in early and suck up the opportunities in your marketplace. Only 2–3% of people who visit a B2B website will fill out a form and become an inbound sales lead. (That 2–3% might even be a bit too generous).
Of those other 97%+… there’s a ton of opportunity. Chances are, you’re already doing some type of outbound prospecting. Instead of wasting your time burning through ice-cold lists that you put together yourself (or bought from ZoomInfo), how about you target your recent website visitors FIRST. They’ve got a way better chance of closing than someone from a cold prospecting list.
Maybe you’re not doing outbound right now… maybe you just want to see if your marketing is attracting the right audience to your website? Our tool can do that too. We had a client in mid-2020 that used our platform for exactly this. The CMO wanted to see if the majority of their website visitors fit their ideal client profile (ICP)… after about 4–5 weeks, they saw that most of their website visitors did not fit their ICP. And they took that as a cue to revamp their entire strategy.
You would never be able to do that with a website visitor identification tool that only gave you the names of the companies that visited your website.
Want to use SiteVisitor to get more clients?
Or maybe you’d just like to check it out for now… do a little product tour, ya know what I’m screamin?
If you think knowing the names of your website visitors would help, let’s chat.
Send me a message on Twitter (DMs are open). If you’re not on Twitter, you can either find me on LinkedIn or shoot me an email: kackerman@liftcertain.com.
Website visitor identification tools should identify website visitors, not companies.
