The term “anonymous lead” may be heard when conducting BtoB marketing. There may be some people who have a vague idea of what it means, but don’t really understand it.
In BtoB marketing, dealing with anonymous leads is almost always encountered when acquiring leads and performing lead nurturing, such as lead generation.
This time, I will explain what anonymous leads are and how to identify anonymous information.
What is Anonymous?
Anonymous is the English word “Anonymous” and means “anonymous”.
For the author of a book, it is also translated as “author unknown,” and for the author of a poem, etc., it is also translated as “unknown reader.” In any case, this means that the individual cannot be identified.
In recent years, the term “anonymous” has come to refer to communicating on the Internet or posting on bulletin boards without disclosing identifying information such as user name, account name, sender, connection source, etc. there is.
What is anonymous lead?
The word anonymous is often used in the world of BtoB marketing as “anonymous lead.” An anonymous lead is a type of lead. First, let’s check the meaning of lead.
What is a lead?
We often use expressions such as “Let’s get a lead” or “We’ve got a lead,” but a lead is a potential customer. A person or company who is likely to become a customer. In BtoB marketing, the customer is a company, so it mainly refers to a company.
It is important to note that leads are not all people who access your company’s service site, for example. To be considered a lead, you need to show some interest in your company and the products and services it provides.
It also refers to someone who has some kind of contact with your company, such as at an exhibition or exchanging business cards, and who you can approach.
In other words, we do not call people or companies who have no interest in your company a lead.
What is lead generation?
Next, let’s take a look at lead generation.
Lead generation refers to all marketing activities to obtain leads.
Specifically, this refers to acquiring inquiries such as applying for downloaded materials on the website, SEO measures, acquiring business cards at exhibitions, and applying to participate in online seminars.
This is an activity to discover companies that are interested in your company from among the many target companies and set up some kind of contact. Lead generation is an early stage activity in BtoB marketing, and it is also an important activity for lead nurturing to increase subsequent purchase intent.
Type of lead
There are various stages of leads, and they are divided into types such as hot leads, cold leads, and anonymous leads. Let’s check the meaning of each.
1. Hot lead
Hot leads, as the name suggests, are “hot” leads that have an increased desire to purchase. In other words, it refers to people and companies that have an increasing possibility of being turned into projects. It goes without saying that these are the most important leads for your company, as they may lead to future deals. It can be said that marketing, such as lead nurturing, is done to create hot leads.
2. Cold read
A cold lead, as opposed to a hot lead, is a “cold” potential customer who has the potential to purchase or use your product or service, but who has a low desire to purchase. You could say it’s all about early-stage leads. What is required is how to make this call lead hot.
3. Warm lead
A warm lead is a prospective customer who has not yet reached the “warm” or “hot” state, but has warmed up, in other words, has some degree of purchase intent. It can be said that the leads acquired through lead generation are in the process of becoming hot leads.
4. Anonymous Lead
And then there’s Anonymous Threat. Anonymous, as explained earlier, has the meaning of “anonymous” and refers to a lead that means “someone cannot be identified.”
Some of the leads have the company name or the name of the individual in the company, while others don’t have any information at all. As mentioned the other day, a lead is defined as someone who has shown a certain level of interest in your company’s services or products, so even if you can’t identify the person, you can target someone who has a history of frequently visiting your company’s website. can be considered as one of the leads.
In other words, it is a lead whose name or contact information has not been obtained, and whose identity cannot be determined.
Why is there a type of lead called anonymous lead? Because that’s a type of potential customer. One of the candidates who could become a current customer in the future. That’s anonymous leads.
These are leads who will become interested in your company’s products and services in the future, and who may eventually turn into potential customers.
What information can be identified with anonymous leads?
Among the leads, I think you understand the meaning of anonymous leads.
As long as anonymous leads remain anonymous, there is limited information that can be obtained about them at this stage.
For example, the following information may be obtained.
- Pages of the company’s homepage viewed
- Viewed date and time
- Home page stay time
- IP address
This information can be continuously obtained by continuously recording lead information using tools such as access analysis tools and MA (Marketing Automation). Even in the anonymous state, it is possible to know when and what actions the user took.
What is MA tool?
Here I will briefly explain MA tools.
MA stands for marketing automation, and it is a tool that allows you to manage the acquired leads after acquiring them, and automate marketing digitally through email and the web.
For example, there is a function to distribute useful information to acquired leads and perform lead nurturing. There is also a function that analyzes the behavior of prospective customers on the website, such as which page of the company’s website they viewed and for how long, when they clicked on the link to the company’s website in the email.
How should anonymous leads be handled?
After confirming the existence of anonymous leads, how should we handle them? When conducting marketing activities, it is easy to chase only hot leads, but anonymous leads should never be taken lightly.
Currently, BtoB marketing is particularly customer-oriented and requires customers to make a choice when gathering information about their purchasing behavior and comparing products and services.
Under such circumstances, the fact that they are showing even the slightest interest in your company’s products and services is promising.
Of course, there is a high possibility that this is an action taken during the information gathering stage, but there are many anonymous leads online. However, what is important is how you can make contact with those anonymous leads.
While known leads, such as hot leads and cold leads, are paramount, converting anonymous leads into prospects and customers can expand your marketing and sales efforts. Anonymous leads can be said to be something that cannot be overlooked in this day and age.
3 ways to identify anonymous leads
Anonymous leads can be identified instead of remaining anonymous forever. There are three main ways to identify it:
1. Ask them to enter information into the email form
2. Have them click on the URL in the email you sent.
3. Make your homepage a membership system and have people register and log in.
I will explain each method.
1. Ask them to enter information into the email form
This is a method of setting up an email form on your company’s homepage and asking anonymous leads to fill it out for some purpose. You can identify the person by entering their name, email address, company name, etc.
Possible purposes for prompting users to fill out the email form include registering for an email magazine, requesting materials to be downloaded or mailed, applying for a webinar, and making inquiries. By linking the input data to cookie information that was previously unidentifiable at the time of entering these email forms, it will also be linked to past browsing history.
2. Have them click on the URL in the email you sent.
If you somehow get people to click on the URL in the email you send and view your company’s website, you can get information about which people accessed your company’s website from the email and which page they landed on. You can.
At this time, it is necessary to add an ID that identifies the individual to the end of the link URL in the email. This allows you to identify the other party.
This is an effective method for dealing with people who have received your business card. Get their business card and send an email to their email address. If the other party clicks on that email and accesses your company’s website, there is a possibility that it will be linked to the anonymous lead IP address that you have accumulated. If you do, it will be linked to the history of past visits to your company’s website, giving you a hint as to what field the recipient of the business card is interested in.
3. Make your homepage a membership system and have people register and log in.
To use this method, you first need to prepare the service part of your company’s homepage that you can register as a member to use. If someone who has previously viewed your website as an anonymous lead registers as a member, you will be able to link their input information with their previous data.
By assessing both past browsing history and future behavior history, you can efficiently conduct lead nurturing.
What you can do to identify anonymous leads
We have introduced how to identify anonymous leads, but for marketers, the mission is to identify anonymous leads and develop them into hot leads.
In particular, if there is a target company, it will be possible to identify it by making a detailed plan and implementing it. Here, we will introduce five specific things you should do to acquire anonymous leads.
1. Create a system to get people to fill out the email form
Anonymous leads allow you to enter company information and personal information by having them enter information into an email form. In the first place, it would not be possible without an email form, so it is necessary to create a system in advance.
Email forms can be created with many MAs, so there are other ways to use them in addition to requesting a homepage production company to create them.
2. Make email forms easier to fill out
If you create an email form and you get stuck when filling out the email form, that’s a problem. For example, if there are too many required input fields, or if you have to enter detailed information such as not only the company name but also personal information, the hurdles for entering the email form will increase.
Therefore, we recommend implementing email form optimization. This is done using the know-how called EFO (Entry Form Optimization).
For example, generally speaking, it is desirable to reduce the number of input fields as much as possible, to make sure that required fields are easily identified so that they can be seen at a glance, and to have the submit button in a similarly easy-to-understand location. Also, if input examples are clearly provided, the person inputting the information will be able to input it more smoothly. Also, it is said that it is better not to have a button that erases input content, as it can lead to incorrect operation.
It is also said to be effective to make input errors easier to understand. In particular, if you create a system that notifies you of mistakes in real time when the input content is different, you will be able to notice the mistake and re-enter it immediately if you input something different, which will prevent people from leaving the site rather than having to correct it all at once. It is said.
In this way, we believe that implementing initiatives to help users fill out email forms smoothly and stress-freely will lead to more anonymous leads being identified.
3. Conduct lead generation via email
Once you have acquired business cards at an exhibition or seminar, you can send them an email with information about the next exhibition or seminar, or information that might be of interest to them. It is thought that this will lead to input into .
4. Make your homepage a membership system
This is a way to create a membership section on your company’s homepage. By creating a membership-based section, such as making it possible to view special content by registering as a member, it will lead to member registration and encourage registration through the email form.
5. Utilize company-specified advertisements
If you have several specific companies to target, you can use company-specific advertising. Company-specific advertising is a method of distributing advertisements only to people who belong to a specified company.
Usually, advertisements are displayed to an unspecified number of companies, but this does not necessarily mean that the person in charge of the target company is included. If that happens, it can be said to be inefficient.
On the other hand, with company-specific advertising, there are more opportunities for people belonging to the target company to see your company’s information, which ultimately makes it possible to market to the target company.
Services that can deliver company-specified advertisements utilize fixed IP address data held by companies. If you don’t care about metrics such as the number of impressions or CV (conversions), which are indicators of how many times an ad has been displayed, we highly recommend using it. If it leads to lead acquisition, it may also be possible to identify anonymous leads.
For example, in Japan, there are the following services:
ADMATRIX DSP
https://www.admatrix.jp/dsp/
This is a service provided by Clyde Co., Ltd. It is said to have the largest amount of IP data in Japan, and is a service that allows you to target domestic companies and industries based on unique data based on patent application technology. Since it covers all domestic companies that can deliver advertisements, there is room for use when the target is determined.
Linkedin
Linkedin is known as an SNS where you can post your profile and use it for job changes, etc., and where you can obtain and exchange information about jobs and careers, but you can also place advertisements on LinkedIn.
With LinkedIn Ads, you can target users based on information such as company name, company size, industry, and job title. It has the advantage of being able to specify not only the company but also the job title.
Another attractive feature of LinkedIn is that it attracts people who are highly interested in business.
6. Leverage intent data
Another method is to leverage intent data. Intent data is data that can tell you what a company is interested in. The way to find out is from what a company representative who visits your company’s website asks, “What information are you collecting?” By detecting movements on the web, we can identify the interests of companies.
It is believed that by utilizing such intent data and implementing effective sub-approaches, such as providing information preferred by the target, it will be easier to obtain leads from the target.
In addition, some companies have data on what kind of pages are viewed by various companies in addition to their own homepages, and it is also possible to receive intent data. Let’s use it as needed.
For example, the following services handle intent data from Japanese companies.
Select DMP
https://dmp.intimatemerger.com/service/select-dmp/
This is a service provided by Intimate Merger Co., Ltd. We provide behavioral data to understand customers’ interests and interests through behavioral analysis on the web.
The number of companies that can be detected is approximately 280,000, and the number of keywords that can be detected as needs is said to be over 2 billion. The feature is that it detects the needs of various companies in real time and extracts a list of companies.
unknown marketing
By the way, marketing to anonymous prospective customers like anonymous leads is also called “unknown marketing.” It is so called because it conducts marketing to “unknown” users.
The series of explanations on how to identify anonymous leads that we have explained so far can be called unknown marketing itself. Unknown marketing has been attracting a lot of attention in recent years, especially in BtoB marketing.
As I mentioned earlier, the reason why you should pay attention to anonymous leads is that we live in an era where customers decide what to buy and which company to buy from after gathering information. In addition, the rise of unknown marketing is due to the development of web and digital technology, which makes it possible to accumulate all kinds of behavioral data, even anonymously, through data utilization and the spread of MA, which makes it possible to identify people. There is a possibility that the possibility has increased.
In addition, these days, rather than approaching a large number of unspecified potential customers all at once, it is becoming easier to target them individually, provide appropriate information tailored to each prospective customer, and communicate with each individual. There is also a trend of the times. Under these circumstances, it is thought that the trend of analyzing anonymous leads and identifying individuals and companies will continue to grow.
Although we tend to only pursue customers right now, in the future, it will be important to have a system in place that does not take anonymous leads lightly. At the same time, what is needed is data utilization technology and which platform to use. This can be said to be the point.
summary
- Anonymous is the English word “Anonymous” and means “anonymous”. In fields such as BtoB marketing, the term anonymous lead is often used to refer to a lead whose identity cannot be identified.
- Anonymous leads can be said to be leads that may become interested in your company’s products or services in the future and eventually turn into promising customers.
- Anonymous Leads knows information such as the page of your company’s website that you viewed, the date and time of the visit, the length of time you stayed on the website, and your IP address.
- The main ways to identify anonymous leads are 1. Have them enter information into an email form, 2. Have them click on the URL in the email they send, and 3. Make your company’s homepage a membership system and register. There are three ways to ask someone to log in.
- Things you can do to identify anonymous leads are: 1. Create a system for people to fill out the email form, 2. Make the email form easy to fill out, 3. Generate leads through email, and 4. Make your company’s homepage a membership system,” 5. Utilize company-specified advertising, and 6. Utilize intent data.”