When talking about demand generation services to people who don’t fully understand how they work, we often get this response: “I have Google Analytics. I know who is coming to my site and what they are doing.”

You do…really?

Last time I checked, Analytics provided you with nothing more than aggregate statistics and an overall view of your website traffic. So, the question we reply with is, “Do you want to sell to a statistic, or do you want to sell to an actual person?” The answer, of course, is that people do business with people, not averages.

Imagine that you sell widgets online and statistically most people on your site look at red widgets more than any other kind – you know this because Google Analytics told you. But, what if your demand generation service told you that Visitor X looked at blue widgets exclusively… wouldn’t you call him up and offer him blue widgets instead of red ones? Demand generation services empower you to understand what individual visitors are doing on your site and what they are interested in as unique prospects. It allows you to track a specific visitor from the initial visit, to the pages they view and the navigational path they take, to the amount of time they spend on a specific page, to each time they return to your site. Without making generalizations or guesses based on what visitors do as a group, demand generation gives you the ability to sell into a need a prospect has actually expressed by actions taken on your website.