In school, history was not my best or favorite subject. I think it had some to do with the teacher's belief that pre-hormonal junior high students could only stay alert and pay attention if the room was at a cool 63 degrees. Despite his best efforts, I kept falling asleep in class. I really was not into memorizing dates that meant nothing to me.

Naturally, I was young, the only thing that mattered to me was what was happening right now. History, the study of the past? What's the point?

If you are trying to get more of your web traffic to turn into leads and customers, history just became your best ally.

Why Does History Matter when the Internet Happens in Real-Time?

As I grew up, I started to understood that if you want to change the outcome of the future, you have to understand what happened in the past that got other people there. History went from memorizing dates and people, to stories and patterns of behavior.

With inbound internet marketing, converting more visitors into leads means you need to have the historical data to see where visitors are dropping out of the conversion funnel. The majority of this activity usually happens in the middle of the funnel (MoFu).

Your marketing strategy and action plan should lay out the particular route that you visitors take to conversion. But if you are unable to segment out the behaviors of the visitors who convert versus those who do not, you are still still shooting in the dark as to which behaviors you want to encourage.

And for many data junkies like me, we don't want to spend our time compiling reports, we want to use our time analyzing them. The data is there, the hard part has been applying it to the right place, person, and time.

Enter Hubspot and Performable- Advanced Analytics Just Got a Whole Lot Easier

With the acquisition of Performable, HubSpot has taken the methodology of closed loop reporting (knowing where your customers are coming from) to the level of conversion optimization reporting (getting more customers from your traffic). By being able to run reports that start at the point of conversion and work backwards to show you the content and interactions that led up to it, you can now truly know what is working, and what is not.

And this isn't just about what happens on your website. This is cross-platform, multi-channel. No one is surprised that 78% of people use at least two or more channels from the time they start researching products and services to when they complete the purchase. Some are even using them at the same time. Advanced analytics with HubSpot/Performable enables you to see how your potential customers are using social media, email, mobile and third-party apps.  With that history, you can now understand which channels are most effective at driving conversions.

Getting at that is what sets my pulse racing, it is like real detective work, and all you want is the facts. But what really makes this exciting to me is in order to get to this type of advanced analytics before, you needed an enterprise analytics package like Omniture or Web Trends. The downside to those is the amount of time, resources and talent you will need to get it off the ground.

Not any more.

So my verdict on the HubSpot/Performable deal? Marketo, Eloqua, Omniture and Web Trends should probably be a little nervous. HubSpot just made conversion optimization analytics a reality for the rest (majority) of us.

How, or Where, Do You Start to Take Advantage of Hubspot's Advanced Analytics Platform?

First, you need a marketing strategy and an action plan. This will lay out the road map of conversion for your prospect. It should also tie everything back into your business goals. If you are not sure of the conversion path you are measuring, start there.

Already have a plan and traffic, or even a few leads but not enough? Then ask us about a free HubSpot and Performable demo and trial. 

Or sign up for our next training course and see how these tools, and others like it, can help you to achieve your internet marketing goals.