Many of you may already be familiar with Google Alerts and are already getting great value using them. If you are unfamiliar with Google Alerts or are wondering how they help with sales intelligence, prospecting, or lead generation, read on.
What is a Google Alert?
Google defines Google Alerts as “emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for your search terms.” They “currently offer alerts with results from News, Web, Blogs, Video and Groups.”
To learn more visit http://www.google.com/support/alerts/.
While there are a wide variety of very good sales intelligence tools to use today, I’ve gotten additional prospecting value from Google Alerts. Alerts help keep you abreast of the most current information available about your customers, prospects, competitors and industry. The information comes to you in a timely manner via email. You control the desired frequency: immediately as it happens, daily, or weekly without much thought. You also have the option to control how many results appear in each message. You can set email to contain 20 results or 50 results. If you have limited time, getting the right information coming to you at the right time with no effort is superb in my book.
Using Google Alerts for Intelligence on Potential Buyers and Sales Leads
You determine the specific topics, industry news, potential buyer or buyer accounts you are interested in learning about. Google Alerts will update you, immediately, daily or weekly, when information becomes available.
This is one time when it serves you well to be reactive instead of proactive. It’s like having an assistant scanning, gathering and delivering relevant and current information on the topic for you to be better informed and make better decisions.
What to Target with Google Alerts
Here is the type of information you may want to collect as you prospect:
- Potential buyers or buyers you may be engaged with. Stay abreast of changes, developments that may enhance your strategy, conversations, relationships or deals.
- Prospects and customers you may want to be engaged with. Learn about them and how and why you may be able to help them.
- Your competitors. Keep current: Have they come out with a new product or service, gained or lost a customer, or developed a strategic partnership or relationship?
- Industry news. What is happening in your industry? How is it evolving, changing? What does that mean to your customers or prospects?
These are just a few ways Google Alerts can help you prospect. Sit back and absorb. For those of you already using Google Alerts for prospecting, what have you found? For those who may use some of these tips, how have they helped?