Imagine you are looking to climb Mount Everest. You are standing at Base Camp, looking up. You can't see the summit. In fact, you can only see a small part of the long journey you are about to embark upon.

Because most organizations' systems are only capturing the events occurring on their own web properties, they are missing a wealth of buying signals that provide the full picture of the customer's journey.

Organizations that track visitors on their own, first party websites
can see that they are visiting certain pages and looking at certain information on the site, especially if they become repeat visitors. Those organizations will respond to this shopping activity appropriately.

By leveraging software solutions, you can easily deploy these tactics. The challenge lies in what you don't know is happening outside of your own web properties and interactions with your brand. By now, you've certainly heard the staggering statistics from various sources-including often-quoted SiriusDecisions-about how much of the purchase decision journey (67 percent) a consumer is conducting online.

What people don't usually talk about is that consumers are searching not just your branded sites, but also your competitor's sites as well as third party resources to self-educate before making a purchase decision.