When a new customer walks through your door it’s rarely by pure happenstance – aren’t you curious to know how they heard about you? Well you should be! Countless hours and, more importantly, dollars are spent on your marketing efforts and obtaining new customers. Knowing which arms of your marketing mix are responsible for getting you new clients means you can be more strategic about your marketing tactics in the future.
Why You Should Be Tracking Leads
You’re getting new leads in, who care’s where they’re coming from, right? Wrong. There are several reasons why you need to stay on top of how leads are getting to you.
First, knowing where most of the leads are coming from can help you get even more leads! Investing resources in campaigns that are paying off will ultimately boost your lead production and allow you to free up other resources previously allocated to campaigns that are duds. You’ll also have the opportunity to make tweaks to underperforming campaigns before ditching them completely like personalizing them, adjusting verbiage, or changing your target audience.
Understanding how a lead came to you also gives you a bit of insight into the potential client and possible pain points. You’ll be better equipped to initiate first contact. So, how do you go about tracking these leads? Here are the basics to get you started.
Essentials for Lead Tracking
There are a few basic ways to ensure you can effectively track leads.
1) UTM Codes
UTM codes are valuable when rolling out online marketing campaigns as well as offline campaigns. Assigning unique links allows you to hop on Google Analytics and investigate which are performing and which are not. For instance, you could create a campaign that you roll out via social media, email and online advertising each with a unique link or advertise a URL that’s been created specifically for your campaign.
2) Call Tracking
You may also choose to use call tracking technology. It works much like a UTM but with unique phone numbers in place of links. Unlike UTMs, call tracking software allows you to track where the call is coming from which helps if you’re looking to gather demographic data about your leads.
3) Promo Codes
Including various promotional codes in your marketing ads enables you to pinpoint which ads performed the best based on the volume of each code used.
Ideas for Tracking Leads
Ideas for Tracking Links
If you have a specific landing page you’re trying to drive traffic to (an event ticketing page, contact form, newsletter opt-in) consider using UTM codes throughout your website, on social media, and in online ads to capture information about how visitors are being directed to your landing page.
For example, you’d include different tags in each URL such as “Sandwichshop.com/homepage”. Anything coming after backslash will be the unique tracking tag so be sure it’s very clear to avoid confusion later. Use tags like /Email, /Facebook, /GoogleAd. You get the idea!
Utilize this same strategy with print ads, flyers, at events or with any other offline marketing activity by advertising simple-to-use URLs – “Sandwichshop.com/coupon” . Your tags don’t have to be so on the nose either especially when they’ll be visible to potential leads. So, use tags that are more descriptive to the user and a bit more playful if they make sense with your campaign. You can have some fun as long as you’re able to effectively track down the line.
Ideas for Promotional Codes
Promotional codes are simple to implement and can be used in practically every marketing strategy. While every promo code garners the same advantages for your customer, you’ll easily be able to tell which leads came from various sources. If advertising the code in person, online, via the radio or tv you can simply change the end of the code to be specific to each outlet. For instance, if you were running a Memorial Day promotion you could switch up the code by adding unique numbers or letters at the tail end: MEMORIALDAY10, MEMORIALDAY20, etc.
Ideas for Call Tracking
Call tracking may seem a little, well, archaic. But, I assure you it is not. Consider a scenario where someone looks up the service you provide in a Google search and come across your AdWords campaign. They see your number, give you a ring and you’re in business. Here’s the issue…they never actually clicked on your ad which means when you pull analytics from your campaign it may seem like you had absolutely no results when in actuality it generated more phone calls than it did clicks.
Without call tracking, you could end up ditching your online campaign and lose valuable leads in the process. Bummer. Implementing a call tracking system allows you to accurately trace calls to different marketing channels based on the phone number leads use to contact you.
Ask Where Your Leads Came From
Last but not least…just ask! Your first personal interaction with a lead should include the question, “How did you hear about us?” It’s as simple as that. Include this same question in your contact forms too and eliminate the guessing games. Figuring out where your leads are coming from can feel like a bit of a spider web of connecting lines but implementing one or more of these strategies will have you well on your way to strategically targeting viable lead sources and saying adios to any that are dead weight.
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