Today a lot of attention is focused on enhancing a firm’s Internet presence.
Marketing firms push website improvements, social media, and pay-per-click, often at steep cost in time and money. They focus on Google Analytics and other online tracking mechanisms.
The hard truth is that online tracking will never be effective alone. You still need an old-fashioned “technology” to ensure your marketing time and dollars are effective: An offline process for tracking response. In other words, a telephone tracking and reporting process.
In part one, we showed you how gathering specific numbers can put you ahead of your competition. In this post, we’re going to give you the tools you need to gather and analyze those numbers.
Not all prospective clients will respond through your website – often, the hottest leads will pick up the phone and call.
The good news is that a prospective client who picks up the phone to call has an urgent need that you may be able to serve. The bad news is that Google Analytics won’t know they’ve called. How are you going to track your hottest leads?
It is vital to put tracking mechanisms in place for all of the avenues that funnel leads to you (website, email campaigns, ad campaigns, referrals, etc.), so you know where your hottest leads are coming from and how effective your campaigns are.
It’s not enough simply to make a note of how each lead makes initial contact, because how a prospective client contacts you is not necessarily the way they heard about you. For example, they may have filled out an online form, but only after one of your current clients referred them. Or they may have called you, but only after seeing the phone number in an e-mail marketing piece.
You need a consistent process for tracking information from your prospects and a method for including it in an overall monthly marketing performance report. Your legal intake staff should be asking these detailed questions every time the phone rings:
- How did you hear about us? Beginning with a broad question will help identify unexpected sources as well as the more common ones.
- If they found you online, was it through a search engine or through a link?
- What search engine did they use or what was the name of the website where they found the link?
- If they found you through a search, what word or phrase did they type in? Did they include a location like city or state?
- What did they like that prompted them to contact you? This could be something on your website, something a friend told them, or something they read via a third party (article or blog).
Be careful about trying to get answers to all of these questions through something like a website form. The more questions you ask a prospect to fill out online, the more likely you are to lose the lead entirely as they become impatient or wary. At some point, you must have a telephone tracking mechanism in place.
These questions can be asked during an initial inbound phone inquiry, or during an outbound call that you make to follow up on a website form or e-mail. If you outsource your legal intake, partner with a quality answering service for lawyers that can help you design an efficient intake process. Your telephone answering service partner should deliver reporting containing useful, detailed data based on this process.
Remember, prospects that pick up the phone are gold! Tracking how and where they found you will help you find the vein and tap it.
Want to know more about winning the marketing game? Next month, we’re going to share one final secret that ties it all together. Stay tuned to learn how one simple decision can put you at the very top of your market, and fast.
Are you ready to give your firm an unfair advantage? Suite 1000’s 24-hour legal intake service is available to discuss how our intake specialists can reduce your overhead while capturing every lead and every piece of data from every call you receive. Call now: 877-925-2324.
This blog was written by Laurie Leonard, the President of SUITE 1000, a U.S. based national telephone answering service, inbound call center and outsourced call center service. Her company has specialized in handling legal intake, sales leads, email lead response, appointment scheduling, customer service and help desk calls for over 20 years.
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