Today a lot of attention is focused on enhancing your Internet presence. Your website, social marketing, and pay-per-click advertising are just some of the methods marketers suggest. At the very least, these efforts require a lot of time, and often a lot of money as well.
Make sure your time and money are well spent by having an effective process for tracking the responses you get. Unfortunately, it is not as simple as slapping Google Analytics on your website. That assumes that all of your prospects are going to respond through the web, which is not always the case. Some of your hottest leads will actually pick up the phone and call. You have succeeded at hitting their hot button, and they want to take action. Phone lead tracking has to be incorporated into your plan as well.
It is vital to put tracking mechanisms into place for all of the avenues that funnel leads to you (including your website, e-mail campaigns, on-line directories, and LinkedIn, to name a few). It is also important to note that the vehicle a prospect uses to contact you may not have been the initial reason that they took action. For example, they may have filled out a form on your website, but one of your clients actually referred them. Or they called you, but they didn’t get your number from your website, they saw it in an e-mail marketing piece that you sent them.
This means that you need to have a consistent process for gathering tracking information from your prospects and a way to include it in an overall monthly marketing performance report. Getting accurate information requires specific detailed questions.
- How did you hear about us? Beginning with a broad question will help you identify unexpected sources (a client referral, a LinkedIn contact you have in common, etc.)
- If they found you on-line, was it through a search engine or through a link?
- What was the search engine they used or what was the name of the website where they found the link?
- If they did a search, what word or phrase did they type in (try to get very specific)? Did they include a location like city or state?
- Once they arrived at your website, what did they like that prompted them to contact you?
Be careful about trying to get the answers to all of these questions through something like a website form. The more questions you require a prospect to fill out, the more likely they are to opt out and you could lose the lead entirely. At some point, phone lead tracking is going to be required. Whether it is during an initial inbound phone inquiry or on an outbound call that you make to follow-up on a contact you received via a website form or an e-mail.
Remember, prospects that contact you are gold! They are “conversions.” People who actually took action. You need to know what you did right so you can do more of it!
So, what are you going to do right now to get a phone lead tracking program into place?
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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