“So how do you track where your leads come from?”
We get a variety of answers to this question and rarely do we come across any business that is really doing it well.
- Some clients have their staff asking people how they heard about the business. This has consistently proven to be pretty inaccurate – most people just don’t remember.
- Some ask the question on their website forms – again people are just trying to inquire about the business are likely to pick anything to just get through your form.
- Some aren’t tracking anything at all and just hoping what they are doing is paying off. Shame, shame!
Tracking your leads is essential for calculating your return on investment (ROI). It helps you make better decisions about where you are spending your advertising dollars and it helps you learn more about your customers and their behavior before coming to you.
Here are some ways you can track leads in your business for a better measurement of your marketing ROI.
- Ask – Most businesses we know are asking customers how they heard of them but aren’t recording the data. This is our least favorite method because it can be wildly inaccurate and far too anecdotal. Just having a “feeling” about how customers find you is not a good way to make decisions about your ad spends.
- Ask and Record – This is perhaps the most simple method of asking your customers how they heard about you. It can be done in person, on the phone, or even on a website form. The biggest hurdle here is that you have to compile this data into a single data source so you can analyze it. Also keep in mind that this data tends to be skewed, since customers often don’t remember the exact place they saw your advertisement or listing and will tend to say the first thing that comes to mind.
- Use a Lead Tracking System – There are a few out there that do it well, and for our medical clients, there are even some that will integrate with your EMR (albeit for a pretty hefty monthly fee). We actually developed our own for the medical industry called LeadAlign. Systems like these can guide you through the stages of a lead, the referral process of how the lead came in, and is let you enter income to calculate ROI.
Keep in mind that whatever system you use, you need to be thorough and most importantly, consistent, in how you use it. Make sure entire staff is on board and understands the importance of tracking leads. Without a conscious effort to uncover essential data about your leads, you’ll never have an accurate picture of your marketing ROI.
