How to track your leads and referrals.Do you track where your clients and potential clients come from?
It seems like common sense, but many businesses don’t have the right tools or the time to properly track referrals to their website or to their business.
Keeping track is important.
Why track referrals?
You need to know how people find your business so you know:
A) That your marketing funds are being well-spent,
B) What campaigns are giving you the best bang for your buck, and
C) What areas you need to improve on.
For example, if you are spending a lot of money promoting on Facebook, but most of your inquiries are coming from LinkedIn, perhaps you should focus more energy on LinkedIn. Are most of your clients referrals from previous happy clients? Then spend more time catering these past relationships and learn how to better ask for referrals.
How can you track website referrals?
Google Analytics is the top tracking tool for websites. It is easy to insert the analytics code, and tracking is free.
You can track what sites are sending visitors to your website, and what people do once they are on your website. It also allows you to track your Adwords campaigns, and set goals.
Another important thing Google Analtycis can tell you? What kind of device visitors are using to view your website. If you are getting a high amount of mobile web visitors, you will want to make sure your website displays properly. Other sources, like
Kissmetrics and
CrazyEgg, can provide more detailed tracking information (like eye-tracking heatmaps) if you really want to learn about your website visitors.
How to track where your customers come from:
1) Ask them. Whether your are a B2B that works directly with clients or a retailer that uses ecommerce, you can ask your customers verbally, as part of a follow up survey, or through your ecommerce check out.
2) Use marketing automation to track them. The ApogeeINVENT CRM will automatically create a tag based on where the user has come from – your website contact form, adwords campaign, ecommerce checkout, blog comment, etc. Finding automated ways to keep track of your data will save you time and improve the quality of your results.
3) Use a
CRM or spreadsheet to organize and track all your referrals. This will make it easy to sort them according to referral type.
According to
eMarketer, 52% of US Small Businesses claim that referrals are the most successful marketing tool.
What do you think is your businesses most effective marketing tool? How did you determine that? Share your thoughts in the comments below. I love to hear from you!
