In this day and age, there are hundreds of different ways to bring in new clients for any small business. There are actually so many different lead generation techniques that it can be hard to pick one and know whether or not it’s working for you. In that case, what you really need is an accurate way to do lead tracking so that you know how much you’re spending, and how much time you’ve invested, for each lead that you earn money from. This can be a little difficult if you have a shotgun attitude towards your leads and they’re just scattered occurrences that happen randomly. But, if you start a certain campaign, whether it’s with YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or any other type of advertising, there should be built in lead capture and tracking involved.
Offer Incentives And Coupons To Keep Track Of Your Lead Efforts
One old-time way of tracking leads, that businesses have used for years, is using coupons and coupon codes to track leads. Things have changed, but you can still insist that people write down a coupon code or take a snapshot of it with their phone in order to get the deal. Each different lead generation program can have a different code, and codes should be changed for different weeks for better tracking too.
What you’ll commonly find is that just the slightest change in an ad, maybe the colors, demographics, time of day, or wording, can make a huge difference in the response and not even the best sales CRM can mitigate this. Without proper lead tracking you’ll never be able to accurately know what it is you’re doing that’s working and what’s not. If you doubt that, go to your local home-baked small pizza store and ask them questions about coupons.
The manager there can tell you exactly how much each campaign costs, how many coupons get redeemed and whether it works better in the summer or winter. He knows this like the back of his hand and it’s the lifeblood of his business. If he quits advertising tomorrow he knows he’ll start losing business shortly and be broke in a few months.
In Some Businesses, Repeat Contacts Are Where The Money Is
In more complicated sales, such as insurance, home buying, or other long-term actions take more than just one contact. Some industries have even found that the most sales are made after the 3rd or even 6th contact and have designed lead contacting programs and software in order to integrate some parts of the process.
For instance, the first contact may be made by a click on an ad from a web page for more information. Then an email address is obtained and the first contact is made by email. The next contact might be in the form of a friendly phone call to answer any questions. Then another email is sent and then another phone call to set up an in-person appointment to close the deal. Nearly every part of this campaign can be automated except for that last appointment, making the sales person’s job far easier and less stressful. In some industries, you can actually buy leads that have gone through the first four stages and is ready for the sale.
If you haven’t thought about automating your lead capture and lead follow-through process, it might be time to consider it. With the right type of leads, nearly every business can prosper and expand into new territories. But it’s only with careful lead tracking that you’ll ever know how well a campaign is working.
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