April Blog Week 4: Internet Marketing Strategies for Businesses, Effective Lead Tracking Strategies
TriMark Solutions tracks client leads though a few different methods, mainly Phone Call Tracking and Landing Page Email Submission Forms. There are other methods of lead tracking, but these are the 2 most frequently used due to their reliability and convenience.
Call Tracking
Call Tracking Leads are tracked though any of many outside voicemail communication companies, TriMark uses Marchex Inc. (www.marchex.com). This is a very simple process, in which potential customer calls are recorded live and later reviewed to see how many demos or appointment times were scheduled.
Call tracking is an efficient way to track leads from individuals who may prefer speaking with a client representative via phone, rather than submitting a form online, or communicating via email.
The only downside to this tracking method is that (at least) one person of your full-time staff must be devoted to listening to your client lead tracking calls daily. This person not only tracks leads coming in for different clients, but also carefully tracks calls for quality assurance, and usually plays a very important role in client communication and reporting.
Email Tracking
Email tracking consists of daily emails submitted from various client PPC landing pages. Similar to Call Tracking, these must be sorted and confirmed legitimate (unfortunately there is still a lot of spam submission attempts).
At TriMark Solutions, we have noticed that many potential customers are unable to answer the phone during the day, so they prefer email or online form communications. This medium of lead tracking also provides both the potential customer and the client with a simple and quick way to communicate without voicemails and long hold times.
Determining Your True ROI
It is very important to differentiate between PPC and non-PPC leads, as every internet marketing company should strive to provide clients with the most accurate lead numbers and values that they are getting in return for their monthly advertising budgets. Without an accurate ROI number, advertisers really are unable to determine a true value of their efforts.
In order to determine you most accurate ROI values, , only include PPC submission forms and call tracking numbers on PPC landing pages which you have blocked from being indexed and crawled by Google! This will prevent potential customers from stumbling on landing pages organically, which you do not want. Failure to do so will cause extremely skewed results, and your clients will not appreciate it!
Although there are many other lead tracking options, TriMark Solutions feels these methods are the most accurate and reliable. But I’d love to know, what types of lead tracking methods does your company use?
2 Comments
It is interesting to me that call tracking is now being used to track internet marketing.
I have used call tracking for years in the automotive business to track the effectiveness of my print advertising, but I certainly see the advantages of also tracking the effectiveness of online advertising as well.
Hello Denise, you are exactly right. Essentially the process is exactly the same regardless of industry. We track leads for clients of many fields, including home improvement, dentistry, rental communities, and everything in between.
Call tracking should always be combined with online form/email submission tracking for maximum effectiveness. Otherwise you may find yourself missing potential customers and leads.