What is the one thing all companies have in common, regardless of size, industry, and location? You’ve guessed it: the desire to gain more customers. From a newly created startup down to the largest multinational corporation, customers are the lifeblood of a business.
Before you attract new customers, though, you need to know where, how, and when you can find them. Essentially, you need to have a solid lead generation strategy in place. And once you have it, you need to keep a close eye on it to determine whether it’s performing as it should.
This process is also known as lead tracking, and that’s exactly what this comprehensive guide is about. Let’s get started.
What are Lead Tracking Strategies?
A lead tracking strategy is exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a process that helps both marketing teams and sales teams monitor B2C and B2B leads throughout the entire sales funnel (or customer journey). Because it looks at all the different interactions that a customer has with your company over time, a lead tracking strategy features several steps.
These include monitoring the initial touchpoint – when you first communicate with a lead – to conversion (often indicated by the lead making a purchase or similar action and officially turning into a customer).
It’s vital, then, that you follow all these stages closely. This is the only way to figure out whether the lead is hitting any snags in the process or if, on the contrary, there’s something that’s proving particularly helpful in converting them.
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The Importance of Lead Tracking
Whether you are starting a business from scratch, looking to expand into new markets, or wanting to beat your competitors, a well-structured lead-tracking system can benefit you. Below we uncover three main advantages that you can gain with such a system in place.
Higher Conversions
Businesses don’t just want leads for the sake of them. They want leads so they can turn them into conversions. This, though, is easier said than one, especially without a foolproof strategy. By embracing lead-tracking, on the other hand, you can glean precious insights into your leads, including:
- Their purchasing habits.
- Their overall behavior with your brand.
- Their pain points.
- Their preferences.
Armed with this wealth of data, your lead tracking strategy will let you craft personalized, relevant, and timely messages that significantly increase the chance that your lead will convert.
Better Customer Experience
As a result of personalizing your marketing messages based on what your leads are truly interested in, you’ll be able to deliver a greater customer experience overall. All your efforts – from email campaigns to free demos – will achieve much better results and help you make better-informed decisions.
Increased Efficiency
Lead tracking doesn’t just have great customer-facing benefits, but it’s also a super effective tool to streamline productivity and efficiency within your organization.
Instead of asking your marketers and salespeople to use guesswork when finding new leads, a lead-tracking strategy equips them with the information they need to zoom in on the most qualified leads. These are also the ones who are more likely to become potential customers, so focusing on them hugely saves your team time, money, and headaches.
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Best Practices for Lead Tracking: 7 Top Tips
Want to implement a successful lead-tracking strategy? Keep reading and you’ll find out how to do so.
1. Establish a set of goals
Unsurprisingly, the first thing you’ll want to do is to set up some goals for your lead tracking strategy. Don’t just come up with a bunch of vague, generic objectives – instead, try to follow the SMART framework:
- Specific: Instead of saying something like “I aim to boost sales lead quantity,” specify by how much: “by 5%”.
- Measurable: How will you find out if your marketing efforts are paying off if you can’t measure your goals? Establish some consistent and accurate lead qualification elements for your sales lead tracking.
- Achievable: Don’t shoot for the stars, or you might be easily disappointed. Start small and simple, with one or two attainable goals that will help you uncover actionable insights.
- Relevant: It doesn’t matter what other companies are doing in terms of lead-tracking. You do what’s best for your business, which means keeping your objectives as aligned with your overall strategy as possible.
- Time-bound: Give your teams a fairly specific deadline to assess and potentially tweak your lead-tracking system. This will also instill in them a sense of positive urgency which is likely to translate into higher productivity and commitment.
2. Choose a lead tracking tool
You might think that lead tracking requires fancy tools and tech, but the good news is that this is not necessarily the case. Some businesses find that a simple spreadsheet works great, while others might prefer a more sophisticated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution.
Discuss all your ideas with the team and devise a solution that makes everyone happy. Remember: whatever lead tracking tool you use, you want to make sure that people use it, otherwise it will be a waste of money and time.
3. Get tracking
Time to get tracking! Before you jump into this crucial part, though, make sure that you have clarified your tracking criteria with all the relevant team members. It’s a good idea to use parameters such as:
- Lead demographics.
- Lead source.
- Lead behavior.
- Lead progress.
Keep all the information as detailed and accurate as possible, and review it frequently to ensure it’s the most current you can get.
4. Create synergy between your teams
When it comes to lead-tracking, it’s essential that both sales and marketing are on the same page. Usually, though, the marketing department is in charge of sourcing new leads, and the salespeople to pursue them. And then, what? With no further interaction between these two departments, silos and miscommunication can occur.
If sales and marketing don’t communicate and collaborate when tracking leads, how are they supposed to pursue only the best leads – and work meaningfully and efficiently to convert them?
Consider leveraging a solid CRM so that both marketing and sales can access the same data (perhaps from Google Analytics) whenever they need it. In parallel, schedule regular team meetings with both marketing and sales reps to go through your lead-tracking system in detail.
If you have a geographically dispersed team or people working remotely, you can leverage online phone systems for seamless, real-time communication. This joint approach will ensure full alignment and much better results.
5. Examine lead quality
Once you have generated a decent number of leads, you’re going to want to figure out whether they are good quality prospects. One of the best and most popular ways to do so is by using a lead-scoring system. This is a process whereby you assign a specific score to each lead depending on several factors, including their behavior at the different points of interaction with your brand.
For example, imagine that you set up a lead scoring system that assigns 1 to 10 points to leads. Has one of your leads downloaded your latest lead magnet or started a 14-day free trial? Great, that could be worth 5 points. Has another one subscribed to your newsletter and clicked on the links included in it? This could be 3 points.
Has a lead contacted your sales team and left their contact details to set up a discovery call? That might land them a whopping 9 points – a strong sign of qualified leads.
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6. Connect with leads
Now, you have narrowed down your lead list to a few good-quality ones. What next? You’ll have to find ways to get in touch with them. While this is not strictly the remit of a lead-tracking project, it’s still worth taking the time to evaluate all the different avenues you can take to contact your leads – and increase your chances of converting them into potential customers.
Based on the lead type, pain points, and behavior that your lead-tracking strategy has unveiled, you should be able to identify the best marketing channels and start your interactions there.
7. Share the findings and keep improving
In marketing and sales processes, gatekeeping doesn’t work. If you want things to go well, and if you want to see tangible results, you need to share the knowledge you have gained through each project you embark on.
For this reason, it’s paramount that you regularly discuss the findings of your lead tracking strategy with all the relevant team members, from your sales reps to your marketing team leaders. Make this a monthly or quarterly occurrence, as this frequency should be the sweet spot to keep everyone up-to-date – nobody wants to discuss years-old information when pursuing new leads!
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Key Takeaways
Every business – from the individual entrepreneur to the global corporation – thrives when customers flock to it regularly. But getting leads is no easy feat, and finding out whether the leads you are getting are working for you is even more challenging.
In this article, we discussed lead tracking and outlined some of the best practices for implementing an effective lead tracking process within your company. What are you waiting for? Start tracking your leads today for a better chance of converting potential customers!
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