At Highforge, we’re always discovering new marketing tools and strategies to help your business grow and thrive. This month, we’re diving into lead tracking strategies for small businesses, and we can’t wait to share our tips, tricks and solutions to help you manage your sales funnel effectively. Let’s get started!
Do you know exactly what in your marketing mix is driving sales the best for your company? If not, we can guess you also haven’t yet invested in lead tracking. Lead tracking is simply tracking how your small- or medium-sized business is acquiring its leads and then following them as they progress through the sales funnel.
If you’re tracking your leads effectively, you know where they are in the sales funnel and what actions you need to take to keep them moving through it until they are secured as customers. Sounds like a smart strategy, doesn’t it? That’s because it works. Knowing what actions and/or touch points have helped your lead progress through the funnel or drop out of it sounds like quality intel to us!
Getting Started with Lead Tracking
If you’re just getting started, you’ll probably want to look at lead tracking software solutions. These can be either paid or free, but they should be able to help you use data to make decisions about managing your marketing mix, not guesswork.
In addition, your lead tracking software should be able to track online and offline lead sources. It should give a snapshot of which marketing efforts are capturing leads, and if it displays all that info in a dashboard, you’re moving in the right direction. You’ll also want an analytics suite that is built into the dashboard, so it can be a one-stop shop for all of your lead activities.
Some lead tracking software also has additional features like call tracking, auto responses, lead follow-up abilities and more. What is most valuable for how you do business? Get a clear understanding of the must-have information you need to manage your leads, and then find the software that offers those features and benefits.
However, there’s no need to go it alone. If you’re a Florida-based small business looking for lead tracking strategies, Highforge can help. We have a wealth of experience with both paid and free lead tracking software, and we’re happy to help you find what you need.
Free Lead Tracking Strategies for Small Business
- UTM Codes. One of the simplest ways to track leads for free is by using a Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) code, which adds a code to a URL. This enables you to see exactly where your lead came from, whether it be your website, social or any number of online advertising campaigns. Of course, code tracking is not a simple task, and we highly recommend you use experts like the developers at Highforge to set up and use UTM codes for your marketing efforts.
- Call Tracking. Another way to track incoming leads is by capturing your phone calls. Having a prospect on the line is exactly where you want to be, but do you know what drove that call? Call tracking software uses a different phone number for each aspect of your marketing efforts and then funnels them to your main phone number—providing solid visibility into which of your marketing efforts brought that call your way. Amazing, right?
- Ask Your Customers! One final free lead tracking method is simply to ask your prospects what drove them to you. Ask verbally on the phone or in person, and capture in a spreadsheet or other database. You can also use new customer paperwork to ask and include options like social, ad, search, influencer, referral, etc. It’s easy to forget how simple it can really be to get insight into what’s working for your business.
Of course, there are numerous paid software options available as well, and these often come with more advanced features and benefits than their free counterparts. If you’re ready to invest in paid lead tracking strategies for a small to medium-sized business, Highforge can help point you in the right direction for your unique business needs.
Whether paid or free, manual or software-driven, lead tracking is a must for understanding what marketing strategies are bringing you prospects and are therefore worth investing more of your marketing budget in. Using data to help you target prospects most effectively is always worthwhile, so capture that information and use it to drive your smartest marketing campaigns yet. Need a partner in 2023 to lighten the load? Contact Highforge today!