Tracking Sales Leads is important to know if your business is growing but tracking where your leads are coming from is important to know which marketing campaigns are effective. Tracking Sales leads sources for campaign purposes for services-based businesses is extremely difficult because a person must actually make the sale. Today we share our process of what and how to track sales leads for service-based businesses.
In order to know if your marketing is working or not you need to track contact points first then you can pull that information through to closed sales. The points of contact that you need to track for all your marketing campaigns are
- Contact Forms – websites and landing pages
- Newsletters sign-ups
- Chat Bot
- Phone Calls
- Appointment scheduling systems
Links Mentioned In This Episode
Products We Recommend
Elementor Pro – Form custom website forms
Grasshopper – call tracking and answering service
Supermetrics – Data aggregation from all your lead campaigns
Freshsales CRM – To track your leads
Calendly – Add scheduling links to your campaigns
Links to Previous Episodes & articles
Episode 64- A Sales Process For Small Business – Interview With Nancy Zare
Episode 62 – Youtube Ads – Tv Commercials For Small Business Marketing
Episode 19- Email Sales Funnels For Lead Generation
Episode 46 – Drive Audience Engagement With Welcome Emails
Episode 55 –Chatbots To Increase Lead Conversion On Your Website
Episode 48 – Data to Drive Marketing Decisions
Episode 10 – Use Qr Codes To Increase Sales
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Check out our new blog at marketingmasterminds.co free marketing educational content with how-to’s and training coming soon
What we discussed:
- What is lead tracking
- Where to track your leads
- What tools to use to track contact points
Tracking Sales Leads For Service Businesses
*Not ready to give this episode a listen or watch just yet? Below is a rough transcript of today’s episode.*
[00:00:00] Lead generation campaigns are great for business growth, but they are very hard to track for service based businesses. How do you know if your digital ad campaign has resulted in any leads as a service based business? So today I’m gonna walk you through how to track leads for serviced based businesses.
[00:00:18] So you can determine if your campaigns are working or not. I’m really excited to share this one with you today. because It’s a problem that vexes not only service based business owners, but they’re marketing people too. And we here at Inma have this all figured out, okay. So before I get into the episode, of course, I’m gonna talk to you about housekeeping stuff. there is a lot in the show notes. So please go take a look at them. I am gonna be referencing a lot of previous podcast episodes, some articles, and then I’m gonna be talking a lot.
[00:00:54] Tools today and there’s links for all of these tools in the show notes. And of course the rough [00:01:00] transcript is going to be there as well. so that you can go back and read through different parts and pieces. So we are partners with many of the products that we recommend, not all of them on the list, but the majority, because it’s what we use every day to market ourselves, to market our clients.
[00:01:17] So we’re trying to give you our best in class. so if you are considering any of the tools that we’re talking about today, definitely click on our links, right? We do make a small commission and this helps us keep creating all this awesome content for you.
[00:01:31] Today is all about lead tracking for serviced based businesses. This topic is big enough. There’s so much in it all by itself. so I’m going to dedicate a completely separate podcast to episode for lead tracking for eCommerce or product based businesses. so whole tight guys. We’re gonna talk about service first.
[00:01:51] and then a small geek out alert, out of all the stuff we do for marketing, this is actually one of my favorite things. we do this every time we [00:02:00] build a website is, implementing all of this lead tracking. so we are deep in the knowledge weeds on this. so I will keep it at a high level for this episode.
[00:02:09] Give you an overview of how it works and talk about the tools to use this. . And then in the next couple of months, I’m actually going to be creating a whole video training series on marketing masterminds on how to actually set up these individual, things I’m gonna be talking about.
[00:02:26] So definitely look for that in the show notes, cuz by the time you’re listening to this, it all may be done. And by the magic of editing, I’ll actually go and have ’em in there. in those show notes. So why is lead tracking so hard for service based businesses? all service based businesses have to make contact with a lead to make or finish the sale, right?
[00:02:45] So a person actually has to close the sale in a service based industry. So I think the biggest thing that, business owners and service industries do is when they think about tracking, closed sales, they’re talking about, [00:03:00] looking at, those, actual individuals or the sale itself, but what we really wanna track are the contact points.
[00:03:06] And so contact points are really your calls to actions on your website, your social pages. Any outbound campaign. let’s talk about what those are, right? So first and foremost, on your website or any landing pages you have created, it’s your contact form? newsletter sign up, same thing, right? It’s a secondary type of lead, They’re interested in your business. Maybe they’re not ready to have a conversation with you yet, but they wanna stay connected. I think of that as a really good secondary lead chat bots. If you have a chat bot on your site or anywhere else, like Facebook messenger. I consider a chat bot, phone calls.
[00:03:40] If they pick up the phone to call the business, that is absolutely a lead. And then, appointment scheduling systems or reservation scheduling systems, cuz don’t forget,restaurants, their service based businesses in order to actually get that check to close. There are a lot of things that have to happen from the time that they either step in the door [00:04:00] or make the reservation in order for you to close that.
[00:04:03] so with the right tools, all of these can be tracked and reported on and pulled into your CRM system. So really it’s all about the tools and the setup. So now let’s talk a little bit about where you’re gonna track your leads from simple answer is every single campaign on every single one of your,designated marketing assets.
[00:04:26] So let’s talk about what those are. Websites, landing pages, right? Those are gonna be like your number one for everything. Cuz everything like funnels back to the website, outbound emails, sales funnel. Welcome emails, newsletters. if you listen to episodes 19 and or 46, I talk about sales funnels and welcome emails.
[00:04:46] so definitely go take a listen to that. If you haven’t about getting those set up and using those for campaigning, your social media channels, some you can just put your website link. Others are much. Sophisticated like Facebook and or LinkedIn, or you could put in [00:05:00] calendar links, a link to a contact form, a link to, your telephone number.
[00:05:05] for your page. Facebook gives you a lot of options and then of course there’s always Facebook messenger. and then your Google, my business listing Google tracks and allows you to put a lot of things in there to allow people to reach out and contact you. Telephone numbers. You can actually put your calendar scheduling link in there.
[00:05:22] if they click on your website, it’s tracked. So Google my business is a really, really great place. And then of course, don’t forget your digital ads. And then any type of print ads or print mailers, or materials that you have out there for lead generation.
[00:05:37] okay. So now let’s get into the meat of this, where we’re gonna spend most of our time and how we’re going to track these different contact points on your different campaigns and places where you have them and the tools I’m gonna give you all the tool recommendations that you can use to actually set these up.
[00:05:55] But before we get into those, let’s talk. The landing [00:06:00] place, like where’s all this gonna go. Like, it’s all great and wonderful that you’re tracking all this stuff, but where are you gonna look at it at? So there’s two places, right? You’re gonna have a data report and maybe a CRM system. the reason I say maybe is that some businesses just don’t lend themselves to CRMs, which is contact relationship management systems because their sales cycles are so short. so a good example of this would be a restaurant. if you’ve got people coming and going, maybe having a CRM system, isn’t right for you.
[00:06:31] they come in, they pay the check. They. but you definitely wanna have a data report. Whereas if you are a plumber or a general contractor, everybody that contacts you, you wanna put into a CRM system because you may do a bathroom for them one day and they may reach back out to you to do an addition.
[00:06:46] And you want the notes and the information from the first time you service them, especially if it’s a year or two years later. So for data reporting, which is for everybody who’s listening here, you can try configuring Google analytics, right?[00:07:00] it’s gonna collect all that website data. they’ve recently added search console where you can pull that search data in, but it’s hard to set up a little difficult to review, not ins surmount.
[00:07:11] but you can’t pull in extras. Like you can’t pull in your Google, my business data. If you’re doing mailings, you can’t pull all that mailing data into, That report and see it all together. So what we recommend for data reporting is using Google data studio, which is another free Google product.
[00:07:28] and then pulling your analytics, your mailing data, all that other stuff into that report using a data aggregator. There’s a lot out there, but the one that we like the most is Supermetrics. basically what they do is, they give you all these different data feeds. You pick the ones that you’re using and you pull them into the, Google data studio report and all of it’s displayed right there.
[00:07:49] So your analytics data can sit right next to your Google, my business data, which can sit right next to your digital ads and your email, inform. Pretty cool. to [00:08:00] learn more about this, listen to episode 48, where I talk about data collection and a little bit more about Supermetrics and its superpowers, cuz it’s pretty freaking cool.
[00:08:08] So if you want to use a CRM system. this is where the leads are gonna get sent to. So if Jane DOE reaches out and makes telephone call, you can actually get Jane’s data put into a system where it’s collected and stored, and you can add notes to it, whether you want it, or you didn’t. . So this is really important.
[00:08:26] If you have long lead cycles or repeat business where you need to keep track of everybody, if you don’t have a CRM system, we like fresh sales. It’s a pretty simple cost effective CRM system. And it has a lot of add-ons that you can add over time. So it will grow and change with you. it’s really great for small businesses, but there are a ton out there.
[00:08:48] as far as integration goes, a lot of the big ones. Integrate directly with your website and all these other things. But even if you use something like a fresh sales or something else that you already have, that you love, you can [00:09:00] probably get the integrations to work, with Zapier, which is a connector system or a make just a competitor of Zapier.
[00:09:07] They both work really well. Ander has all the connection links. there’s not a lot out there that they don’t have and if they don’t have it make, probably does. so that’s how you’re gonna get that data from wherever its source is it’s connection source, which is what we’re gonna talk about and into your CRM system.
[00:09:25] Okay. So now that we have where all of this is gonna go, let’s talk about what it is and how we’re, gonna get it there. So I wanna start with contact forms and newsletter signups from your website and or your landing pages. so you should be using contact forms on your website and landing pages and not putting your email address on the site.
[00:09:47] There’s two reasons for this number one, it reduces the amount of spam that you’re gonna get to that inbox because they’re not scraping and grabbing your email address and then putting it out wherever for [00:10:00] others to grab it and email you nonsense as well. The form actually will cut down on the. and then at least if someone’s going to be willing to spam you through your contact form and fill it out, you’re making ’em work for it.
[00:10:11] The other thing I like about that is that once they fill out a contact form and hit submit, it can be saved. It can be stored and it can be tracked.
[00:10:19] And so what we like to use for this is, again, you can set this up directly in Google analytics, but we like to use Google tag manager for all of this tracking on the website. It’s easier to actually set up than in Google analytics. It’s a little more intuitive. It’s definitely not code based. And not only can you set this up, but everything else we’re gonna be talking about today, you can set up using Google tag manager where you wouldn’t be able to directly with Google analytics.
[00:10:47] I think what happened is Google realized that they needed something more than Google analytics. So they’ve built these other ancillary services, like Google data studio, like Google tag manager, so that you can get a better look and [00:11:00] feel for all of this. And again, it’s all.
[00:11:02] and then the other thing you’re gonna wanna do is that anytime someone does fill out that contact form goes to the report and you send it to the CRM system, Via either Zapier or direct link from within your website. Now, if you’re gonna be using landing pages on your website, make sure that if you use separate contact, that you’re, setting up Google tag manager to collect both of them independently, because they are separate.
[00:11:29] Because you don’t wanna miss any of the submissions, especially if you’re running a campaign. so what we like to do is we actually use WordPress with element or pro, and then we set up contacts forms with form vibe, and you can have as many contact forms for the site as you want, and they can ask different information.
[00:11:46] So here’s an example of why you would do that. so let’s say you’re a plumber. And you offer all kinds of plumbing services. So on your website’s main area, you’re gonna have a single contact form for general contact outreach, but let’s say [00:12:00] you want to run a water heater replacement promotion, where you’re offering, a certain amount off or a.
[00:12:06] Something back, you can create a landing page that talks about the offer and then a specific contact form. So you can track all of those separately and then ask different questions. You could ask things like, obviously name, address, telephone number, but maybe age of your water heater brand, or,are you looking to get something that’s more efficient versus you?
[00:12:26] Wouldn’t be asking that on your main contact. and then for newsletter sign up, it’s pretty much the same. It’s a different type of form on your website, but instead of sending it to your CRM system as an official lead, that needs to be reached out to you, send it to your mailing system, your email system, and depending on the campaigns that you have set up, you send them to a sales funnel, they get a welcome series.
[00:12:48] They get dumped right into your newsletter. And then when they make some type of, overture there. To fill out a lead form or to call you, then they can get pulled into your CRM system so that you don’t have [00:13:00] people that are not ready to be contacted yet sitting in your CRM system. And so we like to use MailChimp and, or constant contact.
[00:13:08] Both of these will directly integrate with, form vibe and WordPress. You don’t need Zapier for that for sure. All right. So now let’s move on and talk about chat bots. These are similar to contact forms, but they just do more things. And they’re a little bit more elegant about how they do it because they allow the user to interact and they’re very conversational.
[00:13:28] but you can have ’em fill out a contact form that way they can schedule a meeting. They can request a telephone call back, sign up for the newsletter, give special offers. So definitely check out episode 55, where I talk about chatbots in more. And so the data that is collected cuz every time someone has an interaction, that data is collected by the chat bot, regardless of what it is.
[00:13:50] And that can actually be pulled into your reporting. via Zier. and then if we like to use ti Dio at chatbot for, [00:14:00] websites,and so that will actually integrate directly with a lot of CRM systems. So meaning if they say, Hey, yeah, I do want someone to reach out and contact me. It can get pulled into the CRM system as well as logged as an event.
[00:14:12] All right, so let’s move on to phone calls. This one’s actually one of my favorites, because, part of it’s tricky. and it’s a little elusive, but we’ve figured it out. so this is tracking someone when they call you, So let’s say you’re running an ad that has your telephone number in it.
[00:14:28] Maybe social media is there, phone calls for some businesses, are there, lifeblood, right? They live and die by those phone calls. So the most simplest way to do this is you can actually, track, click to calls. Wherever that telephone number is linked websites. social media pages, emails, you can actually set it up where your emails,if they’re looking at it, they can actually click on the telephone number and actually call you.
[00:14:52] And this data can be pulled into your reports as an event. , but this is where that’s only, giving you [00:15:00] part of the story, right? Because it doesn’t tell you anything about the person when they called. or anything like that. Like you can, pull it down to the day in your reporting, but not the time of day.
[00:15:11] And it’s just that they clicked not that they actually talked to someone left a message gave you information, and then it doesn’t track when someone calls you the old fashioned way where they actually put your number in and dial it. Which could happen, Especially if they’ve got print materials or something like that.
[00:15:26] So if you wanna get full, robust phone tracking, you actually have to start the tracking process at the other end at the answering end. So what you need to use is an answering and tracking service tool, like grass. And what grasshopper offers is,they’ll answer your phone, you can do the automated message, or they actually have an add on service to the regular, monthly maintenance fee of virtual receptionist where someone actually, picks up the phone and talks to the person that’s there.
[00:15:56] Regardless of which way you choose. If grasshoppers [00:16:00] answer in your calls, all of the calls are tracked. Date, timestamped, telephone number. If they leave a message, if they talk to a person, all of that is transcribed. And if you have a person, you can give them a script. Would you like someone to call you?
[00:16:15] I need this inform. so there’s a ton of other, cool features. I’m gonna be doing a whole episode about grasshopper within the next, couple of months as well. And so because it’s tracked and because it’s in this online system, it can get integrated into your reports as well as your CRM system. So if Jane DOE calls and speaks to a virtual assistant and gives her contact information, we can have that show up as a phone event on the report, as well as Jane DOE can then be pulled into your CRM system with the message of whatever needs to happen next, grasshopper will integrate with some of the major CRM systems, but again, If it doesn’t integrate with yours, there’s always a here to help you.
[00:16:55] So that one is pretty cool. Now let’s talk about appointment scheduling [00:17:00] systems. so if you use an appointment scheduling system to get people to schedule appointments with you, like Calendarly or motion, those are provided via links. And like I said earlier, if it has a link, it can be tracked.
[00:17:12] And so when they click on the link, that event can be added to your report. And then ly, I definitely know, has an integration where if the person fills it out and schedules with you, that scheduled information can then be imported into your CRM system. and if you’re using something else, like motion, which I think does it too, but motion is new on our list of review.
[00:17:33] We’re actually in testing mode with, motion to see if we like it better than Calendarly. cuz sometimes these up and comers like take over the industry because they’re just better tools. So we’re always constantly looking to upgrade. So I’ll let you know about motion when we know more. but either way they’ll all integrate with your CRM system.
[00:17:52] with Saper, for. and then digital ads. I’m not gonna spend too much time talking about them because basically a digital ad is going to push [00:18:00] them to one of these other contact points, your telephone number, your scheduling system, your landing page on your website that should have a chat bot or a contact form or something on it.
[00:18:10] And so that would be tracked there. The only extra thing that you’re gonna do with digital ads Facebook will do it. And Google, ads will do it where you can actually set up certain codes. that log something as a conversion, right? So in there they don’t call ’em leads. They call ’em conversions, cuz it’s very e-commerce centric, but I’ve set up ads where if they click on that link for the telephone call, that logs it as a conversion.
[00:18:35] If they fill out the contact form that logs it as a conversion. And then when I pull it into the report, We use our lead language. and you can even see that, like if an ad generates five conversions, we actually pull the data in and say, okay, three of those were telephone calls and two of them were contact forms or they were, clicking on the link.
[00:18:54] So we can actually break all that data down by what it actually is, which is pretty cool.[00:19:00] print materials. The big thing here is you’re gonna wanna use a QR code if you’re going to send them off digitally. Some. We’ve got the telephone number, taken care of if you’re using the answering system, but if you want them to get from the postcard or the print piece to the website, to a specific landing pages, that’s where you’re gonna use a QR code.
[00:19:21] Listen to episode 10, where I talk about how cool QR codes are and how useful they are, to learn more. Okay. So that was a lot of information. and, you gotta do something next now that you haven’t, you’re like, this is cool. I wanna do this. we gotta talk about what you’re gonna do next. So let’s talk about taking some action, right?
[00:19:42] Information’s only as good as what you do with it. So the first thing I want you to do is if you don’t have a CRM system, you want a CRM system set up a CRM system and set up your report, decide, am I gonna use native Google analytics? Or am I going to set up [00:20:00] Google data studio? With Google tag manager and then pull that data in with Supermetrics right.
[00:20:05] Decide that, get that set up first. and like I said, with CRM, if you’re on the fence on what to use, we do recommend fresh sales, right? Their base program is great if you’re just starting out. And then when you’re ready to get a little bit more sophisticated, you can add on other modules that they.
[00:20:21] so then once you have that in place and you have a handle on what you’re gonna track my website data, my Google analytics,my Google, my business data, too many Googles in this one. my email, my search console, get that all, laid out. See what it looks like right now. And then you can start setting up one lead tracking path, a specific contact point.
[00:20:43] The one you wanna choose first is actually the one. Where, you know, or you perceive you’re getting the majority of your leads from right. If you’re a real estate agent, probably tracking telephone numbers is gonna be number one out there. You’re getting phone calls all the time, especially if you’re running campaigns where they’re [00:21:00] pushing people to call you.
[00:21:01] if you are a coach and your number one way is that they click on your scheduling link from wherever you have it. and they’re scheduling time with you all the time. Then that’s the one that you are going to, implement first and then. find the tools, set the tools up and then make sure you test it too.
[00:21:18] if you’re using something like Google tag manager, make sure you test everything, you call you fill out the form, have someone call, have someone fill out the form, and follow it all the way down to the end and make sure it shows up on your report. And it shows up in your CRM. then once you do that, pick the next highest volume, right?
[00:21:38] Maybe for you. The second one is telephone numbers. Whatever’s next until you’re through all of them. newsletter signups might be last because you only get one or two of those a month, but they’re important because those folks may be taking another path to actually contact with you. And that’s how you’re going to, get all of this done.
[00:21:54] you’re gonna get the most impactful data first, but it all gets done over time. So here [00:22:00] are my final thoughts for you on this one, right? This is advanced level stuff. If you take a look at the show notes, I’m linking out to so much different stuff, because I’ve talked about other stuff that impacts this, greatly.
[00:22:14] So me, I love this. I can do this all day long, set all these up. but you maybe not so much. So if you’re head spinning a little bit and you’re like, gosh, I really wanna do this, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to do this myself. Please reach out to me to talk about this. And no, I did say. right.if you listen to other episodes, I tell you to hire a professional. I tell you to get educated. some of these topics that I go over there are other people out there that are also subject matter experts. And maybe, they’re right down the street from you. But in this case, there’s a lot of people in marketing.
[00:22:47] that actually don’t know how to do all of this, or don’t understand this whole process. It’s kind of like once they put it out there, they expect you the business owner to figure out how to track your leads. And they may actually do some of it. They may set [00:23:00] the telephone number up to click to call, but they don’t know how to set up a report for you.
[00:23:03] and so let’s have that conversation together, because if it’s something that you’re really interested in, we can take you from all of your contact points to having them into a report and pushing to your CRM system completely. And we’ll do it at whatever level that you want and are most comfortable with.
[00:23:21] So here at Inma, we love to give back to the business community and we are doing it in so many different ways. you can reach out to me from the website and schedule a 45 minute, free marketing consultation where we can talk about this, or maybe your website, or we can talk about search engine optimization, whatever you wanna talk about that 45 minutes is yours.
[00:23:42] Just go to inma.com. I N K YMA dot. And click on the, schedule a marketing evaluation. You’re gonna get my Calendarly link and you pick your date. You pick your time and we are on together. I also have a contact form Fill that out. If you have a question, a [00:24:00] comment, a suggestion for a show.
[00:24:01] I love suggestions for shows. Those are so cool. we have the educational blog, marketing masterminds. There are articles. There are videos on how to, and DIY and understanding concepts in marketing that maybe you’ve never thought of. And we also have a chat bot there that you can interact with, which is pretty cool.
[00:24:19] So hopefully you found this information informative and helpful if you did, and you know, other business owners that you think this could help as well, please share. Right. The purpose of this is to help grow, the entire business community. And so I do my very best to get this out to as many people as possible, but I need your help.[00:24:42] I need you to share this as well, so I hope you found it enlightening thank you so much for listening and have an amazing day.
