Everything you need to know about lead tracking
Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 6:03 am
Leads are members of your target audience who are looking for information. More specifically, they are people who are in the stage of wanting to learn more about your product. They aren't fully sold, but with the help of sales and marketing teams, they can become loyal customers.
Businesses often lose leads like this due to poor lead nurturing efforts. So, let’s look at some lead nurturing tips that will help you convert more leads.
But first…
What is lead tracking?
Lead nurturing involves monitoring the activity of potential customers as they interact with your brand. Follow-up should start from the initial contact and throughout the sales process. In one study, 91% of marketers said that lead generation is their most important goal.
Lead tracking can help you categorize your leads. For example, an inbound lead mobile number list is someone who has reached out to your company. An outbound lead is a customer you have reached out to. These details allow you to create strategies for specific customers. For example, an outbound lead requires more input from the marketing team, while an inbound lead can be fast-tracked to the sales team.
Lead tracking also helps you identify your most efficient lead generation approaches. You’ll see patterns in what works best to convert leads into sales. What works best for you will depend on your audience demographics.
With the help of lead tracking, you can also identify high-value leads to target. You can identify the leads that are most likely to convert and implement specific strategies to shorten the sales cycle. For example, one of your leads might be another business. In that case, you can search for a specific LLC to gather information about their company before trying to close a sale.
Additionally, lead tracking data can inform your sales and marketing operations. The insights can fine-tune marketing efforts and guide future campaigns—your most efficient channels. Lead source data also allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives.
Five tips to help you keep track of leads
Now that you know why lead tracking is so important, the question is: how exactly can you track leads? Let’s dive into five tips:
1. Identify KPIs
Identifying the most relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) is vital. There is a lot of data you can generate from your leads. This can be overwhelming. When you identify your KPIs, you can select the relevant information that you can use for effective lead follow-up.
That being said, here are some key KPIs that businesses should track when monitoring leads:
Traffic-to-Lead Ratio: Measures how effectively your marketing materials convert traffic into leads.
MQL to SQL Ratio: A marketing qualified lead (MQL) has interacted with your marketing materials but may not yet be interested in speaking with a sales rep. A sales qualified lead (SQL) expresses interest in your offering and wants to speak with a sales rep. Knowing this ratio allows you to assess how well your marketing team is moving leads through the sales funnel.
Conversion Time Ratio: Measures how long it takes a visitor to go through each stage of the sales process. The shorter the conversion time, the faster the conversion time.
Monthly Recurring Revenue per Lead, MQL or SQL – This gives you an idea of the quality of your leads, MQLs or SQLs.
Financial metrics are also essential KPIs to track. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is used to project the revenue a customer will generate over their lifecycle. This allows you to plan your sales and marketing budget and focus on high-value leads.
Fountain
It would be helpful to keep track of the cost of your sales and marketing campaigns. This can be done by calculating the cost per acquisition formula below.
lead tracking
Fountain
Tracking this metric allows you to project your return on investment. Determining the profitability of marketing campaigns is essential so you know if your lead nurturing and other marketing efforts are working.
2. Specify possible sources of potential clients
A lead source is a channel that first brought you a potential customer. Knowing this information allows you to determine the tools to monitor your leads.
Let’s look at some potential sources of leads. Organic search traffic is a great place to start. You might think that paid ads would provide more high-quality leads. However, organic search allows you to target keywords that attract highly qualified prospects.
lead tracking
Fountain
In a survey of 30 sales and marketing experts, 44% said organic search was their best source of lead generation. You can use data from organic leads to better match your content to what they're searching for.
Here are some other possible sources of leads:
Pay per click ads
Email newsletters
Events
Traditional ads
Cold calls
Referrals
While you can track your lead sources manually, this can be quite a challenge. The best option is to use tools, which we'll discuss in the next section.
At this stage, you first need to identify your potential lead sources. The best way to do this is to map out the customer journey so you can determine all of your buyer’s initial potential touchpoints.
3. Choose the right tools and monitor leads
Once you've identified your potential lead sources, it's time to invest in the right software that can help you track exactly where your leads are coming from. The tools you choose should be able to monitor all of the potential lead sources you specified.
If you're new to lead tracking, it's worth investing in a comprehensive software that will give you as much help as possible. There are also plenty of tools with specific features that you can use for lead tracking.
You can, for example, assign unique tracking links to all your campaigns that require generating clicks on your sites, such as email, social media, and online ads. You’ll then be able to see where your traffic is coming from through Google Analytics. Or, instead, dive into the new trend of server-side tracking which is a new approach to data tracking that doesn’t rely on third parties like Analytics or HubSpot. With this approach, your user and website data is stored on a secure, centralized server and third parties can’t make use of the data. This will become a necessity as data regulation controls become stricter.
You can also use Call Tracking technology. This is done by assigning a unique tracking phone number to each marketing source. When a person calls a number, the call is routed to the call tracking platform, which collects digital data and links the call to the caller’s previous activity on the site.
Businesses often lose leads like this due to poor lead nurturing efforts. So, let’s look at some lead nurturing tips that will help you convert more leads.
But first…
What is lead tracking?
Lead nurturing involves monitoring the activity of potential customers as they interact with your brand. Follow-up should start from the initial contact and throughout the sales process. In one study, 91% of marketers said that lead generation is their most important goal.
Lead tracking can help you categorize your leads. For example, an inbound lead mobile number list is someone who has reached out to your company. An outbound lead is a customer you have reached out to. These details allow you to create strategies for specific customers. For example, an outbound lead requires more input from the marketing team, while an inbound lead can be fast-tracked to the sales team.
Lead tracking also helps you identify your most efficient lead generation approaches. You’ll see patterns in what works best to convert leads into sales. What works best for you will depend on your audience demographics.
With the help of lead tracking, you can also identify high-value leads to target. You can identify the leads that are most likely to convert and implement specific strategies to shorten the sales cycle. For example, one of your leads might be another business. In that case, you can search for a specific LLC to gather information about their company before trying to close a sale.
Additionally, lead tracking data can inform your sales and marketing operations. The insights can fine-tune marketing efforts and guide future campaigns—your most efficient channels. Lead source data also allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing initiatives.
Five tips to help you keep track of leads
Now that you know why lead tracking is so important, the question is: how exactly can you track leads? Let’s dive into five tips:
1. Identify KPIs
Identifying the most relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) is vital. There is a lot of data you can generate from your leads. This can be overwhelming. When you identify your KPIs, you can select the relevant information that you can use for effective lead follow-up.
That being said, here are some key KPIs that businesses should track when monitoring leads:
Traffic-to-Lead Ratio: Measures how effectively your marketing materials convert traffic into leads.
MQL to SQL Ratio: A marketing qualified lead (MQL) has interacted with your marketing materials but may not yet be interested in speaking with a sales rep. A sales qualified lead (SQL) expresses interest in your offering and wants to speak with a sales rep. Knowing this ratio allows you to assess how well your marketing team is moving leads through the sales funnel.
Conversion Time Ratio: Measures how long it takes a visitor to go through each stage of the sales process. The shorter the conversion time, the faster the conversion time.
Monthly Recurring Revenue per Lead, MQL or SQL – This gives you an idea of the quality of your leads, MQLs or SQLs.
Financial metrics are also essential KPIs to track. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is used to project the revenue a customer will generate over their lifecycle. This allows you to plan your sales and marketing budget and focus on high-value leads.
Fountain
It would be helpful to keep track of the cost of your sales and marketing campaigns. This can be done by calculating the cost per acquisition formula below.
lead tracking
Fountain
Tracking this metric allows you to project your return on investment. Determining the profitability of marketing campaigns is essential so you know if your lead nurturing and other marketing efforts are working.
2. Specify possible sources of potential clients
A lead source is a channel that first brought you a potential customer. Knowing this information allows you to determine the tools to monitor your leads.
Let’s look at some potential sources of leads. Organic search traffic is a great place to start. You might think that paid ads would provide more high-quality leads. However, organic search allows you to target keywords that attract highly qualified prospects.
lead tracking
Fountain
In a survey of 30 sales and marketing experts, 44% said organic search was their best source of lead generation. You can use data from organic leads to better match your content to what they're searching for.
Here are some other possible sources of leads:
Pay per click ads
Email newsletters
Events
Traditional ads
Cold calls
Referrals
While you can track your lead sources manually, this can be quite a challenge. The best option is to use tools, which we'll discuss in the next section.
At this stage, you first need to identify your potential lead sources. The best way to do this is to map out the customer journey so you can determine all of your buyer’s initial potential touchpoints.
3. Choose the right tools and monitor leads
Once you've identified your potential lead sources, it's time to invest in the right software that can help you track exactly where your leads are coming from. The tools you choose should be able to monitor all of the potential lead sources you specified.
If you're new to lead tracking, it's worth investing in a comprehensive software that will give you as much help as possible. There are also plenty of tools with specific features that you can use for lead tracking.
You can, for example, assign unique tracking links to all your campaigns that require generating clicks on your sites, such as email, social media, and online ads. You’ll then be able to see where your traffic is coming from through Google Analytics. Or, instead, dive into the new trend of server-side tracking which is a new approach to data tracking that doesn’t rely on third parties like Analytics or HubSpot. With this approach, your user and website data is stored on a secure, centralized server and third parties can’t make use of the data. This will become a necessity as data regulation controls become stricter.
You can also use Call Tracking technology. This is done by assigning a unique tracking phone number to each marketing source. When a person calls a number, the call is routed to the call tracking platform, which collects digital data and links the call to the caller’s previous activity on the site.