How To Track Phone Leads / Enquiries

When a prospect makes an enquiry to your business, do you track the original source of the lead? Tracking your marketing activities is crucial; after all, if you don't know what is working, how do you know what to spend your marketing budget on (or not spend it on)?

Fortunately internet marketing lends itself extraordinarily well to being measured. Providing you have website analytics software installed for your web site, you can easily determine what search engine/keyword or web site referred a visitor to your own web site, and then what that visitor did on your site, including if s/he made an EMAIL enquiry. But.....

if a prospect makes a PHONE enquiry, it has been notoriously difficult for the prospect to be able to accurately explain which web site or search engine they originally found your own business web site through. Looking at it from their point-of-view, they have probably made dozens of search engine searches, and looked at numerable competitor and industry web sites so confusion over how they initially found your site is to be expected. Also, it is often dificult for the sales manager to use the right question and use it early enough in the sales process to be able to nail down the initial source of the phone lead.

Because of this, tracking phone enquiries accurately has been difficult and generally let slide by most business owners.

However, 2 pieces of software now make it MUCH easier to be able to accurately track the phone lead's initial source.

Software To Track Phone Leads

These two pieces of software are:

a) Affiliate tracking software

b) Real-time web-site visitor tracking software

To explain how each of these help track phone leads, let's use some example scenarios. Let's pretend you offer language training services for businesses in the UK. Our fictional prospect works for a company in Manchester and needs training in German as she has been tasked with opening a new office in Berlin.

Phone Lead Tracking Scenario 1

Scenario 1: In rapid succession the prospect searches Google.co.uk for German language training UK, German language courses Manchester, and finally business German language training Manchester, each time looking at 4 web sites per search phrase. That's 12 web sites she has viewed in quick succession. In those 12 clicks, she has also clicked on 9 natural/organic results and 3 Google Adwords ads.

She is now on your web site and rings your free phone number, as she would like to confirm that she can start your German lessons immediately. Your sales manager fields the call, using his Initial Phone Enquiry script which includes the question "Oh, by the way ma'am, how did you originally find out about our company?" To which she replies "Just then I Googled german training, and found your web site."

Now, the sales manager has probably just performed a small miracle that 95% of businesses don't do, by narrowing the prospect's source down to Google, and a search phrase. BUT, as we know from what the prospect actually did, a) she has just given the INCORRECT search phrase and b) we don't know if she came through an organic/natural listing OR a Google Adwords ad.

When you are spending £1 PER CLICK on Google Adwords, don't you think finding out if it was a natural result or a Google Adwords ad might be valuable in deciding whether to continue bidding on a search phrase or to bin it?

Fortunately, the sales manager has been in the game long enough to know that a prospect is normally confused as to how they found your business after they ring your business phone number, and so after the call he checks the small window on his monitor containing the real-time website visitor tracking information to check EXACTLY which search-phrase she (the prospect) came through to your web site from.

He sees this information in the tracking window:

Alert: Google Free

Search Engine: Google.co.uk

Referrer: google.co.uk/search?hl=en& q=business+German+language+training+Manchester&meta=

Keywords: business German language training Manchester

He chuckles knowlingly to himself, and marks on his Initial Prospect Enquiry Form, that she was REFERRED from Google.co.uk, on an ORGANIC search engine result, using the SEARCH PHRASE business German language training Manchester.

Bingo, he has just accurately tracked a phone lead!

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, what happens if she ORIGINALLY had found out about our business by clicking on the banner ad that you run on the TheHRDirector.com web site but that she had forgotten about that and only gave the most recent information of how she found you?

That is where affiliate tracking software comes to the rescue and scenario 2 to explain it.

Phone Lead Tracking Scenario 2

Scenario 2: Your prospect is told to check TheHRDirector.com by her (did you guess?) HR Director to check if there are any language training companies recommended by that web site. While on TheHRDirector.com late one evening she sees one of your advertising banners and clicks on it. Liking what she sees but eager to get home for the day, she mentally notes she needs to contact your business in the morning.

Overnight, her short-term memory of that fleeting visit fades and she forgets your business name. And so instead she begins the search engine searching we found about in Scenario 1. Fortunately she still makes the phone enquiry to your business but she gives the incorrect ORIGINAL source of where she saw your business, naming a Google search instead of The HRDirector.

Her memory may have rapidly faded but fortunately the data your affiliate tracking software tracks hasn't. When she originally clicked on your TheHRDirector.com banner, the affiliate tracking code in the banner link registered with your affiliate tracking software a visit to your web site from an affiliate coded 24. The affiliate software cunningly inserts next to the phone number on your web site the text "quote 24". Your sales manager also makes sure to ask from his Initial Phone Enquiry Script "Ma'am, next to the phone number you just rang, is there the text quote plus a number?". She replies "Why yes, it says quote twenty four".

The sales manager thanks her, and notes the number 24 in the AFFILIATE ID column of his Initial Phone Enquiry form and continues with the Initial Phone Enquiry Script. After the call he checks the affiliate tracking code sheet and notes that code 24 is for the banner on ThHRDirector.com, and thus accurately tracks the phone lead to the correct source!

Tracking your phone enquiry sources is vitally important so that you are more accurately measuring the effectiveness of all of your marketing. So, 1stPageProphets strongly recommends setting up the above software on your own business web site. If you are pressed for time, why not have 1stPageProphets get your web site set up so you can test and measure the effectiveness of your internet marketing? Contact us now about our phone enquiry tracking setup service.

This article may be freely reprinted as long as the resource box below remains intact (including the hyperlink) with the article.

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Mike Bradley is founder of 1stPageProphets, who provide services to drive hungry, qualified buyers to your web site using natural and paid search engine results and ads. Find out what is holding your web site back from more buyers by going to http://www.1stpageprophets.com now.

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