What is lead tracking? Why is tracking leads important?

Leads are the lifeblood of a successful business, but what is lead tracking? A lead is someone who interacts with your business, with the potential of converting into a customer. Leads might be the individuals browsing your products on your website or clicking into your landing pages. 

They can also be the people who sign up to your email marketing campaigns.

Lead tracking is the art of figuring out where your leads came from, and what kind of journey they’ve taken from getting to the point where they first discover your business to the stage when they’re ready to make a purchase. 

Lead tracking helps sales and marketing professionals collaborate to find more qualified potential customers, close more deals, and earn more revenue for the business. What’s more, with lead tracking, you can reduce the amount you’re spending on lead acquisition strategies not delivering the right results. 

Here’s what you need to know about lead tracking…

What is lead tracking? The basics of lead tracking

Lead tracking involves essentially monitoring the movement of your prospective customers through various stages in the sales and marketing funnel. With lead tracking software, businesses can use a variety of tools to essentially map the path to purchase. 

In today’s complex digital world, the average customer moves through a variety of different platforms and environments in the pursuit of a solution to their problem. Experts say it takes around 8 touches with a brand on average to generate a sale. 

To increase your chances of earning more sales, you need to understand where your leads are coming from, how they’ve interacted with your company in the past, and what kind of campaigns are most likely to drive their decisions. 

Implementing proper lead tracking means that you can also provide your sales teams with all the contextual data they need to make a sale. A lead tracking system can gather information about a customer’s journey, so you can customize your sales pitch.

Is lead tracking the same as lead scoring?

Notably, while tracking leads and scoring them are both connected processes in the marketing and sales journey, they’re slightly different. 

Lead tracking describes following the behavior of a lead as they move through the path to purchase. Lead scoring involves assigning a positive or negative score to a lead based on their likelihood to convert.

Using lead analytics within your lead tracking system, you’ll be more equipped to assign an accurate score to each of your prospects. Each time a lead takes a recordable action, it can trigger a deduction or addition of points to their score, which helps marketers to quantify customer behavior.

Why do companies need lead tracking systems?

Tracking leads is an important step in connecting your sales and marketing strategies. When sales and marketing work together, they can build a better understanding of your target audience and determine what’s really necessary to turn each potential prospect into a repeat customer. 

With a lead tracking solution, companies can:

Create better customer personas 

Deeper understandings of your target audience are the key to making more sales in today’s experience-driven world. Your clients want highly personalized and relevant experiences at every stage of the sales funnel.

To deliver this, companies need to know how their customers are progressing through the buyer journey. You can use the information from your lead management system to build more accurate customer profiles and segment your audience. 

Increased sales opportunities 

Through a deeper understanding of your audience and better segmentation, companies can suggest better products and services to their customers, based on data. 

Your lead management system can even help you to understand the best possible time to reach out to a customer to increase your chances of conversions. 

With reports and data analytics, you’ll be able to optimize your sales and marketing processes, while removing any strategies from your campaign which might not be working.

Improve decision making 

Data helps businesses to make better decisions about how to proceed with marketing and sales activities. Lead tracking can signal problems within your current activities which may need to be updated. 

The right technology can also give your company more direction on the campaigns which generate the best outcomes for your team.

How to track leads

Tips for better lead tracking and management

The best way to optimize lead tracking is to invest in the right technology. A lead management system, CRM, and range of other valuable tools will ensure you have more of the information you need to make informed decisions throughout the sales and marketing process. 

To track leads successfully, you’ll need:

1. Lead tracking technology

A lead tracking solution is an all-in-one system designed to help you with tracking leads across multiple channels and environments. You can use these tools to see where your lead traffic is coming from and use performance summaries to understand the effectiveness of your campaigns. 

Lead tracking solutions often come with customizable dashboards, where you can see some of the key performance indicators most relevant to your business (like who your top publishers are). 

You can also use the technology to dive deeper into information about your leads, so you can enhance your user personas and knowledge of your target market.

2. Lead qualification and scoring tools

Tracking where your leads come from is only one part of making sure you’re getting the most out of your acquisition and nurturing strategies. To minimize wasted time for your sales team, and enhance your chances of conversions, you’ll also need a way to qualify your leads. 

Many lead tracking tools and CRM solutions will allow you to apply scores to leads based on automated triggers and systems. For instance, you could add points to a lead when they engage with your emails or download something from your website. 

On the other hand, you would reduce a lead’s score when they stop interacting with your brand for an extended period of time. 

3. CRM technology

CRM solutions often go hand-in-hand with lead tracking and scoring tools. These solutions are essential to helping you cultivate as much information as possible about your individual prospects, and your wider audience. 

With Customer Relationship Management tools, you can keep a close eye on how many interactions a customer has had with your business, and what kind of connections they’ve made in the past. 

CRM solutions can sift through large amounts of data and collate the information you need to build user profiles with minimal effort. 

4. Sales tracking software

With sales professionals now working in a wide range of environments, it’s important for companies to be able to keep track of the sales activities taking place in their ecosystem. 

Sales software is usually a solution integrated with or built into the CRM system, to help monitor the progress your team is making when it comes to converting deals.

With lead tracking technology used alongside sales software, sales teams can often make better decisions about how to reach out to their prospects. 

5. Lead capturing and nurturing tools

Finally, don’t forget to implement tools for capturing and nurturing leads whenever possible too. Landing page builders and form builders which allow you to capture information from customers for your CRM and contact list are essential to lead management. 

You could also think about implementing email marketing campaigns to nurture and convert your leads over time. 

Ideally, the majority of your software for lead tracking, management, and scoring will be able to work together through integrations and hooks, so you can maintain a complete stream of data. 

Bringing marketing and sales together on lead tracking

Lead tracking requires a lot of planning and coordination, to ensure you get the best possible view of your target audience, and your prospects over time. Most companies assume lead tracking is the responsibility of the sales professional, as these are the individuals most used to dealing with leads.

However, an effective lead tracking strategy will often involve bringing sales and marketing teams together. 

The marketing team also has a role to play in a comprehensive lead management environment, because they create the content and tools required to bring new customers into the pipeline, and they’re essential for moving prospects through the sales channel.

Sales and marketing teams need to work together on prospect and lead tracking through seamless collaboration. Bringing your sales and marketing teams together will help with the creation of a more customized, informed, and educated approach to sales which makes each customer feel like an individual. 

Remember, lead tracking isn’t just for the sales team. 

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