The question is usually something like ‘and where do you keep all your sales leads and all the other valuable nuggets of digital data for each potential new client’?
Often the answer is that new business enquiries are held in lots of different places and accessed by many different people.
Most often there is no set consistent process of how each new request should be followed up and if this actually turned into new business or not!
And, this is the critical bit. Cash will have been divided up into pots and spent on different advertising channels but often there isn’t any information, at all, on which pots have done better than others!
Effective marketing strategies require a lot more than this, whether outbound or inbound.
Which marketing channel performs best for your business?
How will your business work out which is the most effective marketing channel for return on investment?
And, whilst we are on the subject, it’s not enough to know if Google search created this enquiry and Linkedin another, it’s most important to know which pot of cash generated the most pieces of ‘closed business’.
This is one of the first questions any marketeer, worth his or her salt, will ask a new client.
Marketing attribution for each individual enquiry
In the business, this is called ‘attribution’ and to record this properly, for every new enquiry and each hard-worn closed deal you need to have a CRM (customer relationship management system) or a CDP (customer data platform) and in some cases both.
And of course, you need to have the tools to provide you with the digital intelligence on which marketing channel each new piece of business is being attributed.
Goals can be set in Google Analytics based on form submissions and contact requests but these give you anonymous numbers. They don’t tie each individual enquiry with a name and business. Also, there are many different ways of getting in touch.
There could be:
- website form submissions
- mobile phone calls directly from a Google text ad
- phone calls from the website (from many different channels)
- appointment bookings through a service like Calendly
- direct emails from the website
- social media form enquiries stored on Facebook or LinkedIn
- live chats on the website conducted through a tool like Livechat
- enquiries through email marketing
However, before getting in touch, how did this potential new business opportunity find out about your service or product?
Digital Intelligence, CRM and CDP
A digital intelligence and lead generation tool like CANDDi will provide your business with information on where an enquiry has originated. It also provides rich information on companies visiting your website and not submitting an enquiry.
This is great prospecting data for sales teams.
CRM’s and CDP’s that are integrated into your website can also provide information on where a prospect has become aware of your business; which channel has triggered that need to get in touch.
It depends on your type of service whether you use a CRM, CDP or both. CRM’s are used more with business to business (B2B) marketing and CDPs more within (B2C) marketing.
Of course, there is much other information that will be stored too for each customer record.
Sector, company size, turnover, website user journeys, first point of contact, last point of contact, recorded phone calls and much more are all valuable for customer profiling.
Maximise your advertising spend!
If you are not convinced of the value of properly storing all this vital digital marketing data you won’t be maximising your advertising spend. And it then follows that your business will be wasting money.
That’s the value of best in class CRM, CDP and accurate digital attribution.
Contact requests can be hard won and are valuable. Design, strategy and financial investment, including media spend are all required to generate them.
Alongside the critical ‘where did they first notice us and what caused that enquiry’, contact requests from every single way of getting in touch NEED to be stored in one place.
The business needs to clearly see that value of each alongside the resources invested. Finally, closed business is critical for the bottom line on which marketing channels are delivering profit.
Sales teams take note!
