Lead tracking is a process for managing information about prospects. Your process accumulates information about each potential customer that visits your website, or attends a webinar, or meets you at a trade show or other type of event. Lead tracking helps you achieve other goals as well test and evaluate marketing and sales departments.

Using Lead Tracking

There are many ways to use lead tracking for your company. The method will probably depend on the size of your team and the number of leads coming in at once. The kind of sales you do can also be a determining factor, especially if you rely on the complex sale.

If you have a small company and a small team with a small volume of leads, you might be able to manage lead tracking either by hand or with a home-grown process. You will just build a file for each person with whom your company has contact. You gather and record relevant contact information. If very many people will use the system, you might need controls on who can change the records.

If you have a bigger company, a larger team or if you are managing information about more people, you probably should look into software or a contact management service to help with tracking. Good lead tracking will be able to help sales, marketing, customer service and management in several areas:

1. Analyzing landing pages and the way visitors are moved through your web site to a sale or to giving you personal information.
2. Testing and revising your registration form and “contact us” page.
3. Taking a look at how effective your blogs, social media, article marketing, advertising and SEO are in their bringing people to your website.
4. Gaining a better understanding of how leads are converted to customers – how to improve the sales process.
5. Reviewing the way long term relationships with customers are managed.

If you have a large company, tracking leads as they move from the web site and from marketing to the sales without being lost will be one of your top challenges. A more sophisticated tracking process will be needed for effective lead conversion.

Why Lead Tracking Makes Such a Difference

If you do not do a good job of lead management, you will not be able to keep track of the people who show interest in your company. If you lose track of them somewhere in your system, you almost always lose the sale before you find the file. Lead tracking is also the best way to constantly improve your marketing plan, your landing pages, and your sales program. Without lead management, tracking and analysis, your growth will be very limited.