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How do you track your marketing?

1K views 9 replies 10 participants last post by  J Hisch 
#1 ·
i need to do a better job tracking marketing.

I do all of the phone answering and a lot of that I will be answering out of the office. What do others do to track incoming leads? Specifically do you just pull up a note in your iPhone and mark "referral" or "postcard". Is there maybe an app for this? I use jobber but I don't think the software would help. Anyone have a tip?
 
#2 ·
I suggest you pick the simplest method you can do and just stick to it. We do marketing work and it would be so helpful if my incoming clients had a little bit of track record to know what has worked or not worked in the past.
So a note, or a google drive spreadsheet or anything that you can refer back to...whatever you will stick with. Doesn't have to be fancy, you just have to be diligent about it. Good luck
 
#3 ·
I'm old school so try not to laugh. Everyone who calls gets asked at the end of the conversation "How did you get my number" If this is a habit after awhile you know where they came from before you even ask. I think half the people offer this information in their first sentence when calling. Without writing anything down you have a general sense of what's working.

Another idea, when you meet them have them fill out a small form. Name, address, email, and referred by? You keep this form and now you have an email list that you could use even if you don't close the sale. You also could tally all referrals at the end of the year. If you want to get cute ask for their birth day, month and day only! Then you could send them a card or offer a discounted service on their birthday regardless if their your customer or not.

The best part for me is I have a much easier time reading the handwriting of a customer vs. my own.
 
#4 ·
Specifically do you just pull up a note in your iPhone and mark "referral" or "postcard". Is there maybe an app for this?
Specifically related to any marketing campaigns (flyers, print ads, postcards, PPC, etc), try to send any traffic to corresponding landing pages on your web site.

Send them there to [learn more about/fill out an estimate form/redeem a promo] and those landing pages, mapped to the specific marketing vehicle, will really help you silo the traffic and gauge effectiveness.

Doing that will allow you to better set up future campaigns and decide which vehicles might need pruned or tripled down on.

I've written about this, to varying degrees, in the past, so there may be some good stuff in the archives, as well.

Questions or clarifications, just yell.
 
#5 ·
We use Google Analytics "Goal" tracking to track our incoming leads who submit contact forms via search, social or direct traffic.

We use Google Analytics "Event" tracking to track all of our tap-to-calls.

If someone picks up the phone and dials our number out of the blue they usually say something like "I found you online or I saw you at my neighbors or I saw your trucks in the neighborhood).

In Jobber we created a custom field called "Referral" and we enter in what method they were referred by (web, word of mouth, walk up etc..)

It's working well for us and we aren't wasting any money on marketing that doesn't pull new clients.
 
#6 ·
We track orders in two ways. 1 - in our QuickBooks accounting software - since we use it to set up each person that requires pricing, we have a field noted "type" and thats where I have set up various items to pick from - post card, Google, customer referral. 2 - we have a spreadsheet in Excel where we list every job # in order - as we get a new job, we assign it the next number and in one column we note New or Existing Customer and in another column - if its a new customer... we note how they heard about us. --- It's double duty entering it in 2 places but sometimes its nice to have two ways to glance at it... I shared both of these as I thought one or the other may help you get ideas on how to use your existing steps you already have in place.
 
#8 ·
CallRail is very powerful at tracking phone calls and where they came from. You generate phone numbers for each of your marketing pieces. We only have a few things going on right now but here's a screenshot of a tiny bit of the data we get. The darker color is first time callers, lighter is repeat callers. Also ties into Google Analytics where we get more data from online marketing. In the process right now of hiring someone to comb through our GA account to make sure we are accurately tracking stuff.

Azure Rectangle Line Parallel Circle
 
#9 ·
I think answering your question is dependent upon the size of your operation. I have 1 mowing crew & 1 install crew - I still ask the question "How did you hear about us" - I keep track of those numbers; but, the most important aspect I get from that is the narrative they tell me - they tell me why they called me - they liked the website, or the Facebook page, or the neighbor's referral. I know this process won't work if you have a high volume of callers/business.
 
#10 ·
I use a method of mail tracking, and Informed delivery knowing when my mail went out and when it was delivered. I apply a special cloud phone number on the marketing piece which allows me to track how many calls were generated from a campaign and allows me to record the calls for improvement in the sales process. Plus everyone that visits the website is then tracked online, Via Google Display Network, and Social Media pages. These ads show up on their time lines or as banner ads. I can monitor it all via a dashboard.
 
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