Let’s Be Honest: Do You Know Where Your Leads Come From?

Let’s Be Honest: Do You Know Where Your Leads Come From?:

Let closed-loop marketing be your guide.

One of the things I love about the real estate industry is that it’s all about marketing–the four Ps are fantastically relevant in this trade. And still, just like every other industry in the world, there’s plenty of room to improve; no one has it completely nailed.

(If you aren’t in real estate, don’t click away just yet–I am talking about marketing in general, not just real estate. You’ll see.)

I learned about some of the biggest marketing challenges in the real estate business on a recent trip to New York City for Inman Connect, a conference focused on real estate technology. Throughout the conference, I also learned that the marketing challenges faced by brokers aren’t unique to real estate–they’re issues that every industry must tackle.

But the biggest of them all? Knowing which ads drive leads.

Across all industries, the power to know which ads drive leads is critical to marketing success; in many cases, it actually sets the budget. After all, if you can’t prove where your leads came from, you won’t be able to claim a piece of the (budget) pie for future lead generation efforts.

If knowing the source of your leads is so important, every smart marketer must practice it already, right? Surprisingly, people don’t. The simple reason why not is that most marketers don’t think they really need to. Here are a few objections I commonly hear:

• “Of course I know where my leads come from!”
• “I know exactly where my leads come from because my reps record every lead that comes in.”
• “I know where my leads come from because my customers tell me where they found me.”

But reliable reps and helpful customers notwithstanding, if you don’t track where your leads came from, you don’t really know. Would the people insisting, “I don’t need to track my leads” feel the same way if they knew the costs of ignoring a lead source?

A big cost is insight. It’s business intelligence. After all, if you don’t know where your leads come from, how will you know which ad and marketing efforts are actually working? How can you stem wasteful ad spend on ineffective campaigns until you see which ones are and are not driving business your way? Without tracking efforts in place, you’ll never know that the majority of your leads who call your business start online (and you won’t know which keywords drove them to your business).

If you already track your leads, you’re one step ahead of the competition. I’m guessing that most of you out there are tracking online leads from email campaigns, download forms, web site visits, and the like. But what about those leads that read your email and then call you? Or, those leads that search you out online and then call to talk to a rep? These voice-based leads are an essential part of the entire marketing loop, and you don’t want to neglect them. Now that you see how crucial it is to track your leads—from wherever them come—be diligent about capturing the entire picture. Online. Offline. Web-based. Voice-based. Everything.

So the next time someone asks if you track your leads, you can say with confidence (and accuracy): “I know where all my leads come from.”