For many marketing departments, collecting lead data can be tedious and sometimes puzzling, as a recent Forbes article discloses. This is not helped by the need to often toggle between platforms and manually compile lead data in a spreadsheet, sometimes generating irreconcilable lead numbers.
A solution that can assist with this problem is CallRail Form Tracking. This gives users the ability to assess their marketing performance through one of five commonly-used attribution models. These are termed: First Touch, Lead Creation, 50/50, Qualified and W-Shaped.
To discover more, Digital Journal spoke with Kevin Mann, co-founder and chief product officer at CallRail.
Digital Journal: How can marketers better understand where their leads are coming from?
Kevin Mann: It is crucial for marketers to analyze all conversion points in the buyer journey and have visibility into all interactions that take place across time to understand where their leads are coming from. In today’s world of complex buying, buyers research and contact businesses across several channels before making a purchase. That’s why marketers need to be using technology that helps them analyze why people are calling, filling out a website form, sending chat messages and walking into their businesses. Viewing conversion touchpoints through the lens of multiple attribution models is the best way to understand how different channels impact different stages in the funnel and ultimately drive more leads.
DJ: Why is attribution crucial to a marketer’s bottom line?
Mann: Attribution data is key for marketers to understand what is ultimately driving leads to their businesses. They cannot focus on high-impact efforts without understanding what’s working and what’s not working. Attribution helps marketers understand what channels, campaigns, keywords and ad groups are driving the highest converting leads. They can then use this information to shift budget to those more efficient and high-performing marketing efforts. For SMBs in particular, optimizing limited ad spend is imperative to their success, which is why it is equally as important to understand what campaigns are negatively impacting their marketing budget and pipeline to inform their strategies accordingly.
DJ: What are the insights your customers are gleaning from using your new form tracking solution?
Mann: At the highest level, CallRail customers are able to cut through the data to know which ads are driving actual leads –– whether via phone call or form submission –– and which aren’t. That’s the most valuable insight for any business spending money on marketing. Further, our form tracking solution allows customers to access granular touchpoint data from forms alongside call, text and web session information to understand the customer’s exact path to purchase.
Form submission content can be drilled into and reported on in bulk to gain more context and see exactly how customers speak about your product or service and what they are interested in learning more about as it relates to their business. Marketers can then use these insights to understand the person that’s behind the form and what drove them to take action –– rather than just focusing on the number of clicks and conversions.
DJ: How can agency marketers better prove ROI to their clients?
Mann: Most agencies already know they’re adding value for their clients and attribution technology helps them to both quantify and qualify that. It can be difficult to see tangible value in a basic report showing number of impressions, clicks, visitors and form-fills. But when agencies can offer specific proof points and paint the complete attribution picture for their clients –– double-clicking into the actual phone calls or form submissions corresponding to the leads –– this qualitative look at lead generation greatly improves the tangibility of marketing performance.
DJ: What trends do you see approaching in the marketing attribution space?
Mann: One of the largest trends I see approaching in the marketing attribution space is true ROI reporting. This involves the ability to pull in cost data from ad networks and marry that data with revenue reporting from CRMs. This will be critical to the future of marketing in general, as businesses will soon be expecting to pay for actual leads, not just clicks and conversions.
The expectation of paying for guaranteed customers will also amplify trends like automated recommendations based on ad spend and campaign performance and access to custom attribution models. The need for marketers to understand what’s working and what’s not isn’t going away. The difference is there’s now added pressure to keep a close eye on this data and use it to inform marketing strategies immediately.
