27 replies to this topic

[Drew]

I think we've figured out the solution. I'm going to have the sales people paste the entire contact email from the website into each company's record in our database so that I can easily tell which leads came from the website and which didn't, and then track them back. That should do the trick nicely!

[tmeuz]

This a great discussion- we've spent many hours mulling over this topic at the company I work for. A few general thoughts that may or may not help:

- For high-end products with lengthy sales cycles, our marketing often has to make multiple points of contact with a customer before a sale completes. We've known clients who have purchased after having initially received our product catalog, then gone to our website (finding us by search) to look for information, talked to one of our sales reps on the phone for further information, been reminded to follow through after seeing a journal ad, and discussed our product with a colleague who has used it before. To make it more complicated, once they actually purchase, the sale comes not from them, but from a purchasing department or agent who knows nothing of the whole process. This can make it very difficult to connect the sale back to an initial lead, or to credit a sale to a single marketing channel. Therefore, some of our tracking systems are very broad in scope- some are highly quantitative, some more qualitative. At times it seems as much art as it does science.

- Also agree that at the end of the day, there is no substitute for a competent sales team that's comfortable building relationships with clients. This becomes increasingly important for higher-end products. For some of our products, we'll know a sale is coming ahead of time simply because we're staying in touch with clients currently using the product who are recommending it to others. A good relationship with a client can be a pot of gold in terms of understanding where some of your sales are coming from- you get to see the world through a buyer's eyes (not your own marketing eyes).

- As other have implied, you have to match your tracking systems/strategies to the potential sales volume/ROI for a product. That is, don't over-engineer a system for a product that nets you $20 a month! Similarly- if you're getting a high volume of traffic relative to conversion, you can't possibly keep up with every lead, and will need to use more broadly based quantitative approaches.

[SJ3K]

I agree that this discussion is excellent. I have some questions that are a bit more specific that I would like to add. I also work for a company that has a slightly longer sales cycle (2-4 weeks) and we are trying to figure out a better way to track our AdWords effectiveness. Due to the long sales cycle, it is rare for someone to purchase after an initial click. A potential buyer might not contact our salesforce until weeks later. We are ONLY doing PPC advertising right now, so we already know that the lead is being generated by the Web site. We are trying to determine the effectiveness of specific campaigns. Obviously folks don't remember what keyword phrase they used several weeks later, so having our salesforce ask is unproductive. We use Google Analytics, which will tell us the keywords the people came in on but can't tie it back to a sale that was taken over the phone. Since that data obviously exists, does anyone know if we could write the initial keyword/keyphrase into a permanent cookie that have our salesforce ask about when they call (potentially by clicking or link that will display it to the user, etc)? I would imagine if Google Analytics has the data that it is somehow accessible outside of their program, but maybe not. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Or other methods to specifically tie back to PPC campaigns?

[Randy]

I like the concept of using a cookie, but don't much care for putting the onus on the customer.

If you're going to do something like that I would approach it a different way. I would capture the keyword phrase to a database, and tie it to a unique identifier. If you're using server side scripting you could even generate this (pretty) unique identifier using a Date() function. For instance, I use php's date('U"); to generate unique invoice numbers, so as long as two people aren't clicking the exact same second they get a unique invoice number. I can't think of a single time where I've had two customers end up with the same invoice number.

If you saved this unique identifier to a persistent cookie on the users computer you could then grab it back later, allowing you to tie it back to the original query/entry point. Of course this assumes you have a need to send buyers back to a page on your web site after the sale is complete.

[SJ3K]

That makes a lot of sense. I agree that it would be unwise to put the onus on the customer. But does anyone out there have an idea how to actually capture the data? Google sends a single URL variable called "glid" that has no discernable meaning. Adwords and Google Analytics deciphers it appropriately but that won't help me to set a cookie on a user's machine at the time they click. Does anyone know if Google has a Web service, or if there is any other way to capture the ID or keyphrase of the ad that was clicked? I have my fingers crossed on this one because it would incredibly useful for our business.

[BlueSky]

That makes a lot of sense. I agree that it would be unwise to put the onus on the customer. But does anyone out there have an idea how to actually capture the data? Google sends a single URL variable called "glid" that has no discernable meaning. Adwords and Google Analytics deciphers it appropriately but that won't help me to set a cookie on a user's machine at the time they click. Does anyone know if Google has a Web service, or if there is any other way to capture the ID or keyphrase of the ad that was clicked? I have my fingers crossed on this one because it would incredibly useful for our business.

I have not used it, but you might want to look at the e-commerce tracking on Google Analytics -- you can include a (fake) order number in there which you could attach to the customer info and get the info back through analytics. Like I said, I have not tried this but it might work.

[Randy]

That's right, Adwords doesn't send keyword phrase info through the clicks do they? hmm...

You could track which ad was showing I believe, if you had your adwords campaigns set up to do it. Or you might be able to get at least some information by having different landing page addresses for different campaigns and recording that info into the cookie. But I don't know of an easy way to extract any search phrase data on the back end.

It would be a good question to ask of the Adwords team if no one else knows of a solution that's already available. I would imagine it has to have been asked before.

[MaKa]

You can code your landingpage to include the keyword that triggered the ad by adding something like &gookey={keyword} to your landing page url in Google.

Please note you will record the keyword in your campaign that triggered the ad, if you use broad match this may differ from the actual keyphrase your user typed in.

[Drew]

Just a followup - now that I've got the sales staff entering the lead contact emails into the database, I can see that we've had 4 people buy the product since the new website went live in April that used the website contact form to get in touch with us. Of course, only one of the four actually came through a web search... the others were referrals or email ad campaigns. If that trend continues, maybe we're either spending wayyyy too much on our online advertising or we're doing it wrong.

[Randy]

If it's any consolation, that's a very good problem to have ARothman. And the exact opposite of the problem most seem to have.

You really don't want to rely on a single channel to deliver all or even most of your sales. It's folly and very dangerous since any single channel can be shut off tomorrow. Just doesn't make good business sense IMO.

I rather like the fact that less than 50% of my income is produced by search engine referrals. And I don't even do email marketing campaigns, though I probably should make a more concerted effort on that front. Even if it's just buying space in industry publications.

It sounds like you have a pretty good handle on getting the type of information you need now.

[Drew]

I guess the concerning part of it for me is that we spend thousands of dollars per month on advertising. If it's only generating one deal in two months, we're wasting a ton of cash, or we're advertising to the wrong people.

[Randy]

Well, you'll want to make sure there isn't a missing cog somewhere in your system. Data corruption is a definitely biggie to watch out for.

[torka]

Dunno how I missed this when it first came out on June 5, but it having come to my attention tonight, I thought this announcement might be potentially useful to readers of this thread:

Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords provides an integrated and effective solution that gives companies of all sizes all the tools they need to acquire new customers and grow their business. By encapsulating every element of the customer lifecycle - advertising, creating leads, closing business and retaining customers - in one solution, Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords enables any company to jump start their business by creating an online marketing and sales presence.

Basically, AdWords lead captures are recorded automatically in SalesForce and automatically distributed to the sales team for follow up, which in turn can be tracked through SalesForce.

Source: Salesforce.com and Google Form Strategic Global Alliance

--Torka