Last week we covered referral systems and their importance. Today is the last episode in our month-long series on how to get clients, and we will look at 3 reasons why you should track your leads as a virtual assistant. You want to make sure you’re doing everything you can with tracking because getting clients is so vital to your business!
1. Help Identify Your Target Market
Are you reaching the right people? Whatever marketing (running FB ads, networking in FB groups, sharing on IG, etc.) you are doing, you need to reach a specific type of person with a specific method. Let’s say your target is real estate but you’ve determined that you were attracting a different type of professional instead. Would you be ok with that, or would you like to ensure you are reaching the right type of clients?
Do you know who your ideal client is? If not, it would be a good idea to back up and determine who they are. You need to identify your ideal client to know if you are reaching your target market and tracking ensures that.
2. To Retain More Clients
If you are going to go through the effort of marketing your business and looking for new leads, then you should be tracking them! Tracking helps you respond to inquiries in a timely manner and ensure that you are prompt with following up. If you are not tracking, you’re most likely letting things slip through the cracks and missing opportunities. Let’s say you heard a mention of someone who needed a VA and you received contact information. You could track that lead and follow through with it instead of allowing the opportunity to slip away. The contact is a potential client who could then turn around and refer more people to you. As mentioned, having a referral system helps with getting more clients, and tracking your referrals and leads is an effective way to get the most out of your referral system.
3. Gauge Your Marketing’s Effectiveness
Is your marketing working? It’s important to set a goal, track the lead, and measure the effectiveness. One suggestion is to track on your website. In your contact process, you could ask where the lead heard of you and provide a drop-down menu with options (Facebook, referred by a friend, Google search, etc.). Feel free to be as specific or general as you’d like as long as you are able to see where most of your leads generate. You’ll be able to see what is working and what gets you the best return on your investment. Running an ad on Facebook and earning no leads is an example of a bad investment. A worthwhile use of time could look like spending an hour engaging in Facebook groups and earning leads from it. You want to make sure the marketing and investment are worth your time!
Another Suggestion
Automate the process to save time! I recommend HoneyBook and the Google Chrome extension Streak CRM. Streak allows you to create a pipeline in your calendar that lets you see where the lead is in your process. For example, it could show that:
- lead booked a consultation.
- you held a consultation.
- you sent a proposal.
- you sent a contract.
- lead signed contract.
- the lead became a client.
On the flip side, the pipeline could show that they didn’t become a client and only inquired without booking a consultation. You can see where someone may have gotten stuck. You can also color code to see which colors became clients and which ones didn’t.
HoneyBook is a CRM (customer relationship manager) that is more robust in that while you can track leads, you can also track time plus send contracts and invoices. You may not need that for now, but I do suggest you look into it.
Tracking is something I’ve been doing for a long time, and it allows you to look at what is effective. You’re able to see on any given month how many leads became clients. You’re also able to see where your marketing efforts are paying off and where they are not.
Do you have any questions on this broad topic? Reach out and I may do an episode! Thank you for listening.
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