Get Granular With Your Tracking

This week we look at the importance of tracking your sources of data at a very granular level. We examine what this means, how to do it, and the benefits of going granular in practical terms. Spoiler: It all comes back to taking control and making more sales.

This article is adapted from the latest episode of the B2C Lead Generation Podcast. You can find links to listen or watch at the bottom of the page.

What does it mean to go granular with your tracking and why is it important?

Tracking at a granular level ultimately leads to better decisions. This is knowing exactly where leads have come from, why they are performing, what makes them perform. It is hugely important because it means you are running the lead generation on the KPIs or the targets that important to you as a lead buyer.

How granular can you actually get when tracking sources?

When tracking sources of data and the performance of leads you are buying the aim to be to go as granular as your possibly can. The more granular you are able to go the better understanding of performance you will have the more able you are to make good decisions.

Let’s imagine a scenario where you have different types of traffic coming to you. You work with affiliates, you have PPC leads, and these are all being driven by external agencies of lead generators. If you can track exactly the keywords that are being driven, the ads that are being shown, the incentive that is being used, specific emails, the sub-source, the sub-sub-source, absolutely everything, you can really drill down into what is performing and what isn’t.

There are many lead buyers who track at a shallow level. This means by channel or by type of lead. A typical example of this may look like:

• Running two Ads with different copy and these get brought together under “Facebook Leads”
• 40 different suppliers are put together under “Co-Reg Leads”
• 50 different sub-suppliers are put together as “Affiliate Leads”

In this scenario the subtleties between the different ads or suppliers within these channels or type are completely lost.

What are the practical benefits of going granular with your tracking?

In practical terms granular tracking is how you unlock sales.

This is what it all comes back to. You need to really drill down into the specific granular moments that are leading to sales. What do they look like?

Once you understand the micro you can effect change in the macro.

This impacts everything. It tells you where to put your budget. It opens up transparency in terms of exactly how your procurement of leads is working and how it can work better

How do you go about tracking sources on a granular level? How does it work?

In short, you need a system that can manage this for you. Whilst you could do it manually on a spreadsheet it will be massively time-consuming, unreliable, and impossible to scale.

A lead management system like Databowl has the ability to track keywords, adverts that driven leads, specific sources and suppliers of leads, all built in. Reporting on this very quickly allows you to identify which sources of leads are over-indexing on sales and you can adjust your budget accordingly.

Want to hear the entire podcast? You can listen on Spotify or Apple or watch the video over on Databowl’s YouTube Channel.