Job Shop Marketing: Getting Started with Tracking Request for Quotes
In a previous blog post I posed the question “How much would you pay for a RFQ?” As you start driving more RFQs to your shop, you need to track the effectiveness of your job shop marketing campaigns and start tracking RFQs.
One simple way to do this is to ask “How did you hear about us?” on your RFQ form. I have tested this extensively over the past 8+ years. You capture the best data when this field is both required and an open text field (rather than a picklist that assumes how the user found you). Unless you are getting hundreds of submissions per day, reviewing the field data will be simple and highly valuable to your business. When current customers fill out the form they will be able to use the browser auto-fill feature, so don’t worry about “forcing” anyone to fill it out repeatedly.
The Paperless Parts Smart RFQ Form™ includes this question as well as a host of other tools to enhance your shop’s quoting capabilities. If you are not using Paperless Parts, signup for a demo today.
Tracking RFQ’s from Web Traffic using Google Analytics
Beyond adding “How did you hear about us?” to your form, there are other ways of tracking RFQ’s and marketing activities via website traffic. For example, you can track if users originated from LinkedIn or an email blast you sent. You can do this by creating a goal in Google Analytics to measure conversions. This data helps you understand which sources provide the best RFQ conversion percentage. You might find that LinkedIn has a 5% conversion rate, so think about posting more to see if that makes an impact!
Setting up Tracking with Google Analytics
Tracking your marketing campaigns is easy. You will need:
- A Website with a RFQ Form
- A “Thank you” or “Success” page that you will use to redirect users to after they submit your form
- Google Analytics
To get started with tracking, follow these steps:
- Create a Google Analytics account and install tracking code on your website. Here is a video guide for sites hosted on WordPress
- Create a Thank You or Success page on your website. This will be a page that your visitors will be sent to AFTER they submit a RFQ on your form. You will need to set this redirect with the form platform you are using to receive RFQ’s
- Create a “Goal” in Google Analytics that will measure the conversion of a website visitor submitting a RFQ.
Here is a video guide. - Test!
Need help setting this up? Contact me at [email protected] and I’d be happy to help you accomplish tracking RFQ’s on your website.
-Matt Sordillo
Connect with me on LinkedIn to stay up-to-date with future posts: https://www.linkedin.com/in/quickturnmarketing/
Matt Sordillo was the Head of Marketing at RAPID, a CNC machining and sheet metal shop that grew to $50M in sales and was sold to Proto Labs, Inc. (PRLB) in 2017 for $120M. Today, Matt is the Chief Marketing Officer at Paperless Parts and is working to provide job shop owners the tools necessary to compete in today’s increasingly digital business world.