We have leads coming in from all kinds of places. Websites, advertising campaigns, email, different traffic sources. And depending on what somebody filled out, that lead might need to go to a call center, a particular buyer, or into a system where somebody follows up with them later.
Now imagine managing all of that manually. And I am not talking about a business getting ten leads a day. I am talking about multiple businesses, different campaigns, different buyers, and leads coming in all day long.
That is where it gets complicated. You can spend all this money generating leads, have people interested in what you are offering, and still lose money because of what happens after somebody fills out the form.
I have been doing lead generation for a long time, and getting the lead is only part of the job. You have to know what to do with it.
Where does the lead actually go?
That is really what lead routing comes down to. Somebody fills out a form, and your system has to figure out where that information belongs.
Say you are generating leads for home improvement companies. You have contractors in different states, different service areas, and they are not all looking for the same customer. One contractor wants roofing jobs in Florida. Another works in Michigan. Somebody else only wants full roof replacements, not repairs. You cannot send every lead to every contractor.
And even when you have the right contractor, maybe they already took all the leads they agreed to that day. So now what?
You need a system that can look at the information, check the requirements, and decide where that lead should go. That is automated lead routing. It sounds simple with one campaign. But when you have a lot of campaigns running at once, there are quite a few things that have to happen correctly. And when they do not, somebody has to figure out why.
This is where businesses start losing track of things
Think about a lead that gets sent to a buyer and does not get accepted. Why not? Was it outside their service area? Did it fail validation? Had the buyer hit their daily limit? Was there a technical problem?
Those are all different situations, and they do not have the same fix. If you cannot see what happened, somebody has to go track it down. And if you have enough leads moving through your business, you cannot spend your day doing that.
That is the part people underestimate. The routing is not just getting the lead to the right place. It is being able to answer what happened when it did not go where it was supposed to.
Delivered is not the same as done
Here is the other thing. Say the routing works perfectly. The lead comes in, meets the requirements, and gets delivered to the right place. Good. But does somebody call that person? How fast? What happens if they do not answer?
The person who filled out the form does not know or care how many companies or systems are involved. They asked about something and they expect somebody to respond. And whatever you use to follow up, a call, an email, or a text, it has to match what that person actually agreed to receive. I have written more about how lead generation, calls, email, and SMS fit together over on my main site.
Why we built LeadBranch
A lot of the software we have built over the years came from things we needed in our own businesses. LeadBranch is part of that.
When you are working with different traffic sources, buyers, campaigns, and follow-up processes, you need a way to manage where the information is going. You also need to know what is happening when something does not go where it was supposed to.
I do not think you ever get to a point where everything runs perfectly and you never have another problem. You change an offer, add a buyer, bring on another traffic source, and suddenly there is something else to account for. But you should be able to answer some pretty basic questions about your business.
Where are your leads coming from? Where are they going? What happens when somebody does not accept one? And once the lead gets delivered, is anybody actually doing anything with it?
If you are spending money generating leads and you cannot answer those questions, that is probably where I would start looking.
We have leads coming in from all kinds of places. Websites, advertising campaigns, email, different traffic sources. And depending on what somebody filled out, that lead might need to go to a call center, a particular buyer, or into a system where somebody follows up with them later.
Now imagine managing all of that manually. And I am not talking about a business getting ten leads a day. I am talking about multiple businesses, different campaigns, different buyers, and leads coming in all day long.
That is where it gets complicated. You can spend all this money generating leads, have people interested in what you are offering, and still lose money because of what happens after somebody fills out the form.
I have been doing lead generation for a long time, and getting the lead is only part of the job. You have to know what to do with it.
Where does the lead actually go?
That is really what lead routing comes down to. Somebody fills out a form, and your system has to figure out where that information belongs.
Say you are generating leads for home improvement companies. You have contractors in different states, different service areas, and they are not all looking for the same customer. One contractor wants roofing jobs in Florida. Another works in Michigan. Somebody else only wants full roof replacements, not repairs. You cannot send every lead to every contractor.
And even when you have the right contractor, maybe they already took all the leads they agreed to that day. So now what?
You need a system that can look at the information, check the requirements, and decide where that lead should go. That is automated lead routing. It sounds simple with one campaign. But when you have a lot of campaigns running at once, there are quite a few things that have to happen correctly. And when they do not, somebody has to figure out why.
This is where businesses start losing track of things
Think about a lead that gets sent to a buyer and does not get accepted. Why not? Was it outside their service area? Did it fail validation? Had the buyer hit their daily limit? Was there a technical problem?
Those are all different situations, and they do not have the same fix. If you cannot see what happened, somebody has to go track it down. And if you have enough leads moving through your business, you cannot spend your day doing that.
That is the part people underestimate. The routing is not just getting the lead to the right place. It is being able to answer what happened when it did not go where it was supposed to.
Delivered is not the same as done
Here is the other thing. Say the routing works perfectly. The lead comes in, meets the requirements, and gets delivered to the right place. Good. But does somebody call that person? How fast? What happens if they do not answer?
The person who filled out the form does not know or care how many companies or systems are involved. They asked about something and they expect somebody to respond. And whatever you use to follow up, a call, an email, or a text, it has to match what that person actually agreed to receive. I have written more about how lead generation, calls, email, and SMS fit together over on my main site.
Why we built LeadBranch
A lot of the software we have built over the years came from things we needed in our own businesses. LeadBranch is part of that.
When you are working with different traffic sources, buyers, campaigns, and follow-up processes, you need a way to manage where the information is going. You also need to know what is happening when something does not go where it was supposed to.
I do not think you ever get to a point where everything runs perfectly and you never have another problem. You change an offer, add a buyer, bring on another traffic source, and suddenly there is something else to account for. But you should be able to answer some pretty basic questions about your business.
Where are your leads coming from? Where are they going? What happens when somebody does not accept one? And once the lead gets delivered, is anybody actually doing anything with it?
If you are spending money generating leads and you cannot answer those questions, that is probably where I would start looking.