Amo Sokhi, account director at

POLARIS

, presents five essential search reporting tools for B2B marketers

Tying up the sales and marketing funnel from initial website visit through to closed-won within your CRM is a challenge that all B2B businesses work to overcome. Depending on your website and CRM platforms, there are a number of useful plugins and tools that can help tie the various elements together to provide an all-round view. Here is a breakdown of some that may be of use.

1. WordPress-to-lead for salesforce CRM

This is a

hugely popular plugin

for any websites built on the WordPress platform. This plugin is widely used by businesses that have the Salesforce CRM and want to track leads generated through a destination website and over time report on

• The nature of an enquiry (And whether it was a lead or not)
• The quality of leads
• The potential value of a lead
• Total value won

This plugin allows users to install unique forms that plug straight into your salesforce subscription.

2. Google AdWords offline conversion tracking

For many B2B Clients, PPC is a channel that is used around events or product launches. For others, such as those offering learning and development courses, PPC is a consistent route to market driving delegates all year around. In either case, if PPC forms a part of your digital strategy, be sure to investigate and where possible integrate offline conversion tracking, from

Google Adwords

. This functionality inserts a tracking code into your website, and through the unique passing of a GCLID (a unique ID for every visitor to your website through PPC), each visitor that makes an enquiry using a form can be tracked as it passes into your CRM system.

You have to have some modifications made to your CRM records (to accept and store the GCLID unique ID), but once setup this will allow you to pull a report of all enquiries generated through PPC and the final outcome of them. The great benefit of this is that the data can be uploaded into your Google Adwords account, and you will then be able to see which campaigns / ad groups are driving conversions of value for the business.

3. Third-party call tracking solutions

While many B2B leads are usually generated through form fills or email enquiries, call tracking can also be useful if your B2B business has a more transactional side to the business, or you want to be able to further close the ‘value’ gap and report on both call and form enquires generated from your PPC and SEO. Solution providers do vary, and popular suppliers will offer multiple phone numbers for different campaigns and channels, separate placeholders to individual track different locations on the website/landing pages, and the ability to record calls so as to grade them based on quality of call and also call handling.

Bear in mind, this type of integration has to be site wide for it to work, and there is a per minute call charge that applies. Ensure the potential costs are within budget before considering the integration of such a solution and understand the true value to your business. If your business seldom receives leads through phone calls, it may not be worth the time/budget/integration, however if you are investing significant budget into SEO and PPC and generate consistent leads through Email and Phone then it is beneficial to close the reporting gap.

4. Google call tracking

While there are a number of paid call tracking solutions, if budgets are tight and for whatever reason you do not require the need to record calls, you can integrate

Google’s call tracking solution

as a part of your PPC strategy to determine how many calls are being driven and through which campaigns/ad groups. This solution is a great way to test a call tracking solution with little investment or red tape, as it allows you to integrate yourselves and there is no additional commitment involved commercially.

5. SEO reporting suite

There are a number of tools available to monitor rankings and traffic at the touch of a button, both on desktop and mobile. Search marketing reporting apps can be useful as a quick reference point when you are planning or creating strategy internally or have internal stakeholders that are keen to keep an eye on ‘vanity’ keywords and your websites progress in rankings for them. Utilise tools that are available on mobile, and have them available so that you can respond faster to internal queries or needs when looking at the next goals within your PPC and SEO strategy.