Peek-a-boo! Found you!
It’s such a simple question, but business owners may not be utilizing it enough!
This month is donate life month. If you are interesting in becoming an organ donor, or you would just like to know more, please visit https://donatelife.net/.
SOURCES
Adapted from this list: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/basic-marketing-questions
https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-install-google-analytics-in-wordpress/
https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/3-easy-ways-survey-website-visitors/ https://www.jotform.com/blog/pop-up-survey/
https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-make-affiliate-links
https://www.qualtrics.com/articles/customer-experience/customer-journey-analytics/
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
The goal of The Marketing Gateway is simple – we want to build a connection between all of our marketing mentors in the Midwest and learn from one another! And the best way to learn is to listen.
And the next best way is to share!
For more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketingGateway
Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
Have you ever wondered how a customer found your business? Not me, because I work in a business to business setting where every client interaction we have involves some sort of previous interaction or referral before we ever get down to talking about a project. But back when I was in retail, I’d often ask customers this question, and I’d hear a range of answers –
“My buddy said I should check this place out”
“I heard you guys are awesome!”
“I was just walking by and saw the sign”
Or, my personal favorite,
“My girlfriend’s shopping at the beauty supply store next door.”
But I want you to notice that in this situation, I was able to ask customers this question because I was in a business that allowed me to have conversations with them. That person to person interaction is great if you have it, but it’s not feasible if you’re selling consumer products or if you’re operating an online business.
So, today, let’s talk about how you can find out how a customer found your business and why you’d even want to know that in the first place!
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
I’m once again going to begin with a disclaimer – some of what I’m sharing today may be old news if you’re listening to this at some point in the future and the technology tools we use to accomplish some of these actions may be different. So let’s focus on the framework itself and I’ll link to the practical tools in the show notes.
But let’s also establish why it’s important to understand how your customers are finding you.
Unless you’re operating a purely transactional business where customers come to you because you’re a highly visible business in a highly visible area – like operating a food truck at a big outdoor event – knowing where your customers came from and how they found you is an essential part of not just operating a business, but also marketing it. Your customers are generally finding out about you from somewhere, and it’s very important to understand if it’s because you have a big sign or you’re in the wake of a bigger business or they’ve seeking you out because they’ve heard of you, preferably in the form of a referral from a delighted customer.
So, the best practice is to ask them. And I really do mean this. Periodically give them a survey after they buy something or just ask them at the point of sale or purchase process, “how did you find us?” and you’ll reap the benefits of knowing whether it was your winning personality, your awesome reputation, your proximity to a larger business, your well-crafted marketing strategy or just dumb luck that brought them your way.
I recommend asking this question to any new customers whenever and however you can. It’s not out of line to ask them and it can be really helpful if you need to identify patterns that can help you to better understand your target market, your brand’s reach and your effectiveness.
And if you’re in a transactional business like food service or a convenience store, you can still gather information by setting up an iPad kiosk where you ask them to answer that question for some sort of bonus or you can put a survey link on their receipt and encourage them to take it in exchange for a coupon or something along those lines.
But let’s say you’re in ecommerce and you don’t want to just capture how customers who finish the purchase process found you, but how they even arrived at your website at all. You still have a few options at your disposal.
But let’s first differentiate between organic traffic and direct traffic. Organic traffic finds its way to you through general links, earned media and search engines. And it’s honestly the most desirable type of traffic because you don’t have to do anything to bring it in besides being there to receive it. If you optimize your ecommerce site for search engine optimization, get some good press and have a fanbase out there that’s recommending you to others, you will benefit from a healthy amount of organic traffic.
Think of it like the soil in which your company can grow, and do what you can to keep it fertile.
But direct traffic is sort of like adding some rapid-growth formula to the soil to help boost your chances of success. It’s more expensive because you have to pay for it, in this case through setting up affiliate programs for referrals, through social media campaigns, by paying influencers to promote your product or through digital or traditional advertising. You need to pay close attention to efforts to bring in direct traffic because every one of those customers costs you something and it’s very easy to spend more on acquiring them than you’ll make from getting them buy something.
One method you can use to track organic traffic is to set up your site to be tracked with a tool like Google Analytics so you can see where your traffic is coming from. Google Analytics in particular is a good, free solution you shouldn’t be afraid to set up and use. It’s also pretty user-friendly and integrates with most major website platforms.
Another is to program in a pop-up that asks customers who happened upon your site without an affiliate link to say how they found you. This isn’t something you can just do on your own – you’ll either need to use a service like SurveyMonkey or Jotform or have someone who’s knowledgeable about technology help you program this into your website – but it can definitely be done.
I would be careful about having it pop up too soon, however – setting it to pop up after a certain amount of time is spent on the site is better practice because you will not only capture those who are more seriously browsing, but you can also offer them a coupon or promotion for answering the question and have a better chance of seeing them make a purchase.
Another thing you can do in ecommerce is send out email surveys to new or infrequent registered users, but this is actually better for measuring experience than for how people found you in the first place. It also relies on them remembering the exact path that brought them and not just saying “Google.”
As for direct traffic, you’ll generally use a platform or program to create affiliate links that you give out to certain partners, use on social media, hand out to influencers or use in digital marketing campaigns so you can track specific details about where traffic is coming from. This is most useful for helping you gauge the effectiveness of your promotional campaigns, and tracking inbound traffic and conversion rates can really help you gauge the effectiveness of your digital channels and ensure you optimize your site to bring in customers from the right places.
So beyond all of these methods, what else can you do? There are some other tried and true methods you can consider.
One of those is bounceback coupons. Let’s say you want to bring in more customers from a certain niche, like churches or schools. You can create special promotional offers just for these audiences and hand out coupons to them. Redeeming the coupon gives you an immediate answer to the question of how they found you – they did it through your promotional outreach! And of course you can do this with online sales too via coupon codes or email marketing that promotes a special offer.
Another is through loyalty programs. I’m gnot a fan of loyalty programs as a general rule because I’m not persuaded that they work for most businesses anymore, and I think you’re almost always better off giving your most identifiable customers special offers rather than cutting into your margins with general purpose loyalty discounts for people who may’ve only shopped with you once or twice. Tuning loyalty programs requires a lot of thought and care.
But getting people to sign up for loyalty programs does has its advantages, and one of those is that you can ask them questions about how they found you and what their interests are as they sign up so you can tailor your future marketing outreach to them.
One final idea is in offering “next time” deals to current customers and identifying new or lapsed customers by their lack of redemption of those offers.
For example, retail stores like Hot Topic, Box Lunch and Kohl’s offer promotional spending dollars towards future purchases that have to be redeemed within a certain timeframe. These deals often are available for multichannel shopping as well so customers can use them on the website or in the store.
When these are redeemed, you know you’re dealing with a regular customer, and those offers are even trackable to help link transactions so you can develop a customer lifetime journey profile using customer journey analytics. But when they’re not utilizing these deals, front-line staff can be prompted to ask them how they found the store, and this can ensure that data are being captured more regularly.
And by the way, some point of sale systems available to even small businesses can look up customer profiles by credit card or phone number and build them that way. Once you’ve learned how they found you, you can use those data to see how often, on average, your customers are coming back, what their average transactions are and what your biggest opportunities are in terms of bringing them back with targeted offers or special promotions.
But again, let’s go back to what I said at the beginning. Yes, you can use high-tech tools to do a lot of cool things, but at the end of the day? Your customers want you to care about them as individuals, and they will always give you the best and most reliable information if you simply ask them how they found you. And if you can use that information to serve them better, the better news is that they’ll probably be back for another purchase down the road!
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been The Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
PLUG
This month, it’s National Donate Life month, and so I want to encourage you to consider registering to be an organ donor. Did you know that one organ donor can not only save up to 8 lives, but can also donate corneas that can help people with their vision and tissue that can be made into hundreds of incredibly beneficial medical products? Your gift of life can go really far in benefitting others, potentially 75 lives or more, and you might be surprised who can be a donor or what can be donated. Even people in their 70s, 80s or even 90s can be donors today!
When you register to be a donor, all you’re doing is saying, “If I die, I want my organs and tissue to go to people who need them.” You can be confident that the doctors and nurses who are taking care of you will do everything they can to keep you alive, and it’s up to them, not the people recovering the organs, to decide when you have reached a point where you cannot come back. Every now and then, there is a sensational news story about a situation where the hospital got it wrong, but those cases are rare, and that’s why there are so many precautions in place to ensure that donation is administered with respect, transparency and a high degree of ethical behavior. Donors are heroes, and they are treated with dignity.
And there’s an important reason why you need to consider this. There are over 100,000 people on the national transplant registry right now who will die if they don’t receive an organ. Many of them need a kidney transplant and have to go and do dialysis treatments daily just to stay alive. Dialysis is time-consuming and not a lot of fun, and these individuals have trouble living heathy, happy, productive lives because they are really sick. And 13 people die every day waiting for an organ transplant.
Imagine that there’s a mom out there who needs a second chance to take care of her kids. Or a new grandfather who wants to see his grandkids grow up. Or a child who wants to have a chance at leading a full life. Or a newlywed who hasn’t had a chance to settle down and start a family yet. All of these sorts of people, and more just like them, are on the waiting list now, and they need your help!
I personally know many of the hardworking professionals who get those donated gifts to the people in need, and let me tell you – I am always amazed by their passion, their professionalism, and their dedication to caring for donors and their families.
So please visit https://donatelife.net/ and click on “register to be a donor” if you’re willing or read up on their resources to learn more. And if you’re not ready to register but still want to be a donor, please tell your family and friends so that if they have to make the decision for you, they will know your wishes. You won’t be alone – 90% of Americans support organ donation!
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