Most small businesses spend money on marketing without knowing which parts of it work. The leaflet drop, the directory listing, the boosted Facebook post, the van signwriting: all of it goes out, some enquiries come in, and nobody can say which caused which. That makes every marketing decision a guess.
You do not need expensive software to fix this. You need a habit, a couple of small website changes and one simple log. Here is how to track where enquiries come from in a way a busy owner will actually keep up.
Start with the cheapest method: ask
The most reliable source of information is the customer. Software can tell you someone arrived from Google; only the customer can tell you they searched on Google because their neighbour recommended you and they wanted your number.
Ask every new enquiry, every time, and ask well. “How did you find us?” gets vague answers. “Did you find us online, or did someone recommend us?” followed by “Whereabouts online?” or “Who can we thank?” gets useful ones. Whoever answers the phone or the inbox needs to ask it, and to write the answer down straight away, not at the end of the week.
Add a “How did you hear about us?” field to your forms
For enquiries that come through your website, a short dropdown on the contact or quote form does the asking for you. Keep the options to the handful of channels you actually use, and include “Recommended by someone” and “Other”.
- Google search
- Google Maps
- ChatGPT or another AI assistant
- Facebook or Instagram
- Recommended by someone
- Saw your van, sign or shop
- A directory or trade site (with a box to say which)
- Other
Tag the links you control with UTM codes
A UTM code is a short tag added to the end of a web address that tells your analytics where a visit came from. The page is the same; the address just carries a label. For example, the website link on your Google Business Profile might end with ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp. When someone clicks it, your analytics records the visit as coming from your Business Profile rather than lumping it in with everything else from Google.
Use them anywhere you control the link:
- Your Google Business Profile website link, so profile clicks are separate from ordinary search.
- Links in your Instagram bio, Facebook page and any posts.
- Links in email newsletters and email signatures.
- QR codes on leaflets, flyers, vans, menus, business cards and shop windows. Give each one its own campaign name so you can compare them.
- Listings on directories that let you set your own website link.
Call tracking: useful, but handle with care
If most of your enquiries arrive by phone, a website form field will not tell you much. Call tracking fills the gap. You rent a set of phone numbers that forward to your normal line, and put a different number in each place: one on the leaflet, one on the van, one in a directory. The call tracking service records which number was dialled, so you know which source produced the call.
Websites can use a version called dynamic number insertion, which swaps the phone number shown on your site depending on how the visitor arrived. Someone from a Google ad sees one number, someone from organic search another, and each call is attributed automatically.
There are two catches. First, cost: call tracking services charge per number and often per minute, so it earns its keep mainly when you are spending real money on advertising and need to know what it returns. Second, consistency: search engines and assistants use your phone number to confirm that listings across the web belong to the same business. Scattering different numbers across directories can muddy that. If you use a tracking number on your Google Business Profile, Google’s guidance is to make it the primary number and keep your main number as an additional one. Keep your main number on your website’s footer and in your core listings, and use tracking numbers mainly on paid ads and printed material.
Spotting enquiries from AI assistants
A growing number of people ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity for a recommendation before they search. Some of those people click through to your website, and some simply ring you. Tracking both is imperfect but possible.
Clicks from assistants usually show up in analytics as referrals from their websites, such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com or claude.ai. ChatGPT often adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to links it shows, which makes those visits easy to pick out. Visits from Google’s AI Overviews, on the other hand, are not separated from ordinary Google search in most analytics tools.
The people who read an AI answer and phone you without clicking anything are invisible to software. That is why “ChatGPT or another AI assistant” belongs in your “How did you hear about us?” options and in the question you ask on the phone.
Keep one simple log
All of the above feeds into one place: a spreadsheet, a notebook or a column in whatever system you use for quotes. One row per enquiry, filled in on the day. Add whether it turned into a job and what it was worth, because a source that sends ten enquiries and no work is worth less than one that sends three good jobs.
| Date | Name | How they got in touch | Where they found you | Won? | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Mar | J. Patel | Phone | Google Maps | Yes | £1,200 |
| 4 Mar | S. Hughes | Website form | Recommended by a past customer | Yes | £350 |
| 6 Mar | R. Evans | Facebook post | No | – | |
| 9 Mar | L. Okafor | Phone | Asked ChatGPT | Quoted | £800 |
What to do with the answers
The point of tracking is to change what you do. Once you have a few months of data, compare each channel by the work it brings in against what it costs in money and time. You might find that one directory produces most of your best jobs while another produces only price-shoppers, or that recommendations from past customers are your biggest source and deserve a proper referral scheme. You might find that people who found you through an AI assistant are unusually likely to book.
Do not overreact to a single month. Seasonal businesses in particular will see sources rise and fall through the year. Look at the trend.
On the websites Nerdsharks builds, we can add a “How did you hear about us?” question to your enquiry forms, but a spreadsheet and the habit of asking will get you most of the way on any website.