Avatar photo Amanda Pell
|
Feb 4, 2025

Your marketing generates plenty of leads and your conversion rates look solid. But too many of those leads just aren't turning into customers. The problem might not be your targeting or even your message—it could be a disconnect between how you understand your customers' needs and what they actually care about.

That's where a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program comes in. By systematically collecting and analyzing customer feedback throughout their journey, you can align your marketing with what actually drives purchasing decisions. The result? Higher quality leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers.

What is a Marketing-Focused Voice of the Customer Program?

Most VoC programs focus on product development or customer service. But for marketers, especially those focused on lead generation, a VoC program serves a different purpose. It's about understanding how your best prospects think about their challenges, how they search for solutions, and what convinces them to become customers.

A marketing-focused VoC program systematically captures and analyzes feedback at every stage of the customer journey. But rather than trying to gather every possible data point, it focuses specifically on insights that help you attract and convert better leads.

VoC programs are even more important for agencies. When you're managing multiple clients across different industries, you need a systematic way to understand and track customer insights for each account. This helps you not only improve campaign performance but also demonstrate your value to clients more effectively.

Understanding Voice of the Customer Data Types

Voice of the customer data comes in three distinct categories, each offering unique insights into customer needs and behaviors.

A visual depiction of the three types of VoC Data. Direct data is feedback that's explicitly provided by customers; indirect data is gathered from interactions and conversations; and inferred data is information derived from customer behavior.

Direct Feedback Data

Direct feedback is explicitly provided by customers through structured channels. This includes:

  • Customer surveys and feedback forms
  • Product reviews and ratings
  • Support ticket submissions
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS) responses

The goal of collecting direct feedback is to understand stated customer preferences, satisfaction levels, and explicit needs. This data is valuable because it comes straight from the customer, but it can sometimes reflect what customers think you want to hear rather than their genuine decision-making process.

Indirect Feedback Data

Indirect feedback is captured during natural customer interactions rather than through formal feedback channels. Sources include:

  • Sales call recordings and transcripts
  • Social media mentions and comments
  • Live chat conversations
  • Customer service interactions

The value of indirect feedback lies in its authenticity—you're hearing how customers naturally discuss their needs and challenges without the artificial context of a survey or feedback form.

WhatConverts users can easily capture this type of feedback through call recording and transcription features, making it simple to analyze how qualified leads describe their needs during sales conversations.

Inferred Data

Inferred data comes from analyzing customer behavior rather than direct communication. This includes:

  • Website navigation patterns
  • Content engagement metrics
  • Search term usage
  • Form interaction patterns

This data helps reveal the actual decision-making process rather than just what customers say about their decisions. For example, you might discover that while customers report making quick decisions in surveys, their website behavior shows multiple visits over several weeks before converting.

How Marketers Use VoC Data

Building a VoC program requires investment in tools, processes, and sometimes additional team resources. But for marketers focused on lead generation, the ROI can be substantial.

Impact on Lead Quality and Conversion Rates

When your marketing language matches how your ideal customers think and talk about their problems, you naturally attract more qualified leads. This alignment shows up in improved metrics across your entire funnel:

  1. Higher click-through rates on ads that use customer language
  2. Better engagement on landing pages that address specific pain points
  3. Increased form submission rates from qualified prospects
  4. Higher sales conversion rates from marketing-qualified leads

WhatConverts users can measure these improvements directly by comparing lead quality metrics before and after implementing VoC-driven changes. The platform's Lead Intelligence feature helps identify which messages and channels consistently bring in the most valuable leads.

Proving Marketing ROI Through VoC Insights

One of the biggest challenges marketers face is proving the value of their efforts. VoC programs help by connecting marketing activities directly to lead quality and customer value.

For example, you might discover through call recording analysis that leads who mention certain pain points or use specific phrases are 3x more likely to become customers. By focusing your campaigns on these indicators, you can demonstrate a clear connection between your marketing strategy and business results.

Using VoC to Retain Marketing Clients Longer

For agencies, VoC programs offer another crucial benefit: longer client retention. When you can show clients that you truly understand their customers and are continuously improving based on real feedback, you become a strategic partner rather than just a service provider.

Setting Up Your Marketing VoC Program

Implement a Tracking System

The foundation of any marketing VoC program is a solid tracking system that can collect information on customers’ communications and behaviors. This system should track conversion events and the full context around them, including things like marketing source attribution, customer journey touchpoints, call or chat transcripts, and ultimate sales outcomes.

For example: WhatConverts provides a tracking infrastructure that captures over 70 data points for each lead and organizes them into individual lead profiles with tracked marketing attribution paths that remain unbroken throughout the customer journey.

Include All Customer Communication Channels

Identify and connect all channels where customers interact with your marketing, including:

  • Phone calls
  • Form submissions
  • Live chat
  • Email inquiries
  • Social media interactions
  • Custom click events

Ideally, your lead tracking system will capture interactions across all of your marketing channels and port the associated data into a single centralized database. This allows you to analyze patterns across channels, so you can stitch together cohesive narratives that illustrate prospective customers’ wants and needs, as well as how they act on them.

Pay Attention to Both Structured and Unstructured Data

The easiest pieces of information are the structured data points that come in well-defined, easily quantifiable formats—things like form field answers, dropdown selections, and business ratings. However, some of the most valuable VoC insights come from analyzing organic customer interactions that can reveal key pieces of information:

 

  • Call Transcripts: Gather information like customer language, common objections and concerns, buyer decision-making criteria, and opinions on competitor offerings.
  • Open-Ended Forms: Learn how prospects describe and prioritize their own needs, what specific solutions they’re seeking, average timeline and budget considerations, and previous solutions that customers commonly try before finding your business.

 

Of course, poring through unstructured data manually is difficult to do at scale. Use tools that can automatically spot key words or phrases, identify customer sentiment, and offer up patterns across customer feedback.

Turning VoC into Marketing Success

A well-executed VoC program does more than just collect customer feedback—it creates a continuous cycle of improvement in your marketing effectiveness. By focusing on collecting and acting on the right insights, you can create campaigns that naturally attract and convert better leads.

Remember, the goal isn't to gather every possible data point but to understand your customers well enough to market to them more effectively. Focus on extracting actionable insights that can improve your marketing ROI and lead quality.

Ready to start building your marketing VoC program? Start with a free 14-day trial of WhatConverts to see how proper lead tracking and analysis can enhance your voice of the customer research.

 

Avatar photo
Amanda Pell

Amanda is a writer and content strategist who built her career writing on campaigns for brands like Nature Valley, Disney, and the NFL. When she's not knee-deep in research, you'll likely find her hiking with her dog or with her nose in a good book.

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