While so much happens online these days, phone calls are still a major touchpoint between consumers and small businesses. And that very first call is the most important of all. If businesses are running marketing campaigns, they need to know what ads or series of ads prompted that vital first outreach by the customer.
Small businesses could handle this by just asking: “How did you hear about us?” But there are some drawbacks to this approach. Staff is often too busy to ask the question. They’re answering product or stock information, finalizing sales or giving opening hours. Customers sometimes only give partial answers. They recall the most recent ad they saw, while their online journey might have involved multiple ads, interactions, or other engagements over a period of time.
To get more reliable information to use in shaping future campaigns, small businesses are turning to call tracking software and services to gather that vital data for them.
Call Tracking Software to the Rescue
Call tracking software uses a process called call attribution to find out how customers found you and to gather key data to optimize campaigns. It works by inserting a unique phone number into each online channel, such as an ad or a webpage, that could lead callers to call your business. The phone numbers are trackable, dynamic, and unique to each site visitor. The benefit is that those unique numbers tie directly back to the ads, campaigns and keywords the customer interacted with before dialing.
That added information can not only help future marketing efforts, it can be used in business improvement. Here are some of the main benefits of call tracking.
Smarter Marketing
Marketing and sales teams love using call tracking to market smarter and improve marketing ROI. By capturing caller details, and with data about call-related conversions, marketers can easily tap into what sources are driving the most calls and delivering the most qualified leads. Down the line, those improvements can optimize budgets by reducing cost-per-click and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) on paid search.
Gain Business Efficiency
Call tracking boosts business efficiency by providing insight into call frequency and timing. You don’t want to miss out on any potential leads, so having staff available on peak call days and during peak call hours will help increase conversion rates.
Better Customer Service
Call tracking lets you record phone calls to analyze details and gather metrics – of conversions, or of lost leads. Conversational analytics helps analyze the language used during the call to learn how a conversion happened, or gain a fuller understanding of the customer journey and the customer intent. For instance, you can track what products or services they’re interested in and what concerns they have. You might also find out who on your team is answering call and whether they require more sales training to help drive conversions. All this call-related information can be used to measure and improve sales processes, or personalize interactions in retargeting campaigns. Everything can be used provide a better customer experience.
The best part of call tracking? It’s easy to set up and start leveraging call data. The first step is choosing between local or toll-free numbers and deciding where the call should be directed: to an office or home, to sales, or a third-party service. Next, you need to identify which campaigns to pair with tracking numbers.
The fun part is in collecting and applying the data for business improvement. You’ll learn where the call came from, who called, how long the call lasted, and other caller information, such as purchase history. Most importantly, you’ll discover which ads and interactions were key in persuading the customer to grab that phone and dial.
Digital marketing doesn’t end with the final click. Knowing what’s making your phone ring helps businesses measure the success of ad campaigns and optimize marketing strategies down the road.