When it comes to digital marketing campaigns, keeping track of important information, like leads and sales, is essential. This is especially true with 61% of B2B marketers saying their biggest challenge regarding lead generation is finding high-quality leads.
While there are various elements to marketing, call tracking is an important component of every marketing campaign. Call tracking allows businesses to know how many customers are calling their company based on their advertisements and marketing efforts. So let’s take a closer look at why call tracking is so important.
Are Phone Calls Dead In Our Automated World?
When doing an initial analysis of a client’s website, often we will see phone numbers missing completely. The site owners response to the phone number exclusion is usually that they don’t want people to call them.
From a business owner’s perspective, the advancement of automation has meant more efficiency when it comes to company operations. The idea is appealing to have site visitors fill out a online form and forward it to sales or customer support. However, that is not always the best customer experience.
According to Neil Patel, “The total number of calls to businesses has been growing and is only continuing to do so.”
Also, when compared to web leads, calls convert 10-15 times more often.
These statistics reflect the idea that people still want an easy-to-reach human to handle their questions or purchase.
How does call tracking work?
Call tracking is not a new concept. Before the internet, the advertising world ran on print marketing, radio, and TV. Businesses purchased multiple tracking phone numbers to incorporate into each area of their marketing efforts.
Advertisers knew exactly which advertising mediums their phone calls were coming from. Direct mail would get one tracking number, newspaper ads would get another, TV another, billboards another, and so on.
Using call tracking numbers with your website follows the same strategy, with a little extra coding effort. One code placed correctly on your site will change the site’s phone number depending on the visitor’s source. This way, if they make a call while visiting your site, you will know exactly which advertising medium they came from.
Breaking down the platforms:
Most marketing campaigns utilize a variety of platforms and mediums. Organic traffic, paid traffic, and referral traffic are a few common marketing mediums. Because Digital Marketing services utilize several platforms, it’s important to know which one is doing best.
With call tracking, customers see different numbers depending on the advertising source. In return, companies have a better understanding of which marketing efforts result in the most calls. This can help break down the platforms and allow businesses to choose which efforts to focus on.
On occasion, it might be necessary to track phone calls from a specific marketing effort within one advertising medium. For example, you can add a unique call tracking number for a paid Social Media Ad Campaign advertising a new product. Or, one PPC campaign may have a unique tracking number to measure a campaign about a specific sale’s success.
Focus on demographics:
When companies invest in call tracking, they can also choose different numbers or local areas. This allows businesses to have a better idea of their audience demographics. Having local numbers for various locations can show which calls are coming from which areas. Also local numbers, as opposed to toll-free numbers, give consumers confidence that they’ll be speaking with a real person.
Optimize for certain times:
In addition to determining the advertisement and locations of incoming calls, call tracking also shows the most popular time for calls. Businesses can pull detail reports that show when people are making searches and calls. This can then help businesses optimize for certain times throughout the day and even change their business hours if needed.
In a scenario with a Marketing Magnitude’s client, monitoring incoming call times changed how our client ran their phones. This specific business’s hours were 8-5pm throughout the week. At 5 pm, their phone system turned over to their answering machine.
After incorporating phone tracking, we observed the call traffic for several months. We found that the client’s calls increased after 5 pm due to their customers only being available after hours. It was also uncovered that the majority of those calls ended with the potential customer hanging up after reaching a machine.
With this new input, our client incorporated an answering service into their day-to-day operations. Calls were then answered 24 hours a day and there were no more hang-ups.
Call Recording Helps Improve Your Customer’s Experience
In addition, to call tracking, call recording is an option that you can include in your marketing efforts. The benefits of call recording while training a new customer service representative or monitoring your sales team are numerous. Or, you may have an experience like another Marketing Magnitude client where phone tracking uncovered a major pitfall in their business.
This client had worked with an answering service for years when we were hired on. After a month of monitoring, we noticed that the client was receiving numerous phone calls with no conversions. The customer decided to turn on phone tracking questioning if it was the sales team.
What they found out was something they never thought about. They found that the answering service consistently put calls on hold for up to five minutes. Obviously, the caller’s patience wore thin and calls were always dropped without ever talking to the sales team.
Our client immediately replaced the answering service and incoming calls started turning into sales. And none of this would have happened if they hadn’t turned on call recording.
The Conclusion About Call Tracking For Marketing Campaigns
In conclusion, utilizing call tracking can help businesses better understand their marketing tactics, their audience, and even their company’s operations. With the addition of call recording, the benefits will reach even further. These factors outline the importance of tracking the phone calls that will inevitably come in from your online advertising sources.
Marketing Magnitude’s Digital Marketing Services with Call Tracking and Call Recording
Marketing Magnitude’s managed SEO and PPC packages include phone tracking. We also offer these clients the option of call recording at no additional cost. However, we also have monthly packages to use our dashboard and phone tracking system without utilizing digital marketing services.
Through our dashboard, clients can see real-time call reports about their internet marketing efforts. As an added convenience, our clients also receive regular emailed reports outlining their campaigns. In doing this, we can accurately and easily see how well the campaign is doing regarding customers calls. Tracking this data, along with site analytics, web leads, and online sales is an essential component of a digital marketing campaign.
