Call Tracking is Essential to Marketing in 2020
An integrated marketing approach is essential for small and local businesses to get the sales and conversions they need. This means combining modern digital approaches with conventional phone calls that can close a sale or bring a person to your store. However, there’s a divide between these calls and the marketing platforms that often drive people to them. This is where call tracking comes in, a method to try and integrate these two in terms of data, to drive more efficient marketing.
The Need For Call Tracker In Modern Marketing
Owner and Founder of CallTracker, Alex Phelps, saw the need for a platform like Call Tracker in the midst of his 10 years of experience in the digital marketing world. “Companies are going to spend money on marketing no matter what,” he explains. “However, if you don’t track how marketing channels are performing, you don’t have an idea on how well your money is being spent or how effective your marketing your marketing channels are.”
Tracking calls, in this context, is creating a phone number that is associated with a given piece of marketing, so you know what the marketing is that drove that call. Call Tracking is the glue to bridge the gap to provide performance data on all of your marketing channels that are generating phone calls.
Call Tracking is the glue to provide marketing performance data on all of your marketing channels that are generating phone calls.
As an example, if you were to put up an online ad as, say, a car shop, the bulk of conversions you would get are people reading the ad, then calling you to schedule service. But, on your end, you would have no way of determining that it was an ad that led to the call, or, if you have multiple ads, which one. The initial goal of Call Tracker, Phelps explains, “was connecting the two worlds for small businesses.”
Digital marketing agencies also require this in order to properly service their clients. A key portion of their client satisfaction is being able to show a tangible impact for their efforts, and call tracking factors into that.
The role of call tracking services is to collect and provide data regarding calls, to help the client apply to future decisions. For example, after sending 1000 mailers, a company may get 200 calls. This may be seen as a failure or success based on expectations, but the key is you have the data to work off of.
A major reason why call tracking services are so important is the fact that it’s unwieldy for companies, even the smallest ones, to try and implement call tracking on their own. Call tracking services function by buying a phone number for you from a specific network, as well as monitoring it to collect data. Doing this yourself poses a major expense and time sink. Not only do you have to buy all these numbers, for every single marketing channel you have, but you also need someone to actually collect and collate the data. Models like Call Tracker allow you to buy a number with a click that can be added to your advertising(ads, commercials, etc). These services also allow for smaller-scale contracts for shorter ad campaigns.
Call Tracking In The Business Landscape
Even for those who may not necessarily be sold on call tracking yet, business marketing is trending towards a climate where it may be more necessary. Phelps notes that more and more time is spent on screens, from apps to social networks to search engines. “If digital marketing was big 5 years ago, it’s doubled now,” he adds. When you track from these ever-growing channels, you want to know who called from what channel, whether it’s a Facebook page or Google Map listing. Depending on your niche, this information can take on a different form.
If digital marketing was big 5 years ago, it’s doubled now.
Let’s compare a lawyer to a vitamin store. A single call for a vitamin store may end in an order of around $50. However, if a successful legal call leads to a long case, that’s an enormous conversion for the lawyer. In some cases, call tracking helps with controlling ad spend. Say that our lawyer in this example has three billboards in three different areas of a city. If call tracking shows that one outperforms the other two by a wide margin, this can provide an indicator of whether they need to relocate or discontinue the billboards and redistribute that money elsewhere.
As a final note, when talking about efficiency, it’s a relatively inexpensive investment to start with call tracking. Compare $10 -$20 a month to $2000 a month to put a billboard up. “People will spend $2000 for Google Adwords, but fail to look and track the data that lets them understand where their money goes,” Phelps explains. Considering the value add for a low expense, call tracking is an essential add-on for many marketing campaigns.
With this in mind, if you are ready to refine your digital marketing efforts and increase your overall ROI, Call Tracker is the call-tracking partner for you. We provide great value and excellent data via detailed reports to determine which of your marketing campaigns are truly linked to increase call volume and conversions. Be sure to stay tuned to the Call Tracker blog for more insight and industry news.
