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Benefits of Call Tracking and Analytics
As a business owner, you may have heard the importance of tracking visits to your website. That is absolutely true. However, by tracking your website AND your phone calls, you gain an additional understanding of your marketing picture by seeing who picks up the phone to call you. Phone call tracking and recording give extra, important insights into your business and marketing investments.
Below we’ll highlight the benefits of call tracking and how it call help you increase your return on investment. Have questions at the end? We’re a contact form away.
What Is Call Tracking?
Do people even pick up the phone to call a business anymore?
Yes! About 65% of Fortune 500 companies say phone calls are their highest quality lead source, and 61% of local mobile searches result in a phone call.Â
Call tracking is when you assign a specific phone number to each marketing campaign so you can track which campaigns generate calls (and sales) and the volume of calls the campaign generates. The best call tracking systems dynamically change the phone number on a website to match the number assigned to the marketing campaign that brought them there.Â
For example, if the phone number assigned to your PPC search campaign is 555-555-5554, the phone number on your website will automatically update when a user clicks through your PPC ads.
By implementing call tracking numbers on your website and marketing strategies, you are able to see exactly how your customers are finding you, and which marketing campaigns are responsible. When you install call tracking software or use a call tracking service, you can compare the annual cost of your marketing investments—web, print, television, radio, etc.—and then figure out which of those investments successfully generate leads. By tracking and recording your phone calls, you have the ability to discover:
- How your customers are finding you
- The volume of calls from each marketing strategy
- What percentage of the calls from each strategy are leads
- The true value of your marketing investments
Call Tracking Software vs. Call Tracking Service
There are two ways you can go about tracking phone calls for your business—purchase your own call tracking software like CallRail or CallTrackingMetrics, or hire a phone call tracking service.
Call tracking software is DYI. You install the software and monitor phone calls and data yourself.
A call tracking service, (like the one Blue Corona provides) does all the work for you and sends you a report each month (or week) with a summary of data and insights to be had.
There’s no “right” way to go about tracking your business’s phone calls. If you have the time and the know-how, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try the DIY route. However, if you receive a large volume of calls or aren’t extremely comfortable with data systems and marketing software, it would be wiser to trust your call tracking to experts that do it all day, every day.
Phone Call Tracking vs. Call Intelligence Reporting
Want more bang for your buck? Within phone call tracking is a service called call intelligence reporting. Call intelligence reporting gives you a more in-depth look at your phone calls—in addition to finding out how many of your phone calls are actually leads, call intelligence reporting gives you the ability to recover lost leads and to gain other important customer service insights, such as:
- When throughout a work week (Sunday-Saturday) people call you
- When through a work day (9 a.m. -5 p.m.) people call you
- Whether you have a large number of missed calls
- Who answers the phones
- If your customer service representatives are polite and knowledgeable
- If your leads convert into appointments
Benefits of Call Tracking & How it Boosts ROI
When done right, call tracking and intelligence reporting can drastically improve your return on marketing investment, primarily in four ways:
1. Call Tracking Helps Determine Your True Return on Investment
Take this scenario. You are a small business owner with a $2,000 a month budget for marketing. Each month, you split that $2,000 between four marketing channels: pay per click advertising, SEO, email marketing, and print advertisements.
You get 30 phone leads, 10 of which turned into sales.
Great! The next month, you want to turn up the dial since you’re seeing success with your advertisement efforts, but only have enough wiggle room in the budget to add an extra $200.
Question is: which marketing channel is going to get that extra $200?
An average marketer would spit the extra budget four ways.
A successful marketer would isolate the channel with the best ROI and lean in.
Second question: how will you know which marketing channel has the highest ROI if you don’t know which phone calls came from each channel? Â
This story is a common experience among business owners. Tracking and recording your phone calls gives you the ability to determine if you are you making money, losing money, or breaking even. You can do this by comparing how much you are spending versus how much revenue that strategy brings in for you. It is easier to measure the success and failure of marketing investment when you have all the numbers out in front of you.
2. Call Tracking Helps Eliminate Wasted Ad Spend
Call tracking and analytics can help you make decisions on which advertising channels to invest heavily in, as well as help you cut inefficient advertising strategies.
I’ll give you an example.
One of our home services clients was looking to boost his conversion rate while reducing ad spend. After we implemented call tracking and analytics, we discovered that one of his print strategies—a quarter-page print ad in a local magazine—had an astronomically high cost per lead compared to his pay per click ad campaign.
The next quarter, we cut the print ad and shifted the budget over to his pay per click ad campaign. That quarter, his overall cost per lead had drastically reduced, leaving him more wiggle room to test new advertising strategies as well as more cash to devote to other parts of his business.
That could be you, too.
3. Call Tracking Can Help Recover Your Lost Leads
Now that you have taken the important step in determining which of your phone calls are leads, we now recommend you go a step further and find out which of those leads turned into a sale or appointment. If a lead did not turn into a sale or appointment, we want to know why. Our call analytics experts can help you determine why your leads are not closing and what you can do to improve your bottom line. Some important ways to recover lost leads include:
Calling the customers back
Who better to know why an appointment did not book than the actual customer. By calling a customer back you have a new opportunity to capture the lead. Ask the customer about his or her need, incentivize the customer with a coupon, waive a trip fee, or offer a special time accommodation.
Even if the lead isn’t recovered you can end the customer’s experience on a positive note. By letting the customer know you care, there is a better chance that if another issue occurs down the road, your company is who they think of to call.
Training your customer service and sales reps
Even if you are unable to recover past leads, you still have the opportunity to capture new leads. By training your customer service reps and sales reps, you can help them increase the number of appointments they book and sales they make.
4. Call Tracking Provides Customer Service Insights
As a business owner, you cannot be everywhere at all times. By tracking and recording your phone calls, you have a special insight into your customers’ experience when calling your company. One of the biggest ways you can recover lost leads is by closely examining your business’ customer service.
Your customer service reps are the first and sometimes only impression of your company your customers will experience. By listening to your phone calls, you have a firsthand look into:
- When throughout a work week (Sunday-Saturday) people call you
- When through a work day (9 a.m. -5 p.m.) people call you
- Whether you have a large number of missed calls
- Who answers the phones
- If your customer service representatives are polite and knowledgeable
- If your leads convert into appointments
By having a better idea of your company’s customer service, you can better accommodate staffing needs, training needs, and have the opportunity to reward great employees for a job well done. With a new perspective on your customer service and your customer’s needs, you can then make the internal changes necessary to capture future leads.
Need Help Choosing the Right Call Tracking Software or Service? Our Call Tracking Experts Can Show You the Way
You have a wide variety of choices when it comes to call tracking software. If you need help deciding which call tracking software is best for your business, we can help. We also recommend looking at hiring a call tracking service, like the one Blue Corona provides. For more information on the benefits of tracking and recording your phone calls, contact our online marketing experts who can get you started today!
About The Author: Erin is currently the Call Intelligence Manager at Blue Corona. However, as one of the first five employees with the company, she has held many positions, including analyst, copywriter, office chair building expert, and (self-proclaimed) bake-off favorite.
View more blogs by Erin Whetham
The information on this website is for informational purposes only; it is deemed accurate but not guaranteed. It does not constitute professional advice. All information is subject to change at any time without notice. Contact us for complete details.
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