Optimizations, the process of improving advertising efficiency, are usually made based on data from advertising dashboards on Facebook or Google Ads, or from an attribution platform such as Google Analytics. But for many businesses, the phone is a major conversion tool. In some service industries more than 50% of conversions are made via phone. That is a substantial opportunity. By using a quality call tracking solution, you can perform sophisticated conversion optimization thru phone call results.
Smartphone Usage
The landline is a dying entity in American homes. Homes without a landline in the US outnumber those that do have a landline. Instead, people are calling from their smartphones. Ads found on the internet while using a smart phone allow consumers to dial the advertiser directly. Many websites enable the viewer to dial the business from any webpage. One report states that when compared to web leads phone calls convert ten to 15 times more often. Phone calls are worth a lot of money.
Keywords
We are all familiar with keywords. They are words that describe a part of our business for which we want to be known. A furniture store will want to be found for the word “sofa”. If a marketer sees that the keyword “traditional sofa near me” generates lots of clicks and those people fill out a form to make an appointment we would want to invest more money in the keyword. Similarly, if a lot of people search that keyword, go the site, and then call for an appointment, we want to know that. Call tracking provides that data.
Just as knowing what keywords drive the most calls, understanding what pages of our website cause the most people to ring us. Looking at your best performing pages may provide insight as to changes you can make throughout your site to increase conversions. Call tracking informs us which pages cause phone inquiries.
Lead Scoring
Call volume alone is not an indicator of success. The calls must be of quality. By using Artificial Intelligence calls can be scored for value. Points or scores can be created based on the criteria of each business. For a retailer, a person who asks about hours and directions might get five points. But a caller who requests an appointment would get ten points. Callers to insurance companies who ask for a quote are of greater value than callers who don’t. Knowing your customer journey will help you set up a scoring system that allows for optimizations.
Offline advertising can also be tracked. Use unique phone numbers with different offline media and different creative. When buying multiple TV or radio stations each should have a unique phone number. And, when new creative is introduced, new numbers should be assigned.
Marketing Channels
Just as we look at our web conversions and KPI’s to determine which marketing channels are working we do the same with telephone calls. You can easily compare your search campaigns with social and offline media. By scoring the phone calls and knowing which channels create the most conversions, one can quickly determine which channels need more budget and which can be curtailed.
Reviewing how calls are handled is another optimization opportunity. If a particular call KPI is not being properly handled by your phone team, listening to phone conversations will allow you to make changes. It could be something as simple as having your phone team ask a person looking for hours and directions to make an appointment. The more efficient the phone team the higher the conversion rate.
Conversion Optimization Thru Phone Calls
If you think that nobody makes phone calls anymore, you’re missing out. Businesses are receiving more and more calls every year. Calls convert more often than web leads because callers are usually more qualified than web leads. To maximize this incredible opportunity marketers must track calls as carefully as they monitor their web traffic. Just as we use Google Analytics or another attribution platform to understand our web leads, call tracking enables us to thoroughly understand our call leads. When you know what caused people to call and then convert, you can knowledgeably perform conversion optimization thru phone calls on all of your advertising. That’s money in the bank.
