Intelligent call tracking ties it all together Call Tracking Simplified
Research indicates that an astounding 63 percent of people complete their purchase offline following their search activity. (ComScore Study 2006). Many marketers are frustrated with the current, limited methods of analyzing and measuring online to offline conversions. They believe today s technology cannot deliver a complete picture of real sales-ready leads and this won t justify online ad spending. Without call tracking there is no easy way to understand which online marketing efforts are driving phone calls. Call tracking brings actionable insight to the issue. Call tracking allows businesses to calculate success for EVERY form of advertising. With call tracking, marketers now have an increasingly powerful tool to not only measure -- but also analyze -- offline conversions in an effort to more effectively determine success and make informed spending decisions. Table of Contents I. Summary: What is call tracking? II. Background: This history of call tracking. III. The Specifics: How does call tracking work? A. Elements of call tracking. B. Key features of call tracking. IV. Case Studies A. Making the right buy. B. Web forms don t tell the whole story. C. Auto dealer in a black hole. V. Conclusion: when it comes to getting instant feedback about your marketing efforts, call tracking is the single, most effective measurement tool to determine your return-on-investment. Page 2
Summary: What is call tracking? Call tracking supplies clients with reliable, clear and actionable data encompassing the entire sales cycle from customer browsing through completed sale. In simple terms, call tracking is the ability to trace phone calls back to the person calling you, as well as their buying behaviors. This tracking can account both for people who call you from your website as well as those who call from other direct marketing efforts, like e-mail campaigns, print ads and television spots. For example, every time an online advertisement delivers a phone call, the call is recorded, traced back to the web visitor s actions and then logged into real-time, detailed reports such as Google Analytics (tm) or Omniture Site Catalyst (tm). This allows businesses to optimize their marketing activities for those methods which generate the highest quality conversions compared to guessing on the outcome. Industry experts suggest 79 percent of ad spending is wasted on leads that do not convert into sales. In other words, call tracking supplies clients with reliable, clear and actionable data encompassing the entire sales cycle from customer browsing through completed sale. Background: the history of call tracking Looking back, traditional call tracking services have been around for more than ten years. Only recently has call tracking moved beyond the traditional service where a tracking number was placed in a campaign ad and calls were reported from a simple detail report. In the past, there was a disconnect between visitor behaviors and phone calls that resulted in an action to the actual sale. Today, this gap has been bridged. Over the past two years, the call tracking industry has worked to develop tools that integrate their systems with popular online paid search services, such as Google AdWords (tm), Microsoft AdCenter (tm) and Yahoo Search Marketing (tm), thus displaying data in a familiar, easy-to-read format. The goal of these integrations is to layer actionable call tracking data into existing business processes and systems. Now, integrated data can be related directly to the behavior, page or ad that drove the call. Additionally, data can be consolidated into most popular reporting environments used by marketers which reduces the learning curve substantially. Studies indicate marketers achieve leveraged gain through integration. These include web analytics packages, bid management software and Page 3
customer relationship management (CRM) software. With integration into reporting and CRM environments, the offline conversion data can be compared against other marketing channels for maximum utility. Call tracking enables you to calculate financial success for every form of advertising you pay for. Integration brings measurement and measurement brings clarity surrounding online performance and future spending, as well as decisions around content and design. Basic questions that all internet marketing managers have such as, Which keywords drove calls? and How many units were sold as a result of my online paid search spending? as well as What pages are causing an action to occur? can finally be answered. With the advancements in call tracking technology and industry integration into third party systems, internet marketers finally have the tools to tie together a complete picture surrounding their online paid search spending and the resulting offline call performance. Having clarity surrounding your marketing performance equates to better spending decisions and ultimately higher returns on marketing dollars. The Specifics: How call tracking works It is much more than recording the number of calls received. The call tracking software is part of a sophisticated marketing methodology that ties results directly to costs and gives clients accurate, real-time campaign effectiveness figures. Call tracking allocates a discrete phone number local or tollfree -- for each unique source you want to track. These tracking sources can be keywords, affiliate IDs, search engines or any other identifiers. When a visitor arrives at your site, the software conducts a dynamic lookup to determine which phone number is associated with the visitor s origin page. That phone number is allocated and then cookied within your visitor s browser. As a result, call tracking gives clients actionable data which allows them to optimize ppc campaigns, SEO and other offline marketing efforts. Instead of associating a phone number with a particular campaign, ad group, or keyword, call tracking assigns a tracking number to each unique visitor session. By tracking each unique visitor clients are able to see granular data associated with the call. Page 4
Key benefits of call tracking include: Optimizing online campaigns: Know which campaigns, keywords and marketing tactics drive callers and whether those calls generate revenue offline or online. Call tracking software is part of a sophisticated marketing methodology that ties results directly to costs and gives clients accurate, realtime campaign effectiveness figures. Improve site design: Understand which pages drive calls customers may be confused and there may be opportunities for site usability improvement. Save money: Find new ways to more effectively close business online and reduce call volume. Save time: Integrated reporting environments save time in analysis by consolidating call information with analytics, CRM and bid management providers. Elements of a call tracking program can include: Log Time Keyword Session Traffic Caller ID Call Length Call Recording I.P. Geo-Location Campaign Ad group Creative / Ad Type Last URL Visited This information is then logged into a central database system which can also export the collected data directly into many popular web analytics programs. Additionally, reports can be exported into a spreadsheet or XML feed. Clients looking for even more granular data can integrate call tracking directly into their CRM database using the API feature. Some popular analytics packages which complement call tracking include Google Analytics (tm), Webtrends (tm), Omniture (tm) and Coremetrics (tm). Page 5
Key Features of Call Tracking Call tracking enables you to understand every caller s behavior and buying persona. Keyword level tracking Tracking of PPC and organic campaigns Web analytics integration Phone call recording Full call details reports exportable to spreadsheet or XML feed Access to local and national tracking numbers White labeling/reseller opportunities The ability to track, measure and evaluate call volume and quality by time of day Detailed reporting of calls, repeat callers, hang-ups and dollars generated Tracking of repeat visitor inquiries and tracking Case Studies Making the Right Buy Imagine, for example, that your new billboard advertising campaign has just cost the company $100,000. Quickly, sales increase and you gladly plan to continue the billboard campaign or possibly expand it. In actuality, the decision to increase the budget for this particular campaign is not as practical or as wellinformed as it may seem. The billboard may be failing in achieving the sought-after ROI and the sales peak is a result of something else, possibly a spike in online traffic due to recent news media stories. With call tracking, every call contributing to this sales peak can be sourced and accounted for on a granular level. A pool of telephone numbers matches the ad that generated the calls, and so, if for some reason the billboard ad was in fact failing to achieve its potential, the call tracking software would present the real cause for the sales increase. Without this information, the decision to continue the billboard campaign would have been a costly mistake. Web Forms Don t Tell the Whole Story A home repair client found their ROI cost per lead was coming in very high. They determined this by looking at the number of site visitors, on a campaign-by-campaign basis, who completed a web form on the site to request a service call. This is because many more customers were calling the company on the phone instead of filling out a web form to request service. Page 6
After implementing call tracking, the client determined that the number of phone calls actually represents a 6 to 1 ratio to the number of website forms being completed. So, the cost per conversion was really six times less than was previously calculated. Call tracking illuminates which campaigns, keywords and marketing tactics are driving calls and, more importantly, which calls are generating revenue, online and offline. Additionally, within two weeks of the call tracking implementation, the client was able to determine that some of their other advertising campaigns were not generating nearly the call volume previously believed. By canceling these underperforming marketing programs, the company was able to reallocate these resources to more productive outlets. Auto Dealer in a Black Hole About four years ago, the general manager of an auto dealership produced a report showing their monthly paid search clicks totaling about 5,000 monthly clicks, or approximately $3,000 in ad spending. The GM was no dummy. He expressed frustration that he didn t know what he was getting from the 5,000 monthly clicks. He didn t know what the visitors did on his site and, most importantly, he didn t know how many called the dealership. He was acting on faith that his $3,000 paid search budget was working because no measurement tools were available. Four years later and in today s uncertain economy, it is doubtful that unmeasured paid search expenses totaling $36,000 a year can continue to be confidently paid without measuring campaign performance. Fortunately, the need to measure the offline performance of online spending has now been met with new call tracking tools. A specific example would be a post call IVR feature where the dealership can log the call outcome and that data can be tied to the specific keyword or spending that drove the call. Contact us at Mongoose Metrics at 877.784.0496 or visit us online at www.mongoosemetrics.com to set up a meeting. With the advancements in call tracking technology and the industry s integration into third party systems, auto dealers finally have the tools to tie together a complete picture surrounding their online paid search spending and the resulting offline call performance. With a questionable economy and extensive scrutiny around marketing budgets, having clarity surrounding your marketing performance equates to better spending decisions and ultimately higher ROI on marketing dollars. Conclusion The bottom line: when it comes to getting instant feedback about the phone calls driven by your marketing efforts, call tracking is the single, most effective measurement tool to determine your return-on-investment. Page 7