Realize Campaign Performance with Call Tracking One Way Marketing Agencies Prove Their Worth
73 Billion for 2018 BY THE NUMBERS BY THE NUMBERS Projected calls BY THE NUMBERS Introduction intro Marketing Agencies that specialize in SEO, PPC and email marketing services are constantly looking for ways to improve their marketing campaigns for their clients, and highlight the benefits they provide. In order to keep pace with constantly changing social network and search engine rules, it is essential for agencies to have the tools they need to stay effective and competitive. Call tracking is one very effective tool that gives agencies, and their clients, the power to easily see where their advertising dollars are being spent on any marketing channel. 30 Billion Business calls in the US for 2013 Billion 65 Per year spent across media to generate calls Source: BIA/Kelsey 2
Calling is King Calling is King Marketing Agencies know the importance of inbound calls, as they are the most lucrative type of lead. They are the leads their client s sales team most want to receive, and therefore the ones marketers most need to generate and track. According to a recent report by BIA/Kelsey, there were 30 billion inbound sales calls made to U.S. businesses in 2013 and with the continuing surge in smartphones and mobile device adoption, that number is expected to reach 73 billion by 2018. Calls have always been highly valued by businesses and this focus is accelerating in the smartphone era, where search has fused with the phone. Businesses that get in front of consumers with the right messaging and calls to action, like mobile click-to-call, can drive high-quality leads and achieve high return on ad spend. Being able to track exactly what campaigns are driving those calls is critical, considering BIA/ Kelsey estimates $64.6 billion is spent annually across media on localized ads to generate calls to businesses. 70% of mobile searchers have used click to call to connect with a business directly from the search engine results. http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/research-studies/click-to-call.html This expansive growth in inbound calls means that marketing and sales teams need to ensure the tracking and reporting of their digital marketing campaigns also includes this critical call data. Otherwise marketing agencies don t know what programs are resulting in phones calls, and they can t attribute sales opportunities and revenue from those calls to the right sources. Without this data, marketing teams struggle to optimize campaigns, content, and marketing ROI to generate more of the phone leads that their client s sales managers value most. It is also important that marketing and sales teams control how inbound calls are routed and managed. After the time and budget spent on generating high-value calls, it is important that these calls get routed to the right sales person, right away so that the opportunity can be handled. 3
why care? Call tracking is a technology that provides traceable metrics for lead generation and marketing analytics. Marketers and lead generation agencies use it to track inbound phone calls back to the specific original marketing source and then follow those leads through the sales cycle to revenue. Why is this tracking important? If you are an agency and are responsible for increasing the rank of your client, you want to get credit when the call volume increases. If you are an in-house marketer and your organization s SEO is improving as a result of your efforts, you should get credit for more than just the increased traffic to your site. You want to be getting credit for all the calls that you gain. Calls have a better conversion rate optimization, and as such, are more valuable. Why Should Agencies Care about Call Tracking? 4
Impact seo For SEO Agencies impact SEO agencies are constantly trying to keep pace with changing search engine algorithms. Each year, Google changes its search algorithm around 500 600 times. While most of these changes are minor, Google occasionally rolls out a major algorithmic that can significantly affect how organizations rank in SERP. Agencies that are able to properly manage a company brand on search engines are going to be a very valuable asset to that business. Providing clients with accurate data on their search engine rankings is a must, and being able to actually produce evidence of their brand presence leading to direct sales is even more beneficial. With call tracking, SEO agencies will not only be able to provide accurate conversion statistics, but also more meaningful data of how customers are reacting to their online campaign. Businesses need to know how their customers are finding their direct phone lines, and what they can do to increase that number. Impact For PPC Agencies PPC impact For many companies, having a successful PPC advertising strategy is critical. There are thousands of businesses in North America where PPC is the only marketing they do. Competition over PPC ad keywords means that businesses can t afford to settle for mediocre conversion rates. For PPC agencies on the line for making the most with their clients PPC spend knowing and showing which campaigns are most effective is crucial. For Google search ads, marketers can use Google AdWords to see which keywords, ads, and landing pages are generating impressions, clicks, and conversions. But the problem is that for online searches, Google AdWords only tracks conversions when a specific page is loaded. It does not provide data for those times that a prospect has come to your landing page via PPC and gave you a call. Without integrating the call tracking data, your AdWords conversion data could be misleading. While a landing page might be generating few form downloads, it could be generating a high number of inbound calls from mobile users. 5
Adding a phone number to mobile search ads results in an average click thru rate increase of 8%. http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/research-studies/click-to-call.html
Impact for Email Marketing Agencies email marketing impact Agencies that offer Email marketing provide services for reaching out to potential customers or current customers of their clients. Call tracking software offers the opportunity for your email agency to better report how a client s email campaign is succeeding at turning a target customer base into actual opportunities or sales. With e-mail campaigns tracking open rates, link clicks, bounces, etc. is a common practice. The problem is many times an interested prospect will phone instead. Tracking and tying these conversions to a specific campaign is important. If the majority of a business s revenue is coming from people calling them up, then they need the full picture on what makes their company successful. Phone calls are the main tool for many businesses, and with an approach that utilizes call tracking, agencies are able to give their clients important information on email ads their customers are responding to. Agencies blacklist time wasters: Integrated call tracking allows you to blacklist numbers of those that waste your client s time. block telemarketers, spammers and even the competition looking to woo your clients away. can reach out to the most likely candidates that will purchase a company s product or service, and then deliver a full statistical analysis of how they are interacting with the brand. Impact for Social Media Agencies social media i Many businesses hire agencies to handle their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google +, Instagram, and many other social media vehicles. As with e-mail campaigns, even though the medium is web based, many consumers, particularly mobile users prefer to call directly. While agencies can t control the consumer, they can control how they want to draw a prospect to a brand. With call tracking implemented in their campaign analysis, social media agencies are able to indicate which channel is getting across to their target audience and which of their marketing strategies can be deemed valuable. Call tracking software can give the agency the ability to provide their client with more information on which social ads (on exactly what social sites) are leading to an interested customer. 7
so how does it work? Call tracking technology lets you insert unique trackable phone number in your marketing material. When someone calls that number, the marketing automation platform knows exactly what source they re calling from. Call tracking technology enables you to track inbound calls back to any marketing source: online, mobile, or offline. You can attribute phone leads to specific ads, campaigns, keyword searches, PPC, referring websites, mobile, email and direct mail blasts, content, social media and more. So How Does It Work? The same functionality can be applied to non-digital marketing sources, including print ads, magazines, road signs, billboards and tradeshow materials. If that lead goes on to become an opportunity or a customer, you can tie those events back to the original lead source. This allows you to understand and prove how your marketing is generating phone calls, so you can optimize performance and spend and ultimately drive more high quality phone leads, opportunities, and revenue for your business or clients. 8
Not Integrated Your Father s Call Tracking When talking about call tracking, it is important to differentiate between traditional, basic call tracking and using call tracking that is part of an integrated marketing platform. Traditional call tracking keeps track of four pieces of data: when and where the call came from, what number the call was made from and the name and address of the caller, which is typically found by referencing with a phone number database. This basic functionality allows users to determine the cost per call for any regional advertising, and learn which geographic areas to focus on. However to fully gain the benefits, you need to integrate your call tracking with all your lead generation and tracking campaigns. When considering call tracking you should look for an integrated marketing platform that offers integrated call tracking and makes use of dynamic number insertion. Dynamic number insertion is a feature that dynamically displays a unique phone number that is dependent on a specific ad, or ad group, or even referring websites that someone visits your website from. This phone number is automatically routed to your main line or advanced products have the ability to direct the call to a specific sales person based on defined logic. Integrated marketing platforms with call tracking systems can automatically identify which internet visitor made which call based on the number that they called. This allows the platform to reconcile the phone call with a particular session visitor. You can find out how a given caller found your site, which exact pages they visited, and what they were reading at the moment that they decided to call. Even further automation, advanced packages can monitor office hours, and if the contact is known, will send an email the caller stating other ways to get in contact with the business after hours. Integrating both your digital media and phone call conversion data allows you to go beyond Cost Per Conversion or Cost Per Call, to a more complete Cost Per Lead. Agencies can supply their clients with data on exactly how much it cost for a given advertisement to bring visitors to their site, and exactly what content encouraged the visitors to contact them. Cost Per Lead takes the guesswork out of the clients marketing initiatives. It provides agencies a quantitative way to measure marketing success for their clients. 9
Mini Case Study: How one Agency Went from Zero to Hero Olympia Plumbing is a local business that knew plenty about heating and plumbing but knew nothing about online marketing. Olympia had previously dabbled in Google AdWords but soon it became over-whelming yielding no results. Knowing that marketing was an important part to his overall business success, Olympia reached out to an Agency for online marketing help. The Agency had the experience to design a proper Google AdWords campaign, with conversion tracking, and so that s what they did for Olympia. Months went by where click-through-rates were monitored, budgets were adjusted, negative keywords applied and more yet conversions remained at zero. Things changed when the Agency began tracking telephone calls for Olympia. The picture become much clearer. What the Agency learned is that they were delivering good quality leads to Olympia through Google AdWords, they just didn t realize it. Customers were clicking through on the Olympia ads coming to a landing page however in Olympia s business as a plumber, people typically want to talk now and not fill out a form and wait. With call tracking in place, customers coming from Google AdWords campaigns could be counted as a conversion. The result: The Agency was able to further refine their online campaigns for Olympia and the Agency was considered a hero in the eyes of Olympia.
Integrated For marketing agencies, whether the focus is SEO, PPC, web design or social media, the goal is to provide measureable results for their clients. The more an agency can show and report their efforts justify their clients marketing spend, the longer the client relationship will last. Supplying measureable value is critical to any businesses success. Recap of Benefits of Integrated Call Tracking for Marketing Agencies Communicate Results: Integrated call tracking ensures that all client conversions, forms and phone calls are properly tracked, recorded and reported to clients. Call Tracking Numbers: Dynamic Insertion telephone number in each advertising source to generate detailed reports. Track each channel separately. Find out which marketing channels work best for your clients. 11
Noise Reduction: Blacklist or block numbers from spammers or competition contacting your clients. Protect your client from known spammers and telemarketers, and keep your competition from contacting your clients based on your advertising efforts. Real-Time Reporting: Web reports that reveal ad source, date, time, duration and callers phone numbers, as well as other lead interaction history. Daily Leads via Email: Detailed history of contact history, website activity before call and previous history if available. 12
caller Demographics: Census data by regional locations helps you target specific markets. Some integrated platforms provide clear graphical representation of caller locations. Interested in Your Call Tracking Solution? Contact ActiveDEMAND Phone: 1.855.782.7041 See Call Tracking in Action: https://www.activedemand.com/call-tracking/ 13