Advanced Call Tracking Tips from Best-in-Class Marketing Agencies Table of Contents Introduction 2 Chapter 1: CALL FORENSICS 4 Chapter 2: SMARTER MARKETING AND SALES 6 Chapter 3: SAVING MONEY WITH DNI (DYNAMIC NUMBER INSERTION) 8 Chapter 4: DISPLAYING LOCAL NUMBERS 10 Chapter 5: CALL ROUTING 12 Chapter 6: SUPPLEMENTING GOOGLE ANALYTICS DATA 14 Chapter 7: CONCLUSIONS AND REFLECTIONS 16
Introduction The world of marketing has changed significantly in many ways just over the past few years, with much of that being accredited to the Internet. As a result of the overwhelming popularity of social media, advertising mediums such as Google AdWords and the proliferation of mobile devices, online marketing has become a sector that simply cannot be ignored by private businesses, large corporations or fledgling marketers. In fact, it has been suggested by more than a few leading marketing entities throughout the world that businesses now must have at least some kind of online marketing strategy in the wings. However, that being said, traditional platforms and mediums cannot be forgotten, as there are still a myriad of customers that prefer to contact businesses directly for additional information. A great many number of tracking tools exist within the realm of online marketing, designed to help analyze where customers are coming from, what they are searching for and what exactly is attracting them. When discussing the merits of a traditional phone-based system, robust marketing analytics is not readily available if at all and in most cases it is not even possible to collect the data. This situation is overwhelmingly unfortunate because a modern and evolving business requires access to data such as this at all times. 2
Call tracking is the solution here, as with multiple sources, it s vital that businesses are able to assess and understand where a majority of calls are coming from. This is an extremely vital element of a successful marketing campaign because knowing where leads originate and how many have been generated is equally as important as knowing how much traffic a business website boasts or how many successful clicks a particular advertisement has been garnering. This is all information and data that can be implemented to hone a formidable marketing strategy and more importantly, can be used to understand a customer base. Put succinctly, call tracking enables measurement of marketing campaign effectiveness, and in so doing allows users to adjust focus for superior performance. 3
Chapter 1: CALL FORENSICS Diving Deep Into the Collected Data Pool On the surface, the process of call tracking is relatively simple: A phone number is called that is associated with a marketing campaign (website/ banner ad/print ad et al) and a call tracking application records associated meta data such as caller ID, source, location and more. Advanced, sophisticated solutions go a step further and provide web history when available, with call forensics going even further than that to analyze the call and provide context and relevancy. What s most important regarding call forensics is that the process analyzes different aspects of a call in order to understand the source of the call, reason for the call, who should answer the call and even what was discussed during the duration of the call. By analyzing the conversation, a great many things can be determined. Example: A marketer may consider every incoming call from a specific campaign a lead, or perhaps an incoming call was a wrong number. These invalid phone calls should not be counted as metrics, and call forensics can determine this automatically. 4
So, with call forensics we can: Know where a call originated Understand the context of the call Was it a wrong number? Is there an opportunity? Can the caller be segmented for further nurturing? 5
Chapter 2: SMARTER MARKETING AND SALES Simply Knowing that the Phone Rang is not Enough I. Any business that receives incoming calls from prospects and customers needs to take the time to set-up a process that will optimize the handling of the call. This can mean knowing what questions to ask, listening carefully and effectively moving the call along to create an opportunity or close a sale. Actually spending time on call processes is much easier said than done. Most businesses don t analyze calls in the name of improving processes because either they don t know how, don t have the time or don t have the means. With today s technologies, conversation analysis is automated providing businesses with significant insight into how incoming calls are being handles. Instead of using call tracking to simply know how many people called as a result of a specific campaign, call forensics can dive deep into the context of the call using cloud computing technologies. 6
A call tracking platform with call forensics enables users to configure queries to search for specific characteristics of a call. This can encompass length of a call, location of a call or specific keywords spoken during the call. What s most important here is that based on these configured queries, individuals within an organization such as a sales manager can automatically be alerted to incoming calls that meet a certain criteria. Example: Perhaps a manager prepares a query in order to listen for the name of a competitor. If an incoming call includes talking about that specific competitor, the sales manager will receive an alert with access to the recorded call and transcription. He or she can then review the call with the sales team for the purpose of coaching or creating a strategy to close a sale. II. Utilizing marketing tactics such as this can aid in easily determining incoming calls as useless or those that hold potential (as an opportunity); important to note is that calls being analyzed during a marketing campaign shouldn t merely be counted their QUALITY should be considered as it relates to the efforts of that campaign. 7
Chapter 3: SAVING MONEY WITH DNI (DYNAMIC NUMBER INSERTION) Unleashing the Power of Real-Time Call Tracking and Data Collection for Calls Tied to a Specific Website I. The process of Dynamic Number Insertion encompasses enabling real-time call tracking and data collection for calls tied to a specific website. Marketers often utilize this approach to measure the impact of digital efforts on inbound phone calls. When a lead clicks-through to a site from any advertisement, DNI technology displays a number that s unique to the specific web session and collects referring data including search engine, web page, keyword or other source. 8 Further, all arriving calls automatically log caller ID information, phone number, geographical location, website browsing history and details
regarding how the person placing the call first came upon the website. What s more, preparing a business operations for Dynamic Number Insertion is easy: A pool of three or more telephone numbers are registered, and the number currently being used is input into a DNI system. Going forward, the number displayed on the website automatically changes to associate with a particular visitor s session, carrying over all applicable information in the process. Important to note is that rich, user-specific data facilitates targeted, high-roi (Return on Investment) marketing. II. This leads to the inherent problem with DNI as it relates to expense for some businesses: While this process can indeed get expensive for companies boasting a plethora of website visitors, there is a solution in the form of creating rules that allow DNI to only be used in specific regions. Example: A legal firm sees website visitors from all across the country but it only does business in three cities where there are corporate offices. DNI can be set up for the three cities, allowing every other caller to use a static phone number to call in. In this case, a call received from an internationally-based individual isn t going to be considered a viable lead, so there s no point in spending money on a DNI pool to track non-customers. In other words, call tracking numbers can be geo-targeted to just those areas and businesses they wish to receive calls from, while the rest get static numbers thus reducing the DNI pool. 9 The bottom line is that localizing a DNI pool saves money while providing accurate marketing metrics.
Chapter 4: DISPLAYING LOCAL NUMBERS Using Call Tracking Solutions to Increase Incoming Calls with Local Number Display I. Fact: The more regional a business makes itself, the more likely someone is to make a transaction through them. By taking advantage of call tracking solutions, a local number that is, one that can be defined by city, region or country can be displayed on a website, and businesses can increase incoming calls with local number display. II. Let s now take a look at how entities that do business outside of their home country gain an advantage by using country-specific phone number insertion on their website. Without doubt, a country-specific phone number insertion feature within a call tracking software algorithm boasts numerous advantages including: a. Better User Engagement and Conversions Irrespective of the fact that international calling has become more affordable over the last few years, many individuals are still reluctant to pay long distance charges to contact a business. By displaying a local number, the business makes it more likely that the visitor will respond to the calls-to-action on its site; in turn, this makes it more likely that their visit will result in a conversion. b. Easier Worldwide Expansion Doing business in or marketing to many different countries requires country-specific number insertion to make the process a lot easier. Even if calls are forwarded to a location that happens to be halfway around the world, displaying a local number gives 10
the impression of a local presence for a business while also making it appear more trustworthy in the eyes of visitors. c. Seamless Integration with Other Call Tracking Software Features Country-specific number insertion works in conjunction with any other features made available in a call tracking software platform, such as call recording and tracking with Google Analytics. 11
Chapter 5: CALL ROUTING Effectively Reducing Time-to-Answer and Routing Inbound Callers to the Right Staff Members I. The process of call routing has been proven to reduce time-to-answer while effectively routing inbound callers to the right staff members, eliminating the need to route them through multiple intermediaries or even a single live receptionist. When a lead or customer assigned to a specific salesperson or account manager calls in, he or she is immediately connected to that individual s personal line. II. Call routing can be accomplished in a number of different ways. It can be based on a specific campaign, so that any call coming in from a print ad in a specific print publication (i.e. magazine) is routed to a particular individual, or it may be based on the region the call is coming from. Example: Company representative Bob handles accounts on the East Coast, so any call originating from the East Coast would automatically route to Bob; likewise, if a specific account manager is assigned to a specific contact in a CRM, it will automatically be routed to the assigned account manager whenever the contact calls. 12
III. The many benefits associated with call routing include, but are certainly not limited to, callers spending less time navigating systems such as IVRs and avoiding receptionists so that they may get to the individual they need to speak with, as well as companies saving time by eliminating the multitude of people normally associated with attempting to direct a call. 13
Chapter 6: SUPPLEMENTING GOOGLE ANALYTICS DATA The Creation of a Powerful Analysis Tool with More Complete and Accurate Data I. The combined power of Google Analytics and call tracking yields a formidable analysis tool that ultimately yields more complete and accurate data. Used on its own, Google Analytics has been an effective tool digital marketing agencies use for their clients however, this approach does not inherently track incoming phone call data, and with a call tracking solution it can. II. Digital marketers have been taking advantage of this approach by tagging their phone numbers to specific campaigns which can then be viewed with analyzed data within Google Analytics. Additionally, agencies have been relying heavily on Google Analytics to measure marketing effectiveness and make better business decisions and to really show clients what is going on. It s a fact that the more successful marketing campaigns supplement Google Analytics data with incoming call tracking data. 14
III. Here s an eye-opening statistic: According to a comscore study commissioned by Google, some 63-percent of website visitors complete their purchases OFFLINE. In the world of online shopping, there are a myriad of methods to track visitor behavior including ad retargeting, click tracking, heat maps and tracking cookies however, as soon as that consumer picks up the phone to make an old fashioned call, most marketers are in the dark. The fact of the matter is they don t have to be. As this intuitive paper suggests, without call tracking there is no way to know what web pages a caller has visited or the referring source of the call; thus, all that effort that was poured into designing user flows and nurturing that lead while individuals were online become all but moot once they decide to chat with a genuine human being. Using the collected data from call tracking campaigns, entities such as salespeople are better equipped to answer 15
Chapter 7: CONCLUSIONS AND REFLECTIONS It is no mistake those marketing agencies considered best-in-class are taking advantage of the call tracking technique. There s one element clients of such agencies will never overlook, and that s delivering great results and so the best agencies stand out because they not only deliver those results but because they re able to shout about it by quantifying the client s Return On Investment. Once upon a time, it was difficult to navigate clients through the minefield that was digital marketing spending particularly when the telephone played an integral part of the conversion process. Today, call tracking applications provide agencies as much insight into phone calls as online forms and mouse-clicks. This fundamentally equates to telling exactly which marketing channels, both online and offline, are making the phones ring while being able to focus on the marketing approaches that work best. But simply measuring incoming campaign calls does not go far enough call forensics need to be applied to provide context and to truly understand the intent of a call. As an essential integrated marketing platform accessible to small businesses, corporate marketers and marketing agencies alike, ActiveDEMAND offers call tracking numbers that measure campaign performance while enabling users to see exactly what incoming calls are occurring as a result of their marketing campaign. Never before has a solution for tracking PPC, SEO, display and offline advertising been so intuitive. 16
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