When you’re running a few advertising strategies as part of your digital marketing plan, you should be getting leads from several sources. And that’s great. But have you ever wished you had more insight into where those leads are coming from, and how often they’re converting to customers? That information would help you make smarter marketing decisions. And it’s available through the use of call tracking.
What is Call Tracking?
Call tracking is a way of assigning different phone numbers to your marketing channels through the use of call tracking software. For example, say you’re running a display ad campaign, a search ad campaign, and an email marketing campaign all at the same time. You would assign one phone number to each campaign so you know where each lead is coming from.
That’s an example of call tracking at its most basic. It might seem unnecessary at first in our digital age – after all, don’t you have the metrics from your web pages and ad analytics to guide you? But if you’re like most businesses, most eventual sales come in through a telephone call. If you’re not using call tracking software, you have no idea where those leads are coming from.
When you implement the use of call tracking solutions, however, you gain much more insight into what’s working in your marketing efforts. For too many business owners, marketing can seem like a vague art. It doesn’t always get them the hard data they expect as business people. And marketing doesn’t come cheap – it’s a big part of a business budget. Getting real results from digital marketing means being able to truly evaluate how your marketing is converting into actual sales. And that’s where call tracking comes in.
How Does Call Tracking Work?
Call tracking harnesses the power of digital tools to work. While you used to have to call the phone company to get a phone number, now call tracking software can set you up with multiple phone numbers with just a few clicks. Each phone number is also a tracking number that lets you know where your lead generating efforts are working. And each one is a toll-free number to make the decision to call easy for your leads.
You can find a range of call tracking software options on the market – from basic to sophisticated. The most basic forms allow you to create a phone number for a campaign. This gives you access to basic metrics like the number and location of calls, and how long they last. You can get more details from a campaign-based tracking system, which allows you to assign each campaign its own number when you’re running multiple campaigns at once. And if you’re a large company, you can get thousands of phone numbers to track which specific keywords are driving traffic to your business.
Call tracking software can certainly be used on its own – that level of detail can be enough to get a smaller business started on gauging the effectiveness of their marketing channels. But call tracking is very powerful when combined with a customer relationship management tool (CRM). Using these tools together to track your inbound calls and marketing campaigns yields a wealth of data. You can discover how much revenue each of your campaigns brings in, the conversion rate for campaigns, and more. A CRM also gives your sales teams access to detailed customer information as the customer called – data like their purchase history and location info in real-time.
Tracking Online and Offline Engagements
Call tracking can help you determine which marketing techniques are yielding the best results for your business. You can track online engagements, like searchor display adsor email campaigns. This is helpful for deciding where to spend your online marketing budget and deciding if your email campaigns are working for you.
But you can use call tracking to do the same for offline marketing too. If you attend a lot of in-person events to market your business, like trade shows, you can simply add a tracking number to your literature or handouts for that event. When your prospects call, you can use that call attribution to see which events are yielding lots of leads – or none at all. All this information drives your marketing budget for the year so you can focus your time and dollars on what really works.
Managing Your Digital Marketing with C1M
Call tracking is incredibly valuable for any business – especially when combined with a powerful CRM. It allows you to make data-driven decisions for marketing that grows your business, without wasting money. If you want to get those results but you’re not sure where to start, give us a call at C1M. We offer data-driven digital marketing strategies using call tracking, our own CRM, and more to give you the results your business needs for growth. Schedule your free business review today and let’s get started together.
