Call tracking is the process of monitoring, managing, and analysing incoming calls to your business. Call tracking solutions provide helpful insight into which marketing campaigns, keywords, and ads are driving customers to call your business.
By installing a call tracking solution on your website and in any paid advertising campaigns you are able to gather valuable information about:
Call tracking is a software solution that records the information about each call, including who called, when they called, and how long the call lasted. It can be used to track calls from any source, including phone numbers, keywords and websites.
This data is then stored in a central database for easy access by sales agents or managers.
Dynamic phone tracking assigns uniquely generated trackable phone numbers to each visitor to their website for marketing purposes. Trackable numbers will give data about customer journeys and the source of each customer, such as SEO, PPC, and more. This is in addition to fixed numbers that are usually used for offline media like TV, radio and print. Although fixed numbers can still be used for data, they don't provide as much detail as dynamic call tracking numbers.
Call tracking has been around in a simple form for a number of years. While it was rudimentary compared to current methods, businesses have always been asking, “How did you hear about us?” to first-time callers and writing it down on a piece of paper for many years!
By asking their customers how they discovered the company, business owners could attribute the client to specific campaigns. Fast forward to today, and many businesses still use the “how did you hear about us?” method to determine what is driving the most calls and new customers.
Call tracking software has evolved since the phone was first used for businesses, and there are now more advanced ways to determine how a lead found your business’s phone number and which advertising channel caught your customer's eye.
Call tracking software records the caller's phone number, name, time and date of the call.
Call tracking is a crucial tool for gaining insight into how well your marketing campaigns are performing. Did you know that 80% of all customers conduct research online before buying products or services? For this reason, it's important to know what information is being provided on your website and other websites so that you can further improve customer service and sales strategies.
If you have an online store, call tracking can help identify which products are most popular with customers when they phone in their orders. This will allow you to adjust the pricing accordingly as needed based on demand for certain items over others in order to maximise profits while minimising waste on unneeded inventory (such as might happen if too many customers were ordering one particular item).
Asking a caller how they got your phone number leads to information about which of a company’s campaigns are performing well, but it could also lead to misattribution. Chances are, the customer probably had more than one touchpoint before converting and making the call.
Their answer to how they got your information is typically the last touchpoint they encountered (and the majority of the time they usually just say Google) This is called “last touch attribution” and gives 100% of the credit for a sale or a conversion to the last touchpoint a customer encountered.
Early call tracking software allowed marketers to set tracking numbers for their marketing campaigns and count how many calls each campaign brought in. Each type of campaign – online and offline – got its own tracking number. Newspaper ads had a different number than billboards or radio ads - whilst PPC ads had different numbers than those from the company’s website. The number the customer called showed which source drove the conversion.
However, fast forward to today, and we know a customer's path to purchase is much more complex than it once was. What if a customer sees your Facebook ad, then searches your business on Google, clicks a PPC ad, and then finally calls from your local Google My Business listing?
The solution is multi-channel attribution. The modern call-tracking software uses cookies and dynamic number insertion to track online activity and measure the customer's journey in more detail. Assigning a unique tracking number to each offline marketing channel is still used today, and allows business owners to see how many interactions a customer has with their business, and the different advertising sources - online or offline - they are engaging with.
This all-encompassing tracking allows businesses to work toward a better overall picture of their marketing efforts and what’s driving leads. Much better than the “how did you hear about us?” days!
Call tracking software is essential for any business that wants to see the ROI of its marketing efforts and understand how its customers are interacting with them. As you can probably tell, call-tracking software can be used for a lot more than just simply tracking phone calls.
Call tracking software helps you understand your customers better by allowing you to capture every single piece of information about them: who they are, where they came from, what they do when they get on the phone with your company, why they chose your company instead of another one (if applicable), what questions they had before calling, etc.
Offline call tracking was already mentioned. To clarify, however, offline call monitoring is for sources or channels that aren’t on the internet. This could include posters, stationery, stationery, brochures, flyers, business cards, stationary and billboards. It can also be radio ads, posters or business cards. Although offline call tracker does not provide as detailed information as dynamic call tracker, it offers many of your usual benefits. You can use it to see what other activities are driving calls. The data is then recorded in your call analytics platform. This will help you budget more effectively.
Call tracking is the process of using a unique phone number to track calls. By using call tracking, you can see which keywords, ads or marketing campaigns drive the most calls to your business.
Inbound call tracking, also known as call tracking or phone tracking, is a service that’s designed to help you understand your customers and their purchasing habits.
Call tracking can help you understand:
Call tracking will also allow us to know what kinds of things our audience likes — which means we can tailor our communications accordingly (and increase brand loyalty) by sending them offers related to their interests instead of generic “buy now” messages like most businesses do today!
Call tracking is a powerful tool that can help you track the success of your marketing campaigns, identify which ads are driving calls, track call volume and call length, track call quality metrics like abandonment rates and improve sales conversions. For example, if you have an ad that drives lots of traffic but has low click-through rates (CTRs) or many leads but few sales then you will want to re-evaluate the content or message in that ad.
The following are some examples of how call tracking can help improve your business:
There are several key features to look for when choosing the right call-tracking solution. The first is the ease of use. Call tracking software should be easy to install and operate so that you can get it up and running without needing a degree in computer science.
Next, you should consider how many different numbers your business uses on a regular basis—are there multiple phone numbers for customer service? Is there one number for customer support and another one for sales? Are any of these numbers available at all times or do they change depending on the time of day or day of the week?
Likewise, does your business operate in multiple locations with multiple employees working from home offices around the country (or maybe even around the world)? If so, make sure that the software has an option that allows you to track calls coming into these various locations as well because it may be too difficult or expensive otherwise ($$$).
Finally, if possible try out a few different solutions before deciding which one works best with your unique needs!
Many providers offer simple, basic call tracking services. To find the best call tracking provider, it is important to look at more details. Here are some questions that call tracking providers should be asking:
Call tracking works well for any industry that relies on inbound calls for sales enquiry, including automotive, healthcare, marketing agencies, home and professional services and directories.
Large enterprise businesses trying to track sales and marketing data and small businesses looking to improve their local SEO both can benefit from call tracking software. Essentially any business that is running multiple campaigns and looking to see where their traffic and leads originated from.
Call tracking is an essential tool for any business. It can help you analyse your marketing campaigns and find out which ones are working best. Call tracking software also allows you to monitor incoming calls from customers and identify opportunities for improvement. Most importantly, though, it gives you the ability to customise call routing based on certain criteria such as location or caller ID number so that each individual customer gets an optimal experience when calling your company.
