How to Improve Your Return on Investment Using Call Tracking?
All marketers and business owners know that the most important metrics for any business is “return on investment” (ROI). They also know that calculating ROI is very difficult, especially with digital advertising. Or at least, it was until call tracking was invented. 😉
Call tracking can help you measure the return on investment of your ads as well as streamline and improve your marketing efforts.
But before we dive deep into how call tracking does that, we need to establish what exactly is call tracking.
What is call tracking?
When you talk to a sales or a customer care person in some business and they ask you “How did you hear about us?” – that’s basically call tracking.
Call tracking is the process of measuring the impact and effectiveness of marketing efforts (usually online) trough offline conversions (phone calls).
Today, most businesses rely on emails, chats, and social media to get inquiries from potential customers. Measuring conversions that come from these channels is easy. However, some businesses still rely on phone calls to close deals. Measuring conversions that come from phone calls is a bit difficult. I’m sure we can all agree that simply asking all potential customers “How did you hear about us?” isn’t effective – and that’s before you take into account the sheer number of phone calls some businesses get every day, as someone would have to write down all the phone numbers and the channels they came from.
That’s why call tracking is so good – it automates the entire process, and you know from which online source the call came from, down to each visitor.
How do you optimize your call channels?
To get the maximum benefits of call tracking, you need to optimize all your call channels so that they collect data properly.
First, you need to make sure your business listings are consistent – all of them should have your name, address, and phone number. You have to this consistently at all levels, starting from Google My Business, Yelp, and all the way to other websites that potential customers are able to see. Of course, you need to make sure that the phone number listed is a tracking phone number that forwards to your main phone number. A call tracking tool like INVOX can do that.
Other than your digital marketing channels, you need to make sure that your offline marketing channels are still tracked. We’re talking about TV and radio ads, billboards, newspaper ads, signage, and company vehicles all of which can bring in a significant number of leads. Identifying which of these channels has the largest impact tells you which one is the most effective and helps you maximize your ROI.
How do you calculate ROI with call tracking?
If you accurately attribute each lead back to the campaign that was responsible for generating that lead, you can precisely estimate how much revenue each campaign generates.
This will help you calculate real ROI. By having a complete view of all the leads your marketing efforts have generated – this includes online and offline efforts – you’ll be able to identify which of your channels are most profitable and which of your channels should be discontinued.
Calculating the ROI of your marketing efforts can be done even more easily if you integrate your call tracking software with your CRM platform. And if inbound phone calls are an important part of your sales journey, then it’s imperative that you do integrate your call tracking and CRM platforms.
How does calculating ROI help my marketing efforts?
Whether you are a marketing agency or you have an in-house marketing department or you even do marketing on your own, calculating the true ROI can help you determine which campaigns are successful and which are not. By tracking your calls, you can be sure that there are no missing data from potential customers that managed to bypass your website tracker and called directly.
All of this data can then be used to adjust your marketing campaigns based on the one true performance indicator – lead generation. If people aren’t picking up the phone and you’re sure they saw your Facebook ad, you need to adjust the ads to make sure people do ring your phone. Also, if you see that people are calling you because of a Google ad you did, make sure you continue with the ad, as it’s most likely going to generate even more leads and potential business.
Conclusion
A call tracking platform helps you track and manage inbound calls to your business more effectively. With insights that can’t be found anywhere else, like your caller’s behavior and demographics, you’ll be able to make smarter, data-driven decisions that will optimize your marketing campaigns.
Each call that goes through a call tracking platform has all the information about your potential customers and the general target audience. Call tracking platforms can be integrated with other marketing, business, and analytics solutions like Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, various CRMs and ERPs which allows you to have access to the most advanced metrics that will help you control your ad bids and spend and at the same time empower your PPC decisions while improving the overall customer experience.
About INVOX
INVOX is a call tracking software that gathers valuable behavioral and demographic phone call data that helps you make better data-driven decisions about your marketing efforts, no matter the marketing channel the calls are coming from.