Why call tracking is important for business growth

Call tracking for business growth

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Call Tracking, as it's meant to be!

Easy-to-use Call Tracking for Marketers

Phone calls are dying! 

The rallying cry of every modern marketer who has just begun dipping their toes into the wonderful world of lead generation. Call tracking for business growth begs to differ.

Things have changed a lot with the advent of the internet and social media, there is no denying that. However, what has remained the same is people’s desire to speak to real humans and listen to their advice first-hand.

No, phone calls are not dead. 

The game simply became much different. Customers still call businesses, but businesses now can turn those calls into valuable data and insights they can use to optimize their marketing and sales.

If you want to grow your business, you can’t ignore phone calls and the wealth of data they carry. It’s a source of leads that many look away from because they think it’s a thing of the past or that you can’t track and monitor it effectively. 

They couldn’t be more wrong and now with call tracking at your side, you can take advantage of this lucrative source of leads and data and leave your competition behind. Here are all the reasons why call tracking should be your next addition to your tool shed.

Fun fact: In its early days, many thought call tracking was for spying on spouses’ phones! If that’s you, couple’s therapy might help, but for full marketing attribution, call tracking is the way to go.

Call Tracking in a nutshell

An image showing how call tracking works

Call tracking is a pretty niche, but valuable, technology. Let’s see the basics first.

In essence, call tracking is a tool that lets businesses monitor and analyze phone calls from customers or leads and helps them understand which marketing campaigns, ads, channels, keywords, etc, drive the most calls.

You can use it by generating unique phone numbers that you assign to your campaigns and marketing material. When someone calls these tracking numbers, they get rerouted to your main business line and the platform tracks data.

Call Tracking Key Features

Source attribution: See which marketing source led to the call. For example, if the customer sees a Google ad or finds your tracking number from a landing page, you will know it.

Dynamic Number Insertion: DNI assigns a unique phone number to each visitor based on their online activity (such as which ad or keyword they clicked on), allowing for precise tracking.

Call analytics: The data we mentioned above. Call duration, caller location, call outcome, etc. There are dozens more. Nimbata tracks more than 50 data points.

Recording & monitoring: Most, if not all, call tracking platforms allow for call recording and analysis, to improve customer service or sales processes.

Is it worth the investment?

Do you like leads? Do you want to increase your marketing ROI and grow your revenue?

I will go ahead and assume you answered yes to both questions. If you haven’t, then maybe these statistics will change your mind.

Only 39% of businesses attribute all of their marketing activities

88% of searches for local businesses will lead to a call within 24 hours

Inbound phone calls are 10-15 times more likely to convert

As you can see, those who use call tracking see a great return on their investment. Not to mention, that most businesses don’t even bother with it, which means that utilizing call tracking for your business, will put you a few steps ahead of your competitors.

Whether you are handling a significant or smaller amount of phone calls, call tracking offers valuable insights that can drive better marketing decisions, improve ROI, and enhance customer service. It’s a flexible tool with many options out there, that offer advanced features with affordable plans. Nimbata has even pioneered in this sector, by not only having budget-friendly plans but also charging only for answered phone calls.

So yeah, it’s pretty safe to say that call tracking is more than worth it!

13+1 Reasons why call tracking is essential for your business

Data & analytics

1) Comprehensive customer insights

Understanding your customers’ behavior can be a challenge. You receive data from fragmented sources and combining them to create a full picture, is not as easy as it sounds. It takes time you probably don’t have and needs an analytical mind that most of us don’t possess.

Call tracking for business growth can gather all these fragments like they are Infinity Stones, but instead of making half the universe disappear, they instead create something new. A comprehensive view of your targetted audience. They achieve this by using data like call times, frequency, marketing source that led to the call, etc.

How is this useful? Your business revolves around customers. By really understanding them, you can optimize all aspects of your business to attract them. Customer service, product design, sales, marketing.

2) Track ROI across all your campaigns

Have you ever tried to determine ROI from phone calls? Kinda hard, right? I mean, how do you track an offline source? It’s offline! That creates a gap in your data picture, that might be sucking in your budget for minimal returns or it might mean that you are leaving a source of leads underdeveloped. And you wouldn’t have an idea.

With call tracking for business growth, you can link phone calls to specific marketing efforts, such as paid ads, organic search, landing pages, emails, or even offline actions and materials, like billboards and brochures. That data gap I mentioned above? Sealed! Now, you know what led every call to your phone line and adjust your budget and marketing efforts accordingly.

For example, imagine having a law firm that runs multiple Google Ads campaigns. You don’t know which keywords drive phone calls, but call tracking reveals that 35% of your total leads come from one specific keyword, allowing you to reallocate your budget toward it and increase call volume.

Since we mentioned Google Ads, check out about Local Service Ads & how to grow with them

A Google Local Services Ad

3) Geo-targeting analytics

If your business operates on a level above local, like national, or international for example, finding out the geographic location of your leads, can be hard. It sounds easy, look at the calling codes, right? Yeah, if you don’t mind countless Excel sheets and plenty of manual work.

Call tracking for business growth collects geolocation data, showing you where all your leads came from. This way, you can plan your marketing campaigns accordingly, switching focus between different locations.

Imagine you have an HVAC business that is operating on a national level. You only have a surface level of understanding of where most of your calls come from, based on experience and your gut. Using call tracking you discover the exact regions that bring in 60% of your leads in the summer season, so you adjust your marketing to focus on them and bring in even more leads.

Marketing attribution & optimization

4) Accurate marketing attribution

Attributing conversions from online sources is fairly simple. You just take a look at what the analytics say and you have all the data you need. Offline sources though, are not that easy. Phone-based leads and conversions go unaccounted for and you end up with a nice big hole in your data and reporting.

This is call tracking’s biggest benefit, in my humble opinion. Its ability to connect phone calls to specific channels. If an ad resulted in a call, you will know it. If it was an email, a page, or a blog post, you will also know it. No more holes in your data.

Let’s see it in action. A fitness studio runs both paid search and social media ads but sees more conversions from phone calls than form submissions. Call tracking shows that 50% of phone leads are from Google Ads, helping them focus on PPC, resulting in a 20% increase in leads

5) Uncover the full customer journey

The path a customer follows to end up in your brand is not a simple one. They interact with your business across multiple touchpoints. Tracking and understanding that journey is not easy, especially when phone calls are included.

Call tracking allows you to follow this multi-step journey with ease. Every phone call will be attributed, enabling you to see the course the customer took before purchasing from you. They read a blog post, then clicked on the link to your landing page, and then placed a call. Great! Tracking the first two steps was easy because they were online, but now with call tracking, you also know what was the last one they took before picking up the phone.

New lead data

6) Optimize your marketing & boost ROI

How do you know if a marketing campaign is effective, if you don’t know how many calls each one brought to your business? That’s right, you don’t. Therefore, every action you take, increasing or decreasing the budget, targeting different keywords, etc, will be taken in the dark. And you still won’t know if it was a right or wrong one and you might end up wasting your budget and tearing down your ROI.

Data-based optimization is the name of the game. With call tracking, you will know the exact amount of calls each marketing campaign generated for your business. This will allow you to optimize underperforming campaigns or reallocate your budget.

For example, a dental clinic finds that its billboard ads generate fewer calls than its Google Ads campaign. Thus, they adjust their budget accordingly and end up with more online leads and less money wasted on an underperforming channel.

An optimized Google My Business Profile is crucial for lead generation. Learn how to Drive traffic to your GBP: optimize your Google Business Profile for quality leads

Calls from a Google Business Profile

Lead management

7) Multiply your leads

High-intent leads. That’s what every business is chasing after. They are easier to convert and more often than not, spend more money than the average customer. Ideally, you would know which campaigns bring those leads to your door or website, but as mentioned multiple times already, you can’t track the source of phone leads.

Or at least, you couldn’t before call tracking for business growth. Phone calls indicate a higher degree of intent since they mostly represent more serious buyers or inquiries. Call tracking will reveal to you which marketing campaigns bring in high-intent leads and allow you to optimize them accordingly.

Here is an example. A real estate agency finds that 45% of all high-value property inquiries come through calls driven by email campaigns. They focus more resources on email marketing, leading to a further increase in qualified leads.

8) Qualify leads & focus on the best ones

How many leads come your way on a weekly, or even daily basis? Multiple I wager. And how many of them convert into paying customers? Depressingly few, you will probably answer. That makes you chase after all of them, spreading your resources thin, exhausting yourself and your team, and ending up with a frustrating conversion rate. You need to qualify your leads, separate the quality from the bad ones, and focus on the first.

Call tracking for business growth allows you to assess the quality of your leads. Nimbata lets you create automations that work in a simple “if X, then do X” format. You combine filters and criteria with actions like tagging or sending a lead to your CRM and practically automate the whole lead qualification process.

You can use the word and phrase spotting feature for example. When a customer uses keywords or expressions that indicate high intent, then you can ask Nimbata to tag the call as a “high-quality lead”. You can also add more criteria, like the duration of the call, the source of the call, etc.

Would you like to know more about lead qualification? Here are 30 Qualifying Questions to Mark a Lead Quotable

Example of lead qualification questions

9) Simplify lead management

Losing leads is much easier than generating them. Routing a potential customer to the wrong department or team can be frustrating for both sides and end up in lost opportunities.

With intelligent call flows and automations, you can ensure that all calls are handled by the right person and that leads are picked up by the appropriate team. Proper tagging, notes, and categorization, can reduce friction between teams and reduce frustration for the customer. Effective lead management means happy customers, which means more conversions and revenue.

Customer experience

10) Create a personalized customer experience

People like talking to real people who treat them as individuals with specific needs. You probably have experienced the frustrating moment of calling a business, only to be treated to an anger-inducing script that the agent follows to a T. No, customers want and appreciate personalized customer service that caters to them.

Sentiment analysis, intelligent call flows, data from analytics, and automations will allow you to create these personalized experiences that customers long for. Even simple things, like remembering where you left off a past conversation will be highly appreciated. Not to mention, you can see what led the customer to place a call, even before picking up the phone with call whispers, and thus make them specific offers.

An example. A travel office runs ads for a new cruise package in the Aegean Sea. A customer calls. The whisper informs the agent that the customer called from a number that was placed on these ads. Now the agent knows what the customer is looking for, even before they speak a word, and can tailor their conversation accordingly.

Call flows can be a game changer in customer service: Call Routing: The definitive guide for 2024

Example of a Nimbata Intelligent Call Flow

11) Improve response times

“An agent will be with you, shortly, please hold”. Did I cause a nerve to pop? Yeah, long waiting times are a nuisance for us all. I hope bank CEOS are reading this article. Include inefficient call routing and endless recorded messages and you have a perfect mix for a disappointing customer service process. Seriously, bankers, keep reading.

Nimbata offers a very easy-to-use click-n-play builder, with which you can design call flows that will guide the customer to the appropriate department and agent. You can also insert automated messages, and keypad options and optimize your customer service department according to average call volumes. No more delays, minimal frustrations, and increased conversions.

Team performance

12) Record calls for quality control

Customers don’t want only personalized customer service. They also want good customer service. No matter if they pay a lot or make minimal purchases, they all expect top-notch interactions with your business. And since you can’t be hovering above every agent’s shoulder while they are on a call, tracking their performance might be a bit challenging.

Call tracking for business growth solves this problem with call recordings and transcriptions. This way you can monitor and review interactions, spot problems and issues, offer training to your team members who need it, or make adjustments to your approach. Call summaries and sentiment analysis can bring common problems to the surface and prepare your team to deal with them, quickly and easily.

Do you want to know which call tracking tool is the best for you? 10 Best Call Tracking Software – Pros, Cons, and Pricing

Why call tracking is important for business growth Best Call Tracking Software 1024x576 1

13) Measure the effectiveness of your teams

You can’t measure the performance of your teams, especially your sales teams, only by reading the transcriptions or listening to the recordings. Sales reps are known for using their personality traits to approach leads from different angles and going off script often. It’s much more preferable to track the success rates of their calls to evaluate their performance.

Data like call duration, conversion rates, call volumes and many more can provide a more complete picture of the performance of your staff. You can identify top performers or those who need more training and help and increase the effectiveness of your team.

14) AI-powered insights & automation

Do you enjoy manually transferring data from one tool to another? Categorizing leads on an Excel sheet sounds fascinating? Scoring them after reading multipage transcriptions seems like a dream right? No? Well, good. You are a normal human being and business owner. No one wants to deal with all that, but it’s necessary, unfortunately.

Well, maybe not quite. You see, call tracking for business growth tools employ AI-powered features and integrations that can automate most, if not all of these boring and time-consuming tasks. Route calls, qualify, tag, and categorize leads, send data, and update profiles to other tools and CRMS and many more. Liberate your teams and yourself from the clutches of mundane routine tasks and focus on strategic work that will increase your leads and drive growth for your business.

Nimbata Automation and AI features

Takeaway

To sum up, call tracking for businesses can be a crucial tool for growth.

Phone calls are not dead, as many false prophets declare. They have evolved. The rise of digital marketing has made call tracking essential for turning phone calls into valuable data. With it, you can accurately attribute calls to marketing efforts, optimize campaigns, and generate high-quality leads.

By leveraging call tracking, you gain insights that improve ROI, enhance customer service, and drive smarter decisions. You can’t afford to ignore phone calls, or you risk missing valuable leads and losing ground to your competition.

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