Calls can be considered “vintage” for younger marketers, however, the truth is that nowdays, calls have been getting more and more attention.
A Call Tracking tool can help you tap into those essential insights, about who your callers are and how they found you.
As marketing analytics advance so do call tracking platforms. New features are added, more data are getting tracked and simpler and more user friendly interfaces are created. As such more and more small businesses include call analytics in their reports and marketers and agencies adopt a call tracking platform as part of their marketing stack.
Let’s start with the essentials
At some point you must have come across the term “call tracking” or “call tracking tool” and you might think it is just used in call centers or maybe by some strict parents who want to make sure their children aren’t up to any mischief! While call centers do use call tracking to track the quality of calls, it is quite different from the technology used by marketers to extract in-depth information and data from the calls to derive insights from it and optimize their campaigns.
What is Call Tracking and Call Analytics?
When digital marketing first came into the picture, tracking how many clicks your marketing campaign generated, was a pretty good indication of how well these campaigns were performing. However, we soon noticed that this was not enough as after the click, visitors could fill out a form or place a call.
And since the analytics cannot portray the entire story, phone call tracking came into the picture. And now, with time, phone tracking and call tracking software businesses are growing, and the capabilities are expanding gradually.
Call Tracking is the procedure for collecting, analyzing, and reporting call analytics.
But how is this data tracked? The answer to this is- call tracking tool.
So what is call tracking tool?
Whatever data is collected from calls, it’s all possible due to call tracking tool. Using call tracking tools can help you track and record every piece of information from incoming phone calls, including audio recordings and call sources.
Call tracking tool allows marketers to extract valuable and insightful data from phone conversations to figure out precisely what is working in the campaign, which strategies help drive the phone call, and the results of that call.
For example, if you are a customer and you are calling a business that uses a call tracking tool, they will know the particular ads, web pages, keywords, and more that led you to call.
Interesting right?
Imagine how much help it’ll be for marketers to figure out what strategies work to make their campaign successful and what needs to be changed. No wonder the call tracking tool market is growing!
How does a call tracking tool actually work?
If you Google about call tracking tools, you will come across tons of different articles talking about call tracking tool for PC, call tracking tool free of cost, call tracking tools for google ads, etc.
But any idea on how these tools actually work? Here’s how.
When it comes to reliable call tracking tool, the procedure is quite simple. As a marketer or customer, you need to determine which marketing sources, websites, and call destinations you want to track, and the rest of it depends on the script used.
Next, you can grab a local or toll-free phone number with any prefix of your choice all around the globe. Then you need to set up where you want to forward your calls and whether you wish to record them. Now, when any customer calls your business, you will receive real-time insights on which ads are driving good-quality phone leads.
Call Analytics and metrics
Call Analytics is the method to collect, analyze, and report the call data that is tracked by a call tracking tool. Its value for marketers and sales teams is major since it provides very significant customer insights with regard to marketing performance that businesses can deploy to optimize the Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS) of their campaigns and drive more quality phone leads and conversions.
Call Metrics are data points gathered by your provider to assist you in better understanding the functioning of your call center.
Recently, we made an extensive list with the most common and insightful call metrics. Although, there are endless call metrics that you could track, here are the 3 that will boost your marketing insights.
1. Lead Conversion Rate
Lead Conversion Rate is the percentage of total calls that generated a positive outcome or reached a goal (e.g. sale, payment received).
2. First Call Close Rate
First call close is the number of customers who book on the first call. The first call from a customer is the most important so this metric not only help you identify your product’s/service’s success but also help you measure your agent’s performance.
3. Call Source
Call Source help you identify which campaign, keyword and channel made each caller pick up their phone and call you.
Beyond the basics, closing your Marketing Gap
Using call tracking can help handle multiple marketing issues like lead attribution, keyword research, and so much more. It helps discover unexplored business opportunities based on the information gathered from the leads and current customers.
How can call tracking enhance your marketing efforts?
Visitor-level Tracking
Using Dynamic Call Tracking, you access the visitor-level data, meaning that you get the whole picture about your visitor (e.g. the journey before, during and after a call, referring domain, source type, mediums, keywords etc.).
Leads
It’s a fact that missed calls equal missed leads, or even missed customers. Call Tracking gives all the right data that marketers need in order to identify these qualified potential leads. Empowered with this information, your sales team can slice and dice all these insights in order to approach each caller and make this conversion happen.
Although, converting a new lead is a goal for your sales team, retrieving a lost lead is more complicated. The list of missed calls along with the must-know details for your caller (caller’s number, date, source, attempts) place your business a step ahead in order to call back and take action eliminating unanswered calls in the future.
Addons
Call recording, transcriptions, Email Notifications etc. help marketers properly analyze if the engagement is coming from qualified leads. This can help in improving campaigns and focus on the factors which are actually driving conversions and gain opportunities for improving sales calls, optimizing demos, building better content marketing strategies, and so on.
Whispers, another essential Call Tracking feature, allows you to engage in a conversation that you already know what it is about. The knowledge you gain from a call whisper, prepares you for a constructive conversation with your potential client. So, you not only make your callers happier, but also save time addressing your caller’s needs.
Personalized Experience
As a marketer, your primary goal is to create the best call experience for customers so that your conversion rates go up. Call tracking and call analytics can help increase the overall revenue and the conversion rates by personalizing the call experience for customers. All the data you gather from the call tracking tool can be used to automatically filter and route the calls so that the callers are connected to the correct person or department that can offer them the necessary support.
How to merge data from clicks and calls via call tracking?
If you want to optimize your digital marketing strategies in the best way possible, capturing data for every unique customer is essential. This data can be collected in various forms.
- Information related to website visits and ad interaction.
- Data collected from calls including call length, time of the day the call was received, duration of the call, etc.
- Third-party demographic data.
- First-party data including customer records that can be obtained from the CRM of the marketer.
Once you collect all this data and merge it to build a solid profile and relate it to the phone call, you will get a good idea on which marketing campaigns are driving the highest number of calls and use all that information for optimizing your marketing strategy.
As a marketer, you are getting the opportunity to make better and informed decisions, create the ultimate customer experience, and drive more revenue. That’s a win-win situation!