Phone calls account for 92% of all consumer interactions.
That’s a lot of chances to gain conversions—and a lot of chances to lose them.
In the best-case scenario, you effectively convert the majority of your consumers, receive payment, and also gain useful customer information. In the worst case, you lose out on a lot of conversions, lose out on a fair amount of money, and have no customer information to guide your future choices. How do you maximize the value of your phone calls, then? The response? program for call monitoring.
Call tracking – what is it?
Call tracking enables the tracking of incoming phone calls to be coupled with Google Ads and other digital marketing tools across your marketing channels. Inbound calls are calls initiated by customers, whereas outbound calls are started by you and your staff.
This technology is incredibly helpful for lead generation and a useful way for businesses to learn about the demographics of their customers, such as the source of the incoming calls (for example, a specific landing page), the locations they’re calling from, the duration, the most popular call times of day, and in some PPC efforts, the keywords associated with each call.
You may more accurately analyze campaign performances for both your online and offline efforts by using call data from a call monitoring program. This will allow you to determine which campaigns are bringing in the most revenue.
The advantages of call monitoring
Conversion rates benefit greatly from phone leads. In fact, 41.2% of sales representatives believe phone calls to be the most successful sales tool they use for their marketing initiatives.
Finding out information about your callers is the main advantage of monitoring data, as we all know, but it’s what you do with that knowledge that makes call tracking genuinely useful in refining your marketing campaigns.
The proof? After we put our techniques, including call and conversion tracking, into action over a two-month period, Logix Federal Credit Union saw a 50% increase in conversion volume.
We’ve listed a number of significant KPIs for call tracking that can help you boost conversion rates below.
Find the most effective landing pages
You may determine which landing page is generating the most calls by manually allocating unique numbers to your campaigns or by adopting software that handles it for you using dynamic call tracking. The A/B testing of this is ideal.
Recognize call sources
You can usually track the sources of calls using call tracking platforms. All calls in the aforementioned instance were from paid Google and unpaid Bing. Almost all platforms will also display Direct.
The number of calls is counted.
To view the quantity of calls as well as the broad trends and patterns connected with these calls, use call tracking reports. When you have enough information, you may compare the data that best supports your objectives.
Identify high call times
You can discover which times of day and which days of the week generate the most phone calls by using call tracking reports. Making time bid modifications in Google Ads using this information is a good idea.
Select valuable keywords.
The more specific you can make call tracking, similar to how you build up Google Ad campaigns using the SKAG framework, the better. Use keyword tracking to determine which terms are generating the most valuable calls.
How to determine the best call tracking software for your needs
Here are a few crucial aspects you should look for as you choose which call monitoring solution is best for you, even though each platform has its own setup.
Ease of use
What good is call tracking software if it’s difficult to use? The deployment of call tracking shouldn’t be too difficult for your team. Software that is simple to install, use, and analyze is ideal. There are several user-friendly alternatives available with the variety of software available to make call tracking simple.
Customizability
Although call tracking software may be the all-in-one answer you want, this does not imply that it is a universal solution. Therefore, you should ensure that your software is adaptable to meet the specific needs of your business.
Scalability
Let’s assume you now have a team of 20 workers. In two, five, or 10 years, that most likely won’t be the case. Will you be able to continue using the same software you have today, or will you have to switch?
Most of the time, sticking with the same program is preferable to switching because it is more convenient. In light of this, you should determine whether the software you select can scale with your business and what the pricing looks like for your ROI.
Keyword restrictions
It’s critical to monitor conversions in Google Ads, but it’s also necessary to check which keywords each call monitoring platform associates with each call.
This may be done in Google Ads at the account level with a tracking template, just like any other UTM parameter. The precise parameter, however, will vary based on the call tracking platform.
Track calls in real time
Dynamic call tracking is the most effective method for tracking calls.
In order to track various statistics, you can do this by allocating a phone number pool of numerous numbers that changes on the landing pages based on a visitor’s IP address (source, landing page, campaign, keyword, etc.). It functions something like dynamic text replacement but only for phone digits.
Most platforms only ask you to add a small amount of Javascript code, which will automatically change the phone number on your website to the number pool, in order to setup dynamic call tracking.
Tracing specific sources
To compare your expenditures and clicks to measure efficacy and cost-per-call, specific source tracking is helpful.
By tying phone numbers to information from numerous different types of ad sources, such as campaigns or keywords, call attribution may track calls. Fortunately, conversion monitoring for phone conversations is supported by platforms like Microsoft and Facebook (Meta).
To assist advertisers in analyzing offline activity, dynamic number insertion links a different phone number to each ad source.
Integration of Google Analytics and Ads
Tracking and connecting these calls with your marketing platforms comes next after you start receiving calls.
You may accomplish this in the majority of call monitoring third-party platforms by combining Google Analytics with your preferred call tracking platform and defining goals that import to Google Ads.
You may use this information to identify the campaigns, ad groups, and even the keywords that are generating the most calls.
You can read this Google Ads page to find out how to set up call tracking.
Integrating CRM
If your aim is to use a customer relationship management (CRM) tool for sales, you should pick a call monitoring program that works well with the CRM of your choice.
Call time duration
To know which campaigns are leading to the longest and most in-depth talks, you need software with the “call length time” capability (AKA the calls that are more likely to translate into conversions).
To prevent low-quality leads from being counted as conversions in Google Ads, you can modify settings in the majority of call monitoring services to the call duration time that would be considered to be a qualified lead.
If the software provides this feature, you may, for instance, set up a trigger to only count conversions for calls that last longer than five minutes. This will assist in removing these low-quality calls and provide you with a more precise and understandable view of the data.
Length of call recordings
One of the most useful training tools you have at your disposal is call recording.
The majority of third-party platforms let you record your calls, which can help you figure out where your customer care team excels and where they struggle, as well as gauge the caliber of calls. It can be simple to identify trends and generate feedback for your team using call recording.
Call analytics in real time
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you were fully prepared for every conversation with a potential client?
You can provide customised customer experiences while you’re on the phone with them thanks to real-time call statistics. This functionality is essential given that 85% of users say they are dissatisfied with their phone experience.
Conversational wisdom
Use conversation intelligence-based software if you want to maximize the effectiveness of your call tracking. You can easily use these conversation analytics to support your team because the technology makes transcriptions of your calls, uses AI to evaluate them, and then provides insights.
5 recommendations for call tracking
Use the best call tracking techniques listed below after setting up your preferred platform to strengthen your marketing plan even more.
1.Examine your calls.
A call tracking number could occasionally be entered incorrectly or fail to reach the intended phone number. Call these numbers to be sure your call will be answered and avoid making this mistake.
2.Regularly pay attention to your calls
Regularly listening to your calls is a good idea if you want to increase account performance. These calls might give you information about what is and isn’t working.
3.Verify that your clients are returning your calls.
Make sure your clients return your sales calls if you’re working with them.
The people who answer the phone play a critical role in customer journeys. Make sure your client is utilizing these calls for quality assurance by paying attention to them.
4.Make use of call flows and call routing
You can save time by using interactive voice response (IVR) menus to communicate with callers via voice or keypresses because they handle automated call routing. In contrast to small firms, call centers or sizable marketing teams would benefit most from this phone system.
Give the employee with the greatest closing rate the first opportunity to close if your sales team has representatives who are more adept at closing particular kinds of leads.
5.Assign particular PPC phone numbers to particular campaigns
You can test whether you can generate calls before the visitor reaches your landing page by allocating customized PPC phone numbers to particular campaigns.
