Why Use Call Tracking? Here Are 7 Vital Reasons.

Call tracking allows businesses to track and analyze inbound calls to understand how customers are finding their business. It helps companies make data-driven decisions about their marketing and sales efforts.

Introduction

Call tracking is one of the best methods used to track marketing activities, that are meant to drive calls to a business. Generally, this is achieved by pairing a phone tracking number, with the source of the calls like tracking Google Ads, Offline ads, Newsletters, and Facebook Ads amongst others. 

The numbers will then forward the call to the business, with no major change to the process, which allows businesses to record these calls or play whispers to call center agents before they answer the call.

Call analytics is used to collect, report and analyze data complied from the calls tracked using call tracking software. The data offers marketers valuable information and sales teams can use that data to improve their reconversions from inbound calls. 

Generally, the data is looked at as insight into their target audience’s decision-making process. The information when used correctly can optimize the business’s Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) from their campaigns which then means they drive more high-quality phone leads.

As you may have already understood the major reason to use call tracking is to track marketing performance across a multitude of advertising and marketing channels. But what is call tracking? Call tracking software makes gathering the data and managing calls regardless of how many a business may have to field easier. 

If anything knowing what inspires callers to reach out to a business can help improve the ROI of any advertising campaign.

Below we’ll dive into 7 important reasons to track calls or use a call tracking solution more specifically.

Reason #1 – Enhance Return On Investment (ROI)

Call Tracking software is an excellent attribution tool that’s already used by many businesses and their marketing departments to track the effectiveness of their ad campaigns, keywords, and offline marketing efforts. 

Having a clear idea of how everything works, allows marketers to focus on efforts that provide the most results in the way of conversions which helps boost ROI. It is a major game-changer for any business depending on how it is used. By and large, it translates to enhanced budget management, improved campaign reach, and a lower cost per acquisition.

Marketers or digital marketers running a Google Ads campaign for their clients can use a call tracking provider to identify leads and sales brought in for every keyword being targeted. So, calls to the business can be traced back to the keywords from where the lead originated, or where the user clicked before they entered the client’s website. 

In addition, this type of campaign setup helps provide insight into ad groups, campaigns, affinity groups, landing pages, etc. The approach allows marketers to reallocate their budget to the keywords which inspire customers to click and do away with ones that aren’t receiving as much attention or ones that are too expensive based on the results they are producing.

Reason #2 – Understanding The Customer’s Journey

One of the most important aspects of running online marketing and advertising campaigns is gaining insight into the customer’s journey. Call tracking software makes understanding how the customers are moving through the sales funnel easier. It also makes it possible to close the gap between customers online and those that approach them (businesses) offline.

Unfortunately, many businesses understand only part of their customer’s journey, which means that it’s not possible for them to maximize their online efforts. Many times it also means that marketers will make wrong decisions because of inaccurate or partial data.

Marketers are in general strongly advised to focus their efforts on the online journey, and how it impacts phone calls to the business. In other words, how a customer went from seeing something online to finally calling the business’s phone numbers and buying. Getting an omnichannel view of the ongoing marketing campaign is the first step prior to optimizing the ongoing strategy.

Many of the latest call tracking software easily integrates with CRM tools, which makes it easier to capture, store and finally analyze all the information relating to their customers’ journey. All of the information can then become part of the business’s marketing strategy as a whole.

Reason #3 – Improve The Customer’s Experience

Another reason why tracking calls is important is because it helps to improve the customer’s experience. If anything the ‘customer experience’ matters a great deal and every little bit that can be done to improve it is important. 

Fortunately, call tracking can do a great deal of good mainly by meeting customers’ expectations and promoting seamless interactions through the sales journey, which helps turn incoming calls ongoing for long-term customers.

For starters, it helps find your target audience via demographic insights. Once you are aware of it, you can then use A/B testing to determine what resonates with customers the most, and then adjust that to your marketing activity. In other words, speaking their language. 

The other advantage is to follow the customer through the sales funnel, it helps you map the path the customer took before they called your business and then tailor the conversation accordingly, with a personalized experience. Generally, this approach will also use call recording features to help agents improve their interaction with prospective customers.

By integrating call tracking with any existing CRM tool or maybe a marketing automation system, a sales team can get instant information about who the caller is, their location, and if they called the business before or visited its website. All of this allows the person working for you to customize the interaction.

Reason #4 – Help Prove Your Value To Customers or Clients

The number 1 priority of any business or marketer is to prove that they are of value to the client or their product offers value to the buyer. Marketers understand this more than anyone else because they need to create that value for their service to be considered worth whatever they are charging. However, it can be challenging to do this without using call tracking services.

You can track phone calls to prove that your efforts are having an impact, which quantifies the contributions made towards clients’ businesses. In other words, you get credit for all your hard work, and keep everyone happy.

Here is how we’d explain this with a real-world example. Let’s say you have been tasked with running a Google Ads campaign for a brand selling golf clubs online. A prospect clicks on the ad and that takes them to your client’s online store. Some of them may see that they have found what they want click “add to cart” and finally make a purchase. 

Though others may have questions and want to speak with a sales representative before moving forward. They will close the browser and maybe call the next day. In this instance, Google Analytics will record this as a bounced user, while in reality they are a qualified lead and may possibly proceed with their purchase over the phone.

As you can see, if you didn’t have call tracking software in place, the signals you are getting for a campaign aren’t being recorded in their entirety. Call tracking solutions will show you and prove to the business that your ads are having an impact on sales, either via their online store or over the phone. Furthermore, you know what platforms are doing better in terms of driving quality leads than others so you can tailor your online marketing efforts accordingly.

Reason #5 – No More Unanswered Calls With A Call Tracking Software

Now most people that try to reach a customer service person or maybe a business owner over the phone want to get answers to their questions right away. 

However, it can be immensely disappointing if they are put on hold indefinitely or if they are unable to connect because of busy phone lines. If such a thing does happen, there are a few things you can do like calling the customer back. If you don’t call them back, you run the risk of them going to a competitor.

As a business owner, you already know that losing a prospect isn’t exactly an option and so a situation like this should be avoided. Fortunately call tracking software can be instrumental in making it possible. Mainly this can be done via a real-time notification, for every call that was missed so that action can be taken to follow up right away. 

Also call analytics reports will showcase peak hours and peak days for a business, which enables them to work accordingly, ensuring that incoming calls aren’t left unattended. Phone conversations can also be recorded for quality assurance purposes.

Reason #6 – Determine The Money Keywords for Your Marketing Campaigns

One of the biggest reasons to use call tracking software is to enhance the efforts of your paid campaign. We already mentioned earlier that it shows you what is working and what isn’t so that the budget and other aspects of the campaign can be further optimized.

Some call tracking software enables a business to determine which keywords are driving the most calls to their phone lines. The tracking works by assigning a unique phone number from a pool of numbers to every individual visitor, which allows for the software to record who is calling you and how they were able to find you online. 

Once the visitor is done browsing the website the phone number or unique call tracking number assigned to them is freed up for the next visitor. This allows businesses and marketers to effectively track PPC visitors right down to the keywords that triggered that call.

If the visitor decides to call, that data in Google analytics and ads enables you to track the conversations. This can be paired with other data from Analytics and Ads, to get a better understanding of which keywords give you an edge.

Reason #7 – Real-Time Data By Tracking Phone Calls

Many of the latest call tracking platforms allow businesses to see calls in real-time, which takes reporting to a whole new level. That means as soon as your phone rings, you can see what drove that call, in addition to information about the caller like their previous calls to the company (if any), web activity on your website, previous email correspondence, detailed caller ID info, and recordings of previous calls.

Furthermore, many of the latest software makes it easier to quickly sort and analyze the reports based on various metrics making it easier to make sense of the data. The data can be easily shared as a PDF or exported as a CSV file.

Generally speaking, it is a marketing agency or the business’s marketing department that will sift through the data before making important decisions like budgeting, which keywords to target, and more important which shouldn’t be targeted.

Final Word and Bonus Reason

In the entirety of this article we’ve primarily focused on inbound call tracking, which is great, but so is outbound call tracking. The feature allows businesses to use one of the tracking numbers to call customers, record outbound calls, and track the number of calls. 

Outbound call tracking, allows businesses to see which teams are following up on leads or dropped calls and how quickly it’s being done. After all the faster the better!

Phone calls are a major part of the customer’s journey and a key part of finding new customers. Make sure that you track outbound calls if you’re in any one of the following industries:

  • Digital marketing
  • Legal
  • Healthcare
  • Automotive
  • Multi-location businesses
  • Education
  • Real estate

Call tracking allows businesses to truly understand who their customers are by observing their behavior through each key part of the sales funnel right down to conversions. However, it also helps track repeat business with retargeting campaigns. 

Whether you are a small business owner or if it’s a large corporation, call tracking helps you dig deeper and that improves the odds of your business successfully generating and converting leads at the lowest possible price.

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