Digital marketing gives you access to a treasure trove of data. Compared to offline marketing channels, it provides you with great clarity in understanding the success of your campaigns and traction of your messaging.
Yet, for many businesses, there is still a missing piece. A piece that can hugely affect your understanding of where your leads are coming from, and where you should be placing your marketing budget is inbound calls.
The Missing Piece
Digital might be our focus, but phone calls are still very much part of the picture. According to one survey, they lag behind only email as your customers’ preferred communication channel. Providing both methods of contact ensures you don’t deter potential leads, from people with different communication styles and preferences.
Phone calls are often disconnected from your tracking and analytics, but they don’t have to be. Making sure they are joined up, gives you a more complete and true reflection of your marketing and lead generation performance. This in turn arms you with the data needed to make important decisions on your website, and marketing spend.
Join us for a deep dive into the basics, benefits, and tools of call tracking to improve your digital strategy.
Just The Basics on Website Call Tracking
The concept is actually pretty simple. You create unique, dynamic or static phone numbers to be used in different sections on your website, landing pages or even offline marketing materials. Then using the right software, you track the calls that come in using those numbers.
Think about it in the way of an example:
- A software company runs print adverts, email campaigns, and social media ads.
- The ads direct users for each of these channels to a unique landing page to track performance.
- Each landing page features a unique phone number to track calls.
- The software company also places unique, dynamic phone numbers throughout its website.
Through those dynamic phone numbers, the software company can track not just which of their channels generated the most leads, but also which generated more phone calls and interested customers. Or on the inverse, which generated the wrong kind of calls.
For example if they are trying to generate new business, but the campaigns are receiving calls from existing customers looking for support, it may mean the software company needs to signpost their support number more clearly. This in turn may improve their customer retention.
Why You Should Track Phone Calls on Your Website
Now we have already touched on the basic benefits of call tracking, let’s dig a little more into the details.
Through call tracking, you can monitor exactly which of your marketing channels (both digital and offline) are generating interest beyond online landing pages or website-generated leads. You can test which of your SEO-optimised web pages generate the most calls, which of your digital campaigns generate that same interest, and which messaging works the best.
But that’s not all. Using the right tools (more on those below), you’ll be able to gain insight from the phone calls themselves as well, allowing you to better understand your audience.
8 Metrics You Can Track Related to Inbound Calls
That versatility of both analysing your campaigns and improving your inbound sales call quality is reflected in the types of metrics you can track when you use the right tools. Just a few of them include:
- The source, web page, or keyword that led to the call.
- Date and time of your average call to better understand ‘hot’ times.
- The caller’s contact information to generate a new lead.
- Whether the call was answered or went to voicemail.
- How long the caller had to wait until they received the help they needed.
- The topic of the call (sales or customer service?).
- The caller’s lead quality or purchase intent.
- The result of the call, as long as it happened within the call itself.
These metrics in conjunction with your other analytics, provide you with a comprehensive overview of your marketing (both digital and traditional) as well as your website performance, providing insight for continued improvements.
6 Tools to Help You Track Your Calls and Improve Your Marketing
So far, so clear. Of course, the nuances and benefits of call tracking are only theoretical. You need the right tools to actually make it happen.
If you just Google it, you’ll find countless vendors all looking to sell you their services. Fortunately, you don’t have to start from scratch. Instead, we’ve pre-vetted these 6 tools as quality options to track your calls and improve your marketing.
1) Infinity
Infinity calls itself the ‘premier call intelligence services. When you dig into its features, you’ll understand why.
Operating across sectors from Automotive to Utilities, the tool’s solutions range from basic call tracking to in-depth conversation analytics providing insights into keywords used during a conversation and training solutions. Prices start at £49 per month.
2) Response Tap
Now part of Infinity, this tool shines through its simplicity. Instead of the comprehensive solution above, it’s a relatively simple tool that can integrate into the solutions you’re already using.
You get the metrics, and you get the dynamic phone numbers that make call tracking possible in the first place. You also get some valuable insights and predictive analytics into what agents might want to talk about based on the caller’s history. Pricing is custom per client.
3) MediaHawk
MediaHawk prides itself on its integrations. It feeds directly into Google Analytics and many common CRMs, making it easy to use as part of your holistic lead tracking and analytics strategy.
The result is what the company calls “100% marketing attribution.” Being able to track a call all the way to revenue certainly helps. Pricing starts at £49 per month, though the above-mentioned integrations are only available at the £125/month price tag.
4) CallTrackingMetrics
Much like Infinity, this tool goes beyond basic metrics. It offers full-lead-service integration including texting and online forms, plus the ability to automate calls.
The result, as the vendor claims, is a full-service solution that eliminates the many channels you would otherwise need for analytics. Pricing starts low, at $39 per month for the basic Business Plan.
5) CallRail
CallRail’s calling card is flexibility and scalability.
For small businesses, the basic solution ($45 per month) helps you tie your calls to individual campaigns and landing pages. At the most comprehensive level ($145 per month), you also get a full-channel lead analysis suite that seamlessly integrates with platforms like WordPress, Salesforce, Facebook and Google Ads, HubSpot, and more.
6) What Converts
What Converts run with a PPC focus, to help you identify campaigns, landing pages and keywords that deliver the best calls.
They provide a demo and 14 day free trial, with plans starting from as little as $30 a month, and their most comprehensive solution priced at $160 a month..
They have US and UK contact numbers for those looking to learn more.
Are You Ready to Implement Call Tracking on Your Website?
Using one of the above mentioned tools, you can easily implement your own call tracking solution and finally gain full visibility over your marketing results and lead generation.
However, you may still find it difficult to naturally integrate the solution into your overall website, or marketing plan.
We can help with the first. As a dedicated WordPress agency, we’ve worked with plenty of businesses looking to integrate call tracking into their website.
If you don’t know where to start, talk to us. Speak to a member of our team at 020 3355 8747. Let’s work together to close the loop on your marketing analytics.
If you’d like to learn more about our WordPress & WooCommerce Support & Maintenance plans, drop us an email or give James a call.
Our plans provide a holistic solution to your website’s performance, reliability and security, and are inclusive of premium tools and services.
