Most Online Marketing initiatives include some sort of Web analytics. However, many people overlook the critical measurement of the telephone calls received as a result of these efforts.
Webolutions’ call tracking solution allows businesses to add a new dimension to their online and offline campaign ROI measurement. Some of this service’s features include:
- Unique campaign-by-campaign call tracking numbers
- Dynamic population of tracking numbers throughout your Website, based on the originating campaign
- Call recording for the monitoring of call conversion quality
- The ability to measure organic vs. paid ad results
- The ability to segment results on a search engine-by-search engine basis
- The ability to track, measure and evaluate call volume and quality by time of day
- Detailed reporting of calls, repeat callers, hang-ups and dollars generated
- Tracking of repeat visitor inquiries and tracking
- Access to local and national 800 numbers
The basics of effective ROI measurement are the ability to measure the ratio of cost to the conversions resulting from any given marketing initiative. For instance, if I spend 10 hours per week or $2000 per month with an SEO company to increase my placement in the organic search results on Google, I should be able to measure this spend’s specific ROI through the precise measurement of the dollars in sales generated by this specific effort.
As simple as this sounds, most businesses have not yet reached this level of sophistication. Some examples of misinformation that we see businesses tracking includes:
- Their positions on the search engines (for relevant and irrelevant keywords)
- Their overall number of Website visitors (which tells you nothing about conversions)
- Their total number of site conversions (not on a campaign-by-campaign basis)
- Their number of phone calls, as an aggregate, from the Website (sometimes by asking callers about how they found them which is not accurate at all. Sometimes by using a single unique number at their Website, which is also not very accurate)
The bottom line is that if you are spending a reasonable amount of money to have and promote your online presence, you should have accurate ROI tracking to show you which activities are worth the allocation of resources and which are not.
Case Study
We have a client who provides plumbing services. On a month-by-month basis we had been tracking the conversion rate of their Website and the ROI of their different campaigns through the use of our advanced analytics solution. We were looking at the number of site visitors, on a campaign-by-campaign basis, who completed the form at their Website to request a service call.
As you might imagine, the ROI cost per lead was coming in very high. This is because, for this type of home service business, far more people will call the company on the phone instead of filling out an email form to request service.
After implementing call tracking, we determined that the number of phone calls actually represents a 6 to 1 ratio to the number of Website forms being completed. So, the cost per conversion was really six times less than previously known.
As well, within just two weeks of the call tracking implementation, we were able to determine that some of their other advertising campaigns were not generating nearly the call volume as previously believed. By canceling these unproductive marketing programs, the company was able to reallocate these resources to more productive avenues.
Action Items
- Make sure you have a complete analytics solution that can provide you with the information you need to be successful
- If you are not reviewing your Website analytics on at least a monthly basis, make this a priority and schedule this on your calendar
- Determine what information you need to track and make sure it is truly actionable
If you would like to find out more about our call tracking solutions or implement call tracking at your Website to more accurately measure your ROI on a campaign-by-campaign basis, contact Webolutions at 1-800-657-6055.
Please feel free to submit your comments, experiences or input to this blog post below.
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