If you’ve decided to optimize call marketing to promote your products, congratulations — you’ve taken the first step toward a time-proven methodology that can provide excellent ROI.
Next, you’ll want to invest in the call tracking software that can generate copious information on where your calls are coming from and how they’re being managed, going beyond Google Analytics to evaluate offline activity as well. The more data you have in that regard, the better you can form sales and marketing strategies that will make the most of your resources.
“Call tracking allows you to fill in the gaps of your lead generation,” explains Zoe-Lee Skelton on SearchEngineJournal.com. “Most businesses’ goal conversion rate is generated by Google Analytics, and this isn’t a fair comparison if conversions are coming from telephone inquiries. If you know where exactly conversions originated, you can accurately measure your ROI — and ultimately this is going to help streamline your budget.”
To help you choose from call marketing tools on the market, consider seeking the following attributes, advises marketing exec Julia Holovko on Business2Community.com:
- Capacity for using a virtual private branch exchange (PBX) phone system. Such systems let you keep your existing phone number(s) and infrastructure, connecting your internal phone lines to one leased external line, then charging you by call volume.
- A callback widget to enable callback buttons on your website.
- Capacity for dynamic number insertion that can optimize geolocation and effectively trace which ads spurred which calls.
- Ability to measure your most meaningful metrics, which may include first target calls, unique target calls, call lengths, sales cycles, unique calls and/or repeated calls.
- Ability to customize reports into providing specific insights, such as why calls are being missed.
- Capacity to analyze calls in conjunction with Google Analytics. You should be able to separate conversions from target calls and compare conversion rates of cost-per-click versus organic calls as well as different advertising channels.
- Ability to identify unanswered calls that went to voicemail, calls terminated because callers didn’t follow voice menu sequences and declined callbacks.
- Ability to customize and/or combine your tracking channels and tools. For example, you may wish to track calls beyond their sources to analyze user sessions, zeroing in on keywords, pages seen, visit history, browsers, devices, IP addresses, etc.
- Capacity to use a number of call tags for better insights on conversions and ad channel efficiency.
- Enough user-friendliness so you can customize certain features on your own. “In the end, by getting to know the tool once and learning of the updates once in a while, you will save time,” Holovko advises.
- Capacity for integration with your CRM or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for better-informed decisions based on real sales across channels. “Make sure the integrations they offer have basic tools for business processes and advertising analytics,” says Holovko. “Almost every service offers API, but few can boast of multifunctional webhooks.” The best webhooks can gather data in real time, kick in at customized times and transmit all data gathered via analytics, she says.
- Ability to integrate with user-based analytics systems or business intelligence (BI) solutions that can create detailed reports regarding contacts, calls, order processing, products sold and margins. Such methodology is especially effective for larger businesses with complex processes and sales funnels, Holovko reports.
- For medium to large firms, the capacity to integrate with bid management tools that can automate management of Google AdWords rates and automate ad generation.
Dial800’s CallView360 software can meet many of your marketing goals by providing a 360-degree view of your call performance data, demographics and analytics. Get a free demo by filling out this simple form.
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