Jane Peters, Marketing Manager at Mediahawk, explains how telephone numbers can be used to capture data and increase ROI from digital campaigns
Call tracking has been around for longer than the internet. Whilst everyone has been getting excited about Google Analytics and looking at bounce rates, click through rates and goals, the humble telephone number has been the Cinderella in the analytics tool box. Until now, the telephone call to action has been accepted as a must have, but not really utilised. The digital marketer has preferred to drive visitors to a website or social media page. The downside of focussing on web traffic and conversions alone is that only half the analytics jigsaw is being completed. Adwords and other online campaigns are generating a significant amount of leads but only the online conversions are being captured. If there are telephone enquiries going into a business that have been generated from digital marketing, these are currently being lost, therefore giving a skewed picture of how successful a campaign really is. Using call tracking digital marketers are able to get the full response picture.
The use of the telephone number is also highly dependent upon which market it is used in. For example, when buying a car the automotive retailer will work hard to drive traffic to a website or social media page but the buying process will not tend to continue online. The telephone will act as a security blanket for the larger scale purchase and as such the automotive retailer would lose ninety percent of all enquiry data if calls were not being tracked. Online retailers that have issues with cart abandonment could use the telephone number to capture lost purchasers by enticing them to call rather than buy online.
The importance of a telephone number for larger purchasers
An online art retailer placed a call tracking number prominently on their website. Soon after this happened they had a call from a client that made a purchase worth £25,000. The client would not have made the purchase online, preferring to speak directly to the retailer.
“Digital marketing is waking up to how important the telephone number can be as a call to action. With in-depth analytics available to track every call that is generated from digital advertising, there is no longer a gap in this area and marketers can get a more complete picture of their campaigns overall.” Harry Bott, Mediahawk
Call tracking was once the staple for large scale advertisers wishing to measure the number of telephone leads traditional advertising had generated. It has now grown and developed to compliment online analytics packages and is able to offer the same benefits of analysis to the digital marketer. Call tracking now has the ability to provide in-depth reporting on which keywords have driven visitors to a website as well as logging the url they click-through from. By changing the telephone number that appears on a website dynamically, the caller information is captured and can be viewed as management information.
When running a pay per click campaign, the biggest frustration is not knowing how many leads have come in as a result and also how many leads were generated from which advert and which keyword was typed in to view it. Call tracking can now complete the picture and balance out the reporting being done on campaigns with Google Analytics. Call tracking now closes the loop in the analytics picture and provides the digital marketer with the tools to plan and promote in the right areas knowing which methods bring about the greatest number of leads.
The humble telephone number can offer much more information than ever before. It has the ability to provide customer insight, improve customer service and increase enquiry levels. Once the digital marketer looks upon the telephone number in the same way as a url or social media link, the holy grail of marketing will become available to them. If Google thinks call tracking is a good thing, who are we to argue?
Jane Peters, Marketing Manager at Mediahawk
http://www.mediahawk.co.uk/