Call tracking is a tool on which many businesses rely for marketing analytics. You can determine which channel, keyword, and marketing message drove a customer to make a call by tracking calls. Call tracking can also help you personalize the customer experience. The data collected can help you tweak your marketing campaigns and skyrocket your business. When you have clear visibility into customer calls, you can determine what is working and what is not and find the next step to optimize sales.
You definitely need to be tracking calls, but before you do, it’s important to know how you should track calls and how you shouldn’t.
The Do’s of Call Tracking
When implementing call tracking, there are a few things you need to be sure to do. Here are some of the most important:
Place Call-to-Actions Strategically
For call tracking to work, customers need to click your call-to-action (CTA) button. This means you must put the CTA button strategically on landing pages. You can also put the phone number on the button, but be sure that visitors know they can click the button to make a call and talk to an agent for their convenience so that all of your calls get tracked.
Use Dynamic Number Insertion
Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) is a call-tracking feature that ties a unique number to each call source. Using DNI will allow you to track which ads, campaigns, and keywords generate phone calls and which do not. This is usually handled by a snippet of JavaScript on your website that dynamically generates a unique number when a visitor arrives. It will also not affect the search engine optimization (SEO) of your site or your name, address, and phone number listings (NAP).
Monitor Performance
Monitoring performance is most likely one of the main reasons you are looking into call tracking. It will help you attribute each conversion to a particular marketing message and channel. By looking at the numbers, you can determine which strategies are working and which need improvement. Some call metrics you should track include:
- Call volume
- Call length
- Call time of day
- Caller location
- First-time callers
- Conversation rate
Each of these metrics can be tracked by marketing message and channel to help you determine their specific conversion rates and what you can do to optimize them.
Record Calls
Along with tracking phone calls, you should be using call recording, a vital call intelligence tool. If you aren’t recording calls, then you are leaving some important data behind. Recording your calls will help you determine the quality of leads you are getting. These recordings are especially useful for providing insights into the caliber of your customer service. They can also be used to guide and train new call agents.
The Don’ts of Call Tracking
While there are fewer don’ts than there are do’s, you shouldn’t ignore them because they could make your call tracking less effective.
Don’t Use the Same Toll-Free Number for Multiple Marketing Campaigns
Your tracking will work best when you use a unique number for each message and campaign. That way you can attribute conversions to the correct channels automatically instead of manually tracking the source of calls, which leads to human error and costly mistakes.
Don’t Count Calls as Conversions
A call itself is not a conversion, so a call alone shouldn’t be used to measure success. Doing this can give you a false indicator that you are succeeding when you might not be and cause you to focus on only getting more calls rather than optimizing conversions. When you are using calls in your conversion rate calculations, you need to set specific conditions that designate a call as a conversion. These conditions can be specific actions taken in the call, the duration of the call, or other factors.
Don’t Use Call Tracking Numbers if It Damages NAP
Dynamic number insertion works on your website because the phone number generation happens in code running in a visitor’s browser. Google never sees this and it won’t affect how they see your name, address, and phone number. But you want to use a consistent phone number on third-party sites like Yelp, Facebook, and Google Business or it can negatively affect your listings.
Call Tracking is Integral to Business Growth
Monitoring call tracking metrics like call conversion rates, origin, volume, and closing rates can help you perfect your business growth strategy and turn a stagnant strategy into a successful one.
Get your toll-free number today and start tracking your calls.
