For most of us in the B2B market, we’re involved in the process of getting our sales reps in touch with the decision maker.
We use somewhat complicated lead nurturing campaigns and other ad technologies to make this all happen.
And, like us, you’re probably using a plethora (si jefe, a plethora) of analytics tools. Seeing how much we take for granted with these web analytics tools, shouldn’t we also hold our call tracking analytics in an esteemed place of honor?
Ok, so maybe not that far.
But they’re definitely too important to just overlook.
Most marketers still have no idea what happens when a prospect calls and talks to a sales rep. Since the majority of B2B online searches result in a phone call, can you reliably measure marketing ROI without call tracking analytics?
Since I started marketing at Convirza I’ve been able to introduce several companies to call tracking. Usually I was involved due to the complexity of their needs. While call tracking analytics can be quite complicated, please realize most startups and small businesses will benefit from the following basic analytics.
If your company is just getting started with organic search, PPC, social, or other channels, it’s awesome to start tracking how many phone calls are driven from these channels. You’ll quickly see whether money spent in those channels and supporting them is working or not.
This is useful when you manage a network of sites and want to see which are producing the most sales calls. A simple KPI like this can actually provide the insight that leads to updating your website or even changes to your sales funnel. We’ve actually seen marketing agencies do a 180 in thinking which of their sites where driving Sales Qualified Leads.
This quick and easy way of knowing your number of spam calls. In the best scenario, sales reps are giving marketing real-time feedback by tagging call quality in a CRM or even something simple like Google Docs. If this doesn’t apply, then call duration is a down and dirty way to measure lead quality. Just like in your web analytics, you look at your Bounce Rate as an indicator. Knowing your industry, you could set “qualified leads” as calls over 5-6 minutes.
Advanced analytics are all about determining which marketing efforts are really converting to sales. After all, you could be producing a million leads per month and your reps could still not be meeting their goals. To really leverage these analytics, you’re going to need a powerful call tracking platform that integrates with your CRM.
These are big-number KPIs, but when your company has insight into both online and offline sales via advanced call tracking, the results are just ridiculously awesome. To do it right, you need to easily provision unique phone numbers, local or toll-free, for all your marketing channels. Each website, social channel, eBook, direct mailer, and email campaign need to have a unique tracking number. This is quicker than it sounds. With services like Convirza, you can provision phone numbers instantly and inexpensively and immediately plug them into your channels.
The campaign level is where marketers have the opportunity to get more granular about which regions respond to their message. Imagine that you create one direct mail piece, and run it in 50 cities. The only difference in the ad’s content is the phone number on each one. Since you have assigned a unique phone number to each market, when the phones start ringing, you’ll get real-time data with each call, showing you exactly which markets respond to your offer, and which you can discontinue.
This is a powerful metric for larger companies with strong inbound marketing programs. Providing you insight into specific sources that drive leads, opportunities and revenue will literally change how you do business. Don’t be surprised if it takes time to start seeing patterns. Like any testing data, the more you put in, the more results you get out.
You really should be A/B testing your landing page, no matter what. Find the time! For any business where calls are even a small part of the sales strategy, unique tracking numbers should be used as a part of your conversion data, right alongside other metrics, like form, downloads, or sales. In many industries, calls drive more sales than online conversions. Understanding this, you should track both the number of inbound calls and the revenue from each as separate KPIs.
So, whether you’re just starting out, wading into the calm waters of Call Tracking Analytics or are ready to do a cannonball into the deep end, keep your goals in mind and know how to measure them with the right KPI. Next? Knowing which call tracking software can give you all of this. I know Convirza can.
