4 reasons agencies using call tracking outperform their competitors
Written by Natalia Selby
Marketing agencies that use call tracking as part of their service offering outshine other agencies for these four simple reasons.
Reason 1: It proves your agency’s worth
Which types of marketing is your agency running for your clients? Some PPC campaigns? A couple of social media advertisements? Some print advertising in the provincial paper?
How are you monitoring these channels? How have you managed to attribute results against your efforts and spend? The PPC and social campaigns are easy; there’s digital analytics software for those. But what about the local print advertisement?
Call tracking is the only tool out there that can tell you how many calls and website visitors you’ve had from traditional advertising. Without this data, your results may be inaccurate. For example you might think that the PPC campaigns are converting more leads, when in reality your client has had twice as many conversions over the phone.
Similarly, we all know that the typical purchasing funnel isn’t as straight-forward as we would like it to be. One recent survey found that “the average consumer engages with 18 pieces of content before making a purchase decision”. Therefore it can be tricky to track the user journey if they’re interacting with pieces of content across the web. Here’s what their journey might look like:
Without some sort of analytics and tracking software, it would be difficult to track a journey this varied. But with call tracking, you can dynamically generate a phone number to track individual website visits. This unique number will stay with them against every piece of content they interact with until they convert, allowing for easier attribution.
When attributing leads and sales, the only way to do this accurately is to see the full lead picture. Plus, you’ll want to make sure your agency is taking credit for sales initiated by campaigns that you’re running!
Call tracking is able to track all sales and all leads to the original source of marketing and advertising. You’ll be able to show clients which of your campaigns are contributing to their bottom line. It’s this ‘edge’ that will make your agency stand out.
Reason 2: It shows you what is and what isn’t working
With a full picture of your clients’ marketing ROI, you’ll have a truer idea of which marketing is and isn’t working.
If your clients are asking you why leads have dropped from their AdWords ads, you can trial different versions of ad copy and compare which ads are generating the most calls.
Similarly, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is somewhat of an adjunct of call tracking. The analytics reports will show you which keywords are driving calls, therefore you can use this data to optimise your clients’ websites.
Here’s what our dashboard report for keyword-driven calls looks like for last week:
This type of keyword data is like gold dust, as Google is placing tighter restrictions on its privacy controls i.e. an increased presence of (not provided) in Google Analytics.
Reason 3: It allows you to be a consultant
Your clients have come to you because they need your expertise. So be decisive. Show them where to allocate their budgets and why they should invest in certain activities over others.
With call tracking, you’ll have an accurate understanding of lead sources and which marketing has led to conversions. You’ll be able to confidently shift your clients’ budget towards the better performing areas of their marketing. This access to decision-making data is what will really increase your agency’s overall value and cement your outstanding reputation.
Mediahawk will have read the headings in from your spreadsheet. This means it is easy to identify what columns you are mapping to the telephone numbers and what data you want to see in the output. In the next section, select what columns hold the telephone numbers, and then any additional headings you would like outputted.
Reason 4: It increases client retention rates
We know how difficult it can be to win new clients on a regular basis. That’s why agencies put a lot effort into keeping their clients once they’re on their books.
But ultimately, what’s the quickest way to your clients’ heart? Results. With all of this granular insight into your clients’ leads, you’ll have the knowledge to be able to build or adjust strategies to attain better results, positioning your agency as one that achieves targets for time and time again.
Agencies are overlooking call tracking at their peril. Call tracking will help you to achieve the best possible results for your clients and sustain the reputation of your business.