5 things you can learn from industries that use call tracking

The rules are changing. Businesses need to develop and evolve ideas and activities. Have you ever stopped to consider what makes some businesses more successful in their field than others?

Looking at the business practices of companies that are thriving, regardless of their industry, can reveal the unexpected. It can help improve projections and support your decision making.

The Viceroy Hotel Group is brand that believes in learning from other industries. Viceroy understands that the way consumers engage with brands has changed so the brand has to change to keep up with them. To move the company forward, they look to other industries for insight.

Some industries are quicker than others at adopting the capabilities that allow them to maximise those insights. For businesses to grow, it’s vital that they look outside their niche for best practice.

There are some useful tools that help to understand important factors in the business environment. Looking to other industries for such tools and innovations offers a fresh perspective on our own.

One of those tools is call tracking.

Call tracking is a powerful solution that helps businesses deliver maximum return on investment, allowing them to achieve their objectives. Read on to find out how these sectors drive more revenue by implementing call tracking – and how you can benefit from their experience.

Home improvements and tradesmen

Monitor the effectiveness of online directories for generating leads

If your boiler stopped working or a pipe burst, the first thing you’d do is search on Google for a tradesman to fix it. The next thing you do is call. On your mobile, it would look like this:

It couldn’t be easier. Whether it’s a locksmith, plumber, electrician, roofer, pest control, heating engineer… they rely on phone calls. In many cases, independent and self-employed tradesmen don’t have a website – they list themselves on directory websites such as Yell or Rated People. Knowing where their enquiries are coming from is crucial. They might be spending hundreds of pounds to have their business listed on these directories, but the bulk of their calls might actually be as a result of referrals from previous customers.

Call tracking provides them with cast-iron information on which channel generates business for them.

Private healthcare, cosmetic surgery and dental clinics

Identify precisely which marketing channels generate enquiries

For private healthcare companies, the largest proportion of marketing budgets is spent on expensive TV advertising, glossy magazine and newspaper adverts.
These media have great reach, but is anyone really responding to them?

After implementing call tracking and monitoring the results, Lighthouse Healthcare – a private healthcare provider – were able to understand exactly how their marketing campaigns were performing. This enabled them to refocus their budget in areas that they knew would generate a greater return.

In a booming cosmetic surgery market, you need to understand the source of your leads to drive even more enquiries. Who doesn’t call a doctor or a dentist to make an appointment? Using call tracking software to monitor your campaigns, you can accurately identify which marketing channels are producing valuable telephone enquiries and, more importantly, those that aren’t.

Professional services

Refine your marketing messages and measure the impact on your target audience

Personal injury claims, insurance, personal finance… You’ll no doubt be familiar with the ads promising to get you the largest car accident settlement or insurance claim.

Services like solicitors, financial advisers, insurance brokers, estate agents, generate a lot of business by phone. This is mainly because their products are complex.
Call tracking enables these organisations to understand which marketing campaigns produce the highest return on investment: is it the advert on daytime TV with the tough talking lawyer? Or is it the ad shown during Coronation Street with a ‘satisfied customer’ talking about how much money they won in a settlement?

Call tracking allows you to refine your marketing messages and measure the impact on your target audience.

Online retail and automotive

Understand the sales cycle and tighten internal sales procedures

Telephone calls can increase online sales. It sounds ironic, but a well-known luxury retailer we work with discovered exactly that.

Our analysis revealed that customers who purchased online after calling the retailer spent up to five times longer on the phone than those people who call but don’t buy. Call tracking allows you to link a phone call to a conversion, enabling you to understand your sales cycle much more effectively.

Visitor level call tracking shows you the entire user journey through your website, including any phone calls made. This data helps online retailers to identify any potential problems within the conversion path. For example, you can look at the post-call data from prospects who didn’t buy from you to see if any of the content or checkout process might have caused them to abandon their carts.

A sector where call tracking is already well established is automotive. And for good reason. After property, a car is probably the second largest purchase that people make. With each phone call worth thousands of pounds, dealers inevitably see the value in tracking where those calls came from.

Call tracking allows businesses to understand internal sales performance. The insights you gain from the comprehensive reports enables you to tighten sales processes and improve customer service.

Along with car dealerships, tyre retailers, car repairs and garage services also reap the benefits of call tracking because of their reliance on phone calls from customers.

Travel, leisure and hospitality

Record and monitor calls to improve customer service and maximise upselling opportunities

In the hospitality industry, much like retail, there is huge impetus to encourage consumers to book online, with the promise of ‘Best Rate Guarantees’ and the increasing number of online travel agents (OTA’s) such as Expedia and Lastminute.com.

However, customers do still like to pick up the phone and call a hotel directly. They like to negotiate room rates, they might have a special request or a complex booking to discuss, or they might just want reassurance.

Bath Travel, one of our clients, realised that 75% of their marketing budget was being spent on traditional advertising. However this channel generated only 35% of their response. Using call tracking insight, they were able to segment their media activity by channel, advert and spend, enabling them to:

  • Focus marketing budget in areas that generate a greater ROI.
  • Reduce spend on ineffective campaigns.
  • Improve call lengths indicating better targeting.

Another benefit of call tracking is the call recording and monitoring functionality. The vast majority of businesses in this sector employ some form of mystery shopping to improve customer experience and make sure that upsell opportunities are maximised. The drawback of this is that mystery shoppers usually work to a script, they can be easy to identify and call handlers are generally aware of them.

Recording actual customer calls provides you with stacks of data on real-life calls. You can listen to them immediately and score your call handlers performance based on real-life scenarios as opposed to made-up situations.

Building a business case for call tracking

“What value does call tracking software bring?”

The answer is simple: If your business receives telephone calls – and you close business over the phone – call tracking provides you with detailed information about which marketing activity generated each call.

It’s equally important to understand and track your call metrics as it is to track online behaviour and conversions.

Do you know which of your marketing efforts currently generate leads?

You’ve got a good marketing mix: you’re running PPC ads and remarketing campaigns, your organic search rank is reasonable, your social media followers are engaging with your brand, you’re running costly TV, print and DM campaigns and you’re generating leads online and on the phone. Good, right? When your CEO asks you which campaign produced the best return on investment, how do you know?

Call tracking shows you precisely where your leads are coming from

It’s easy to track online conversions. But they don’t give you the full lead generation picture – especially if you receive phone calls too. By assigning a unique phone number to each email campaign, Google AdWords keyword, print advert, direct mail, website visitor and more, you gain more accurate insight into which marketing activities generate enquiries.

Demonstrate the actual return on investment

Integrating call tracking with your existing reporting tools and CRM system provides you with an extra level of data: granular information about your leads, opportunities and revenue that you can tie back to specific campaigns, channels, creative, even keywords.

Call tracking: the best kept secret in marketing

Your focus should be on your business’s ability to unlock, decipher and apply key data insights. Call tracking allows you to analyse what is most important to your customers. How do they arrive, find products, transact, and find support?

To be successful, you need to do what other people don’t. There’s a lot less competition and a much greater chance of success.

About the author - Natalia Selby

Marketing Executive at Mediahawk, with 20 years experience in analytics and content management.