Which call tracking solution is right for you?
Written by Natalia Selby
I used to work for a large hotel group and my department was responsible for setting rates and selling hotel rooms across all channels. In our reports we would look at the revenue and conversion rates by converting channel, i.e. website, call centre, etc.
We pumped a lot of money into marketing. Unable to compare our offline advertising and response against our online marketing and response, we didn’t know which activities were producing those conversions.
Where should we advertise? Is our budget being wasted? We didn’t know.
Our reporting was missing a vital piece of information that could link our marketing spend to our revenue, meaning that we could have been spending our marketing budget much more effectively.
Why call tracking is necessary
Call tracking bridges that information gap. It provides you with the data you need to understand which marketing activities you should be focusing our efforts on – and what isn’t working – allowing you to see the bigger picture on your marketing ROI.
Whether you’re considering call tracking, have just started using it – or have had it for a while but think you could be using it more effectively – you’ll be eager to learn more about how you can maximise its potential in order to reap bigger rewards.
I want to understand where my website calls are coming from
You know that if someone calls you from your website, it’s a hot lead. Understanding what marketing activity brings those leads to your website and then triggers a phone call is vital because you want more!
You need dynamic visitor call tracking
Dynamic numbers provide you with visitor level call tracking – a granular level of reporting you won’t find anywhere else:
- View your inbound calls by keyword, campaign, source, medium, ad group and more.
- Capture the entire visitor journey through your website – including their visit history and the pages they viewed before, during and after the call.
- Integrate Mediahawk with your web analytics software, bid management platform, and lead management system to accurately measure marketing performance, optimise campaigns and link marketing sources to actual revenue.
- Interrogate the data even further using ad tagging. Applying your own custom tags to inbound web sources allows you to capture and analyse response more efficiently.
Going back to the hotel group, we invested a significant amount of resources into redeveloping our website – implementing a leading web analytics solution and substantially increasing our marketing budget. Understanding precisely which of our marketing activities were driving calls into our very busy Reservations department would have enabled our marketers to know exactly where to focus their efforts in order to increase revenue and ROI.
I want to know the ROI of my offline campaigns
Do you advertise on TV, via direct mail drops, newspaper adverts or outdoor advertising? These activities consume great chunks of your marketing budget, so it’s crucial to know how effective they are at generating conversions.
You need static call tracking
Applying a unique phone number to each advertising campaign allows you to understand which specific marketing activities result in phone calls.
For example, your next marketing campaign might consist of an advert in the Daily Telegraph and a direct mailshot. Assigning a unique phone number to each of those activities allows you to immediately see the specific source that generated your inbound enquiries. What’s more, you can then link each advertisement to a sale.
The hotel marketing teams would buy ad space in high-end publications, they advertised on billboards and attended travel exhibitions across the world. Allocating a unique phone number to each of these adverts and events would have allowed us to see the impact they made on enquiries – and, more importantly – precisely what the ROI for each activity was.
Look beyond clicks
Open rates, click-through rates, form fills, likes, and mentions don’t always tell us the full story. To accurately measure user engagement, you need to evolve beyond counting clicks.
Static phone numbers applied to your online activities allow you to delve deeper into the mind-set of your target prospects and provide you with insight that is much more revealing than clicks:
- Keyword tracking – identify exactly which keywords your customers search for when they are ready to convert. A high-priced keyword, for example, may not be converting online but it might be generating valuable calls. You can have a unique number for each keyword, ad group, campaign, or account.
- Email engagement – open and click-through rates are becoming increasingly superficial. A unique number as a call to action on an email enables you to gauge the success of each campaign much more accurately.
- Social media – Using different numbers for your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter campaigns, or even specific social promotions allows you to easily and quickly report on the ROI of your efforts.
I use a mix of online and offline advertising and I want to be able to track everything in one place
Your marketing strategy consists of many different channels, campaigns and tactics. Knowing which activities are performing best enables you to target your budget in the right places, allowing you to optimise your efforts and maximise your returns.
You need a combination of dynamic and static numbers
Combining static and dynamic numbers allows you to better understand which marketing activities are working. Seamless tracking allows you to follow all the stages of the visitor journey in your own reporting dashboard.
Make sure you have the insight to measure marketing response and optimise performance across all of your channels. Key features of Mediahawk call tracking include:
- Inbound and outbound call recording – an underused but very effective way of understanding your customers’ needs. It’s also a great tool to use for performance management and staff training.
- API and FTP feed – customise the way you view your call analytics alongside your existing data.
- Missed, key and received call alerts – instant email alerts mean you’ll never miss a lead.
Learn which campaigns and channels perform better
Looking back to those days at the hotel group, call tracking analytics would have provided us with the detailed information we needed to know in order to fully understand what marketing activities we should have been focusing our efforts on.
Gain complete visibility of your marketing response, and the confidence that your marketing activities are well optimised.