Article - Call Tracking Takes the Mystery Out of Offline Conversions By Kathleen Colan, Mongoose Metrics

Call Tracking Takes the Mystery Out of Offline Conversions

Kathleen Colan, Mongoose Metrics - Internet Marketing 2 Comments | Add Yours

About The Author:

Kathleen Colan is a professional journalist as well as director of marketing and content for Mongoose Metrics, an enterprise-level call tracking solutions provider.

“I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted. I just don’t know which half.” This reflection by the early 20th century marketer John Wanamaker – founder of Wanamaker’s, the world’s first department store and often considered the father of American advertising -- can easily be applied to 21st century web marketing.

Despite the promise of today’s web analytics, Wanamaker’s unknown percentage still exists and the biggest mysteries in today’s online marketplace are offline conversions (phone calls). Research indicates that an astounding 63 percent of people complete their purchase offline following their search activity (ComScore Study 2006).

Enter call tracking. Call tracking enables businesses to calculate success (conversions) for every form of advertising – online and offline. With call tracking, marketers now have an increasingly powerful tool to not only measure – but also analyze – offline conversions in an effort to more effectively determine success and make informed spending decisions.

What is call tracking?

In simple terms, call tracking is the ability to trace phone calls back to the person calling and the keywords they entered to get to your Web site. This tracking can account both for people who call you from your Web site as well as those who call from other direct marketing efforts, like e-mail campaigns, print ads and television spots. For example, every time an online advertisement delivers a phone call, the call is recorded, traced back to the Web visitor’s actions and then logged into real-time, detailed reports such as Google Analytics(tm) or Omniture Site Catalyst(tm).

Over the past two years, the call tracking industry has worked to develop tools that integrate their systems with popular online paid search services, such as Google AdWords(tm), Microsoft AdCenter(tm) and Yahoo Search Marketing(tm), thus displaying data in a familiar, easy-to-read format. The goal of these integrations is to layer actionable call tracking data into existing business processes and systems.

Now, integrated data can be related directly to the behavior, page or ad that drove the call. Additionally, data can be consolidated into most popular reporting environments used by marketers which reduce the learning curve substantially. These include web analytics packages, bid management software and customer relationship management (CRM) software.

Why is call tracking important for SEO managers?

If even five to 10 percent of your conversions happen over the phone, call tracking is imperative for maximizing returns from your PPC spending. Call tracking data provides you and your clients with intelligence about which campaigns, keywords and marketing tactics are driving calls, and, more importantly, whether those calls are generating revenue.

Call tracking enables businesses to answer formerly mysterious marketing questions such as:

• Do my Web marketing campaigns generate phone calls?

• Do these phone calls generate revenue?

• Do certain pages or sections of my Web site cause visitors to pick up the phone? Do they take action over the phone?

• Do prospects who call end up back on the site? Do they end up purchasing online?

Call tracking finally gives internet marketers the tools to tie together a complete picture surrounding their online paid search spending and the resulting offline call performance.

How does it work?

It is much more than recording the number of calls received. Call tracking software is part of a sophisticated marketing methodology that ties results directly to costs and gives you accurate, real-time campaign effectiveness figures.

Call tracking allocates a discrete phone number – local or toll-free -- for each unique source you want to track. These tracking sources can be keywords, affiliate IDs, search engines or any other identifiers. When a visitor arrives at your site, the software conducts a dynamic lookup to determine which phone number is associated with the visitor’s origin page. That phone number is allocated and then cookied within your visitor’s browser.

As a result, call tracking gives clients actionable data which allows them to optimize PPC campaigns, SEO and other offline marketing efforts. Instead of associating a phone number with a particular campaign, ad group, or keyword, call tracking assigns a tracking number to each unique visitor session. By tracking each unique visitor clients are able to see granular data associated with the call.

Key benefits of call tracking include:

• Optimizing online campaigns: Know which campaigns, keywords and marketing tactics drive callers and whether those calls generate revenue – offline or online.

• Improve site design: Understand which pages drive calls – customers may be confused and there may be opportunities for site usability improvement.

• Save money: Find new ways to more effectively close business online and reduce call volume.

• Save time: Integrated reporting environments save time in analysis by consolidating call information with analytics, CRM and bid management providers.

Real-World Example: Auto Dealer in a Black Hole

About four years ago, the general manager of an auto dealership produced a report showing their paid search clicks totaling about 5,000 clicks per month, or approximately $3,000 in ad spending. The GM expressed frustration that he didn’t know what he was getting from the 5,000 monthly clicks. He didn’t know what the visitors did on his site and, most importantly, he didn’t know how many called the dealership. He was acting on faith that his $3,000 paid search budget was working because no measurement tools were available.

Four years later and in today’s uncertain economy, it is doubtful that unmeasured paid search expenses totaling $36,000 a year can continue to be confidently paid without measuring campaign performance. Fortunately, the need to measure the offline performance of online spending has now been met with new call tracking tools.

A specific example would be a post call IVR feature where the dealership can log the call outcome and that data can be tied to the specific keyword or spending that drove the call.

With the advancements in call tracking technology and the industry’s integration into third party systems, auto dealers finally have the tools to tie together a complete picture surrounding their online paid search spending and the resulting offline call performance.

With extensive scrutiny around marketing budgets, having clarity surrounding your marketing performance equates to better spending decisions and ultimately higher ROI on marketing dollars.