3 Ways to Track Caller Conversion Sources
Time to Read: 2m 17s
A lot of the marketers I work with are frustrated by having too little time or money to accomplish all their marketing goals. “Do more with less” is the expectation – sound familiar?
Although we would all like to add more dollars to our marketing budgets, the reality is that we have limitations on our time and spend. That makes it crucial to be more effective with where and how you spend those dollars. One of my favorite things about online marketing is how measurable it is. When a potential customer fills out a form online, downloads a form, or makes a purchase, we can get data that tells us how they found us.
That helps us to spend our marketing dollars (and time) where it makes the most impact. For online stores, this works like a charm. All those online checkouts can be easily tracked and we have wonderful data to support our marketing decisions.
Industrial and B2B companies often face a more difficult challenge for measuring the impact of their online campaigns. Why? The more expensive, customized or complex your product is, the more likely it is that a lead will pick up the phone and call, rather than filling out a form. So how do you get the data? Here are three suggestions to capture data from callers:
Think about the number of times your phone rings in a day compared to online form completions. If you’re like a lot of industrial companies, calls outweigh forms. Often, the calls are clients that want customized work, ongoing work, or orders so large they aren’t comfortable just placing them online. In today’s “do more with less” world, measuring callers seems more important than ever.
Although we would all like to add more dollars to our marketing budgets, the reality is that we have limitations on our time and spend. That makes it crucial to be more effective with where and how you spend those dollars. One of my favorite things about online marketing is how measurable it is. When a potential customer fills out a form online, downloads a form, or makes a purchase, we can get data that tells us how they found us.
That helps us to spend our marketing dollars (and time) where it makes the most impact. For online stores, this works like a charm. All those online checkouts can be easily tracked and we have wonderful data to support our marketing decisions.
Industrial and B2B companies often face a more difficult challenge for measuring the impact of their online campaigns. Why? The more expensive, customized or complex your product is, the more likely it is that a lead will pick up the phone and call, rather than filling out a form. So how do you get the data? Here are three suggestions to capture data from callers:
Ask Callers How They Found You
This isn’t ideal because your customer service or sales reps need to remember to ask and you need a way to record and store data. Additionally, users won’t always distinguish between paid and free search listings, or remember which keywords they used to find you. It’s still better than nothing, however.Measure Minor Conversions
Even though it won’t tell you if leads turned into customers, you can track PDF and whitepaper downloads, catalog downloads, newsletter signups, and other minor conversions through web analytics.Use Call Tracking
With call tracking, you purchase and assign number to your online campaigns. You can get as granular as you want; tracking which search engine, referral site or paid campaign sent the traffic. You’re only limited by how many numbers you want to buy. An automated script on your website changes the phone number based on the way they got to your site. Another added benefit is that most services let you record the calls so you can monitor them for quality purposes.Think about the number of times your phone rings in a day compared to online form completions. If you’re like a lot of industrial companies, calls outweigh forms. Often, the calls are clients that want customized work, ongoing work, or orders so large they aren’t comfortable just placing them online. In today’s “do more with less” world, measuring callers seems more important than ever.