Sorry I missed y’all last week but it’s still guest post week this week anyway. Today we’ll hear from John Taylor about how to use call tracking to improve your bottom line. Here’s John:
Call Tracking, as its name implies is a system that allows you to track phone calls associated with various marketing efforts. Modern call tracking technologies allow you to associate various phone numbers to your marketing campaigns, be it online or off, thus paving the way for a range of insights that can help improve conversions.
Before we get into how call tracking can help your business, let’s take a peek behind the curtains and spend a moment on how it works.
When you sign up for a call tracking service, you will be allowed to assign unique phone numbers or special codes to all your marketing activities. The information is all stored in your CRM system and you will be able to track the results of each campaign. The information you collate can help you ascertain which campaigns worked, along with a whole load of information on your customers and prospects. The best part about call tracking is that it complements offline efforts (i.e. TV, radio and print) and online activities (i.e. social media, PPC, display advertising etc.) alike.
Here are 5 ways how call tracking can help your business:
- Evaluate your marketing campaigns and track performance
Since each of your marketing campaigns are tracked with a unique number or code, you will be able to monitor each of them individually. Based on the information. you can track, for each campaign:
- Total calls that came in
- Length of each phone call
- From where the calls were made
- Conversion rates
- Which campaigns resulted in the most number of calls
- And much more.
While evaluating each campaign, you can also monitor the performance of your sales team by tracking how well they convert the leads that came through.
- Compare the effectiveness of your communications channels
A great side effect of being able to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns is that you will be able to evaluate which advertising channels worked based for you. E.g. if you are running a marketing campaign with messages going out through radio, print and PPC, call tracking allows you to set specific numbers to each channel, thus helping you track which channels generated the highest volume of calls. Based on your findings you can make important decisions on where the bulk of your advertising budgets need to go.
- Get to know your customer better
Although you may have a fair idea of who your customer is, how they operate etc. call tracking can be the cherry on top. It can open you up to extensive insights, thus, setting the stage for a deeper understanding of your customers. Simply listening to call recordings can give you insights into how your customer thinks, what his/her pain points are, what exactly are they looking for, how your product/service helps them and much more. Be sure to not only listen to what they say, but how they say it as their tone and pauses too can convey a lot.
- Improve your customer service
By recording the phone interactions between your customer service team and customers, you will be able to determine if your customer service is on point and where improvements need to be made. After all, the ultimate objective of the customer service team is improving customer satisfaction levels, thereby paving way for higher conversions.
Improving your customer service also leads to improved opportunities to cross-sell, avoid missed sales and also churn out better quality leads.
- Never miss a call or the opportunity to follow up
You may miss calls for a number of reasons – the sales or customer service team were all on other calls, someone who took a message forgot all about it or a customer called you outside of business hours. Every call that goes unanswered is a lost opportunity, and possibly one that serves your prospect to a competitor, on a silver platter. Besides, a good call tracking system facilitates automated reminders for your team to follow up on calls that came in.
Conclusion
Regardless of you being a small business or looking after the marketing initiatives of a large organisation, call tracking can give you powerful insights into all your marketing campaigns, advertising channels and performance of your sales/customer service teams. The data you have at your fingertips helps you two-fold by helping reduce unnecessary spending while boosting conversions.
John Taylor
John is a long-time professional with over two decades of experience in analytics and communications technology. He works as the Senior Data Analyst at Fone Dynamics, a leader in call tracking, voice, and SMS communication. When John steps out of the office, he loves to spend time with his family and bike riding.