Many website owners are paying agencies to manage SEO or their Pay Per Click Advertising and many are seeing fantastic long term returns. Online marketing is the most accountable medium ever: we can track where a user is located, how they found our website, what search term they used (in most cases) and how many pages they’ve viewed (and which pages these were).
Where PPC is concerned (Google AdWords) we can to a degree, track what terms led to a phone call and we can classify a call over a certain length as a goal completion.
But, there is a better way.
Advanced Call Tracking
There are advanced call tracking services available that offer unrivalled depths of information that smart marketers are taking advantage of. These systems aren’t limited (Like the in-built AdWords system), you can:
- See callers IP Address, Page Views and physical location
- Track calls originating from SEO traffic
- Track calls originating from Pay Per Click Advertising
- Automatically record calls to review later
- Categorise calls (For example identify a calls quality such as Hot Lead or Waste of time!)
- Track calls from offline and other online channels such as Social Media
An example of how call tracking benefits SEO and/or PPC
The office phone rings and my colleague Ben answers the call. Before he hears the callers voice he’s “Whispered” confirmation the call originated from the website, immediately Ben knows it’s likely a new enquiry.
Once the call is complete the client hangs up and Ben has to rate the call, it’s a hot lead so he presses number 5 on the phone.
Meanwhile, I’m in my call tracking control panel, I can see the call originated from someone searching Google for “Online Marketing Agency” and clicked on one of our adverts. The caller visited 4 pages of our website but spent 13minutes on our Pay Per Click Advertising page. I can also see the caller is located 30 miles from our office location in Lincolnshire and the call has been rated as a hot lead. I play the call back and go through the clients requirements with Ben.
This is rated as a conversion and is reflected as such in Google Analytics and Google AdWords which means we know that that particular keyword is sending converting traffic.
Without call tracking that keyword may never show a conversion when in actual fact it drives most of our telephone based sales.
How Does Call Tracking Work?
It’s incredibly ingenious: You pick a number format, it could be your local area code or a non geographic number and each visitor to your website gets a slightly different phone number (in our case the last 4 digits of our number on every page you visit are exclusive to you – call us and try it out!).
It works from a simple line of code too so you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to implement it.
How Much Does Call Tracking Cost
Honestly, it’s incredibly cost effective given how much data it provides you which in turn enables you to get more from your PPC or SEO campaigns. We use a company called Infinity Tracking (and recommend them to our clients) and they’re a great company to work with all they way from sales to support.
There are other services available and I’ve worked with a few of them but none I’ve experienced offer the same level of features and service as Infinity Tracking.
Other Advantages of Call Tracking
In the case of the Infinity Tracking system you can view live visitors on your website and it can be quite addictive! For instance we regularly see our competitors reading our blogs and with a click of a button we can see what pages they’ve viewed over the past days, weeks and months. Granted, no real benefit but it is fun.
More seriously though, you can even add call tracking numbers to your literature, signs, social media accounts so you can identify where calls originated from and get a deeper understanding of which channels drive your conversions
How to Get the Best From Call Tracking
Call tracking is great, but you’ll get the most from it by choosing an Online Marketing Agency that thoroughly understands how to get the most from it and by that I mean an agency that knows how to use your call tracking data to optimise your SEO and PPC campaigns .
So give us a call on: 0843 636 8035 (this number is tracked!) and we’ll hook you up with the guys at Infinity whilst showing you how with call tracking, we can get much more from your PPC and SEO campaigns.
