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Online Call Tracking

Understanding the effectiveness of your advertising has never been more important. Increasing competition, media fragmentation, coupled with an unstable economic environment, continually increase pressure on businesses and marketing managers to optimise every dollar spent.

Digital advertising has benefited significantly as a result, with real time analytics on site traffic, social engagement, click through rates and online conversions delivering far greater accountability than traditional mediums.

Digital Landscape

hyena reality
In Australia, for the 2014 financial year, digital advertising accounted for 34% of all advertising expenditure1 and paid search expenditure in the region grew by over 20% year-over-year as businesses continued to see and track strong returns2.

Although businesses within the region have achieved efficiencies via campaign optimisations, driving click volume to increase by 26% YoY while impression volume decreased by 4%2, there is still a huge opportunity to increase marketing effectiveness and improve conversion using call tracking.

The Value of Calls

It is easy in a digital world to overlook the importance of something that was invented over 130 years ago, but the humble telephone has had some major overhauls in recent years. The proliferation of smartphones has significantly impacted our purchase behaviour and the way we engage with businesses. Recent studies suggest that 88% of website visitors complete their purchase offline3 and Google suggests that 52% of all mobile ads result in a phone call4.

In the same Google study, 61% of respondents say that the phone is the most important during the purchase stage of the decision making process, which supports earlier research that suggested that phone leads are 10-15 times more likely to convert than email leads5

With ROPO (Research Online, Purchase Offline) playing such an important role within the current environment combined with the value of phone leads, optimising digital campaigns without factoring the impact that calls can make means you are potentially missing a huge part of the conversion funnel.

Online Call Tracking

However, this need not be the case. Most dedicated call tracking companies now offer simple and effective ways of tracking calls from your online activity, including keyword level attribution from paid search.

Integration of call data into Google Analytics and AdWords as well as other bid management such as Double Click, Marin, Acquisio, Kenshoo and analytic platforms such as Adobe and Piwik¬ gives you the ability to not only view calls along with other online conversions but also allows you to optimise your campaigns to call conversion.

If you are new to online advertising, it is estimated that over 71% of businesses in Australia have never run an online advertising campaign6. Call tracking can also help bring to life the true value of campaigns, as it is often easier for businesses to assign value to phone leads as opposed to click through rates.

The Opportunity

cash register
If you value phone calls, or more importantly, your potential customers value the ability to call you, then you need to review your call handling capabilities and processes. There is simply too much at stake to ignore how customers are engaging with you over the phone and if you think I am overstating the importance, here are two stats for you to ponder. On average, businesses miss 17% of all inbound calls7 and even if you think you’re not missing any calls, around 73% of leads NEVER get contacted.8

Call tracking is a fantastic opportunity for businesses to take greater control of their digital marketing spend and improve how customers engage with their business over the phone. In the US call tracking is already a billion dollar industry and with good reason, it’s delivering measurable results. If you’re after a competitive advantages call tracking might be the solution you’re looking for.

See the Info-graphic here

By Simon Pereira

Sources: 1. Marketingmag.com, 2.Kenshoo, 3.Digitas LBI, 4.Marketingcharts.com, 5.Conversionscientist, 6.Mumbrella.com, 7.Avanser, 8.Forbes.com
Image courtesy of hyena reality at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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