The Importance of Call Tracking for your Business

What is Call Tracking?

Call tracking is a piece of software which monitors all your calls and where they are coming from. This allows digital marketers to see which campaigns and channels are generating enquiries. Some companies also use this as a way of training staff as you can play back the calls.

Does Google & Bing have Call Tracking?

Google and Bing both offer call extensions to advertisers as part of the advertising platform. In Google AdWords they are located under the Ad Extensions tab. You can create your own unique forwarding number to your phone number to show which campaign and ad groups actually drove calls. Bing also has a call extensions section and the setup process is similar to Google’s. They are also located under the Ad Extensions tab.

Nevertheless, there is a small downside to call extensions. They only work for calls that are coming specifically from the ad text itself. Once a customer gets to your website you will have lost the ability to track them with call extensions. On top of this, Google Adwords and Bing ads only track paid search activity, meaning you aren’t getting complete transparency for other channels such as SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media or Affiliate Marketing. Therefore, call tracking allows you to monitor and measure all your campaigns in one place, in a simple and concise manner.

Why should my business be using call tracking software?

Call tracking comes with a lot of benefits; we have listed the top five below:

1. Optimise your digital marketing campaigns –Call tracking shows you which of your keywords or campaigns resulted in a website visit or a call, and which of those calls met your goals. Analytics can’t show you when someone makes a call or whether that call is of a high quality or not. Call tracking allows you to look deeper than Analytics to find out exactly which terms or platforms are driving your best enquiries allowing you to fully measure your return on investment.

2. Rate your calls – Call tracking allows you to rate the quality of the calls you’ve just received. This allows you to not only see which channels are generating calls but also which channels/keywords are generating the best enquiries. For example, you may find that although your PPC campaign is driving a lot of calls, your SEO is providing stronger leads. This allows us to really optimise campaigns and upweight budgets into top performing campaigns.

3. Missed call alerts –Call tracking will send you a missed-call alert if a call occurs out of office hours – meaning you’ll never miss out on a useful enquiry. On top of this, if you get cut off from a customer, you can look into the call tracking portal and give them a call straight back.

4. Gather data on your customers – Collect a rich bundle of data from your calls. Call tracking shows you the caller’s number, their geographic location, the content viewed on your website, and allows you to download a recording of the call for training purposes.

5. Find out why your customer made the final call to action –  Call tracking can monitor a consumer’s interactions with your site before they place a call to you. Find out which aspect of your website drove them to get in touch.

For more information on call tracking, or to find out how you can implement call tracking for your business, get in touch with Peaky Digital today.