Have you recently calculated the marketing or advertising cost of generating an incoming telephone lead or purchase? If so, were you surprised? This post explains tracking phone numbers and recording of incoming calls. The three main benefits of call tracking are: 1-to determine the source of business, 2- to monitor lead quality, and 3- to gauge your team’s effectiveness of handling the call. We find these tools particular useful for two categories of businesses: a- appointment based businesses; and b- businesses that have phone representatives answering incoming calls.
Asking a caller how they learned about your company is often not reliable
There are two reasons: 1-Phone representatives often do not remember to do it for every call, especially when the next caller is holding. 2- Even if asked, many customers do not know the difference between an Internet search ad and an organic search result. The solution: tracking phone numbers that forward to your main telephone number.
How tracking telephone numbers work
Tracking numbers forward to the phone number you designate. During the forwarding process, tracking phone technology gathers useful marketing data. Tracking numbers come in both toll-free and local numbers that look similar to your phone number. With most tracking numbers, you have the option to record the conversation. Depending on the requirements of each state, one or more parties must be advised of the recording via an outgoing message.
Tracking phone numbers have long been used by some types of businesses, such as automobile dealers and in print advertising. They can also be coded or substituted dynamically into your website for tracking calls from multiple sources.
Clients need to know what happens to a tracking number when it is no longer actively used for advertising. It is useful to ask if the tracking number provider you are considering allows you the option to “port over” a phone number you have used. This simply means that you can “move” the tracking number to another phone service provider.
Tracking incoming calls to revenue
Your goal is more business and profits, not just more phone calls, right? Then you must understand the source and quality of incoming calls and how effectively your company is handling them. It’s that simple. Tracking calls combined with improved internal handling allows you to spend less to get the new customers and leads you need and at the time you need them. There are several ways to correlate incoming call data to customer acquisition and purchases. If the number of transactions is not too many, the comparison can be done manually with spreadsheets. If your business has many transactions monthly, you might need to aggregate leads into a lead management system or CRM. Having one system in which leads from all sources of conversions, such as online leads and off-line phone calls from your website, are collected has several time-saving advantages.
We look forward to your comments and questions.