Inbound Phone Calls and Tracking Call Value

Have you ever sat down to look at the value or costs of prospects calling your business? You should.

Understanding where, how and when phone leads are finding your business is now fairly easy, because you have tools at your fingertips. You just need to do some calculations.

First, how can you know where someone called from?

Sure you should always ask “where did you find us?” or “how did you hear about us?” Many of our clients have a simple excel spreadsheets that receptionists use to ask a couple of questions before passing the lead on.  Other clients use a CRM to track the source of the lead.  All sources become important, because if you know the source of the lead, you can make some educated guesses on what advertising budgets you have used to gain the lead.

Second, are you actively tracking leads?

It should be common knowledge that you can cheaply purchase tracking phone numbers. We highly recommend that if you are doing branding campaigns, you should always use tracked phone numbers. Tracking can help you find better advertising media, compare reach and find the best performing ads.

You can also track phone calls from your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns and mobile ads. We have been tracking calls for clients for more than five years using services like ReachLocal, but now you can do it natively within Google AdWords.

Google AdWords allows you to track what is called “Click to Call” from any mobile ad.  Not many people know they can buy ad campaigns for only receiving calls, called “just calls” from within their Google Adwords account.  If you have been tracking the value of your leads, you may then know that the value of a click is more or less valuable than a lead giving you a direct call.

Some things you should consider when deciding on a “click to call” approach,

  • Are calls high urgency?
  • Are call values different than online orders?
  • Have you seen differences in conversion rates?
  • What is the cost to answer calls?

Looking for more authoritative “Just Calls” information? Here is Googles Explanation.

Is your website mobile optimized? Well, if you are tracking calls, you should have a mobile friendly website. Learn more about mobile websites.

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