4 blind spots call tracking will reveal in your large-scale marketing program

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Developing a marketing strategy for a larger business involves coordinating a lot of data from a variety of channels.

Unlike smaller businesses that lack the resource and often the necessity for large scale efforts, bigger companies still find it difficult to focus their resources in the right direction.

Having a huge marketing budget doesn’t guarantee great results. You need to make data-backed decisions to ensure you’re generating the highest return on investment (ROI) from your efforts. And if you’re not collecting data from all sources of inbound and outbound responses you’re going to run into some blind spots when making strategic marketing decisions. Especially if you’re not tracking offline lead channels, like phone calls.

Enter call tracking – which bridges the gap between sales calls and advertising spend. Call tracking makes it possible to monitor exactly which online marketing channels are driving phone calls and customers to your business.

Here are four blind spots call tracking will reveal in your enterprise’s large-scale marketing program. 

Siloed Channels

No business wants silos in their marketing efforts – it means your channels are isolated, disconnected and incomplete. Whether you’re investing in multiple platforms or perhaps just one or two, using them in a way where they aren’t working together will simply leave you in the dark over the true performance of your digital marketing, as you’re labelling one channel as the main focus for driving results.

If your enterprise is investing in different marketing avenues, then you need to prove the worth of each channel. For example, let’s say you are investing in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimisation (SEO). Your PPC team noticed certain keywords have been generating conversions, but haven’t shared this information with your SEO team.

Sales and marketing teams achieve the best results when they are aware of each other’s efforts. Operating in separate silos no longer works. Now, most of a purchase decision is made before a lead lands with the sales team. But how can you tell which channels have played a part in this process?

Call tracking, from suppliers such as Mediahawk, allows you to gather data on which channels are driving important sales calls, right from the beginning of the buying cycle, up to when a keyword is used to trigger a PPC ad and right until a sale is made. This provides full visibility of both sales and marketing’s impact on a conversion.

You can also share these insights between sales and marketing to help nurture leads, for your sales team will have a key awareness of each prospect’s needs.

Lack of Cohesion Between Online to Offline Experience

Consumers now favour the omnichannel approach, they expect the same level of service whether they’re picking up the phone or sending an email.

Now, it’s estimated 70% of consumers phone your business directly from a search results page. So, if your enterprise closes a lot of sales over the phone, you need to know which online channels are responsible for these leads, making omnichannel tracking essential.

Visitor level call tracking allocates unique numbers to your marketing campaigns to determine which online channels are generating over-the-phone leads. This will prove your exact ROI from each marketing channel, joining the gaps between digital spend and offline sales.

For example, let’s say you were an online retailer that was using PPC advertising to bid on relevant keywords. If a user clicks through to your website directly from your ad and decides to pick up the phone, it’s clear your PPC campaigns are driving offline, over-the-phone conversions.

Integrating call tracking into Google Ads allocates unique, tracked telephone numbers to anyone that visits your website via a PPC ad. You can use this data to attribute which keywords are driving the most leads and use this to make data-backed decisions on future campaigns.

Driving Value from Customer Data

Although consumers are favouring the omnichannel approach now, it doesn’t mean the path to conversion has become simpler. Remember – it’s still unlikely your leads are going to convert the instant they hit your website. In fact, it’s now estimated it takes between six to eight touchpoints before a viable lead is generated. You need to remind these potential leads of your enterprise’s offering before you lose them to a competitor.

However, knowing which channels have the highest chance of re-engaging with these lost leads is crucial for earning the highest ROI from your efforts. They need to be data-driven decisions based on which campaigns are already driving the highest engagement.

Through call tracking, you can use the data insights on each of your marketing channels to add further value. For example, if a user clicked on one of your PPC ads but failed to convert (i.e. send an email or pick up the phone), you could analyse this journey and integrate the data to create PPC retargeting ads. This way, a customer would be reminded of your business, making a conversion likelier.

Handing Leads Over to Sales

Once a consumer is far enough down the purchase funnel to be handed over to your sales team, they need to have knowledge on all their previous interactions with your business, who they are and why they’re calling.

Without this information, your sales team risks losing a lead at the very last hurdle, leaving all your efforts wasted.

Call tracking analytics produces real-time insights about each caller. So once a lead is handed over to your sales department, they can view insights on the customer they are communicating with. This could include the keywords they used to find your website, the page they landed on and whether they have called before. They’ll be able to tailor conversations to specific customers and, as a result, close more deals.

Together this all forms a frictionless customer journey. Customers will feel like your sales team knows exactly what they want, and happy customers lead to better conversion rates.

Despite larger businesses having better budgets to work with, it doesn’t mean they are free from challenges. Without insightful data to fuel their marketing decisions, enterprises risk losing leads during the last stages of the customer journey.