Phone Leads: Key Metrics for Data-Driven Marketers

As data-driven marketers who optimize phone lead campaigns for many clients, we’re often faced with the task of capturing the data of full detail regarding a customer’s research and behaviors that occurred before the call. By monitoring the full call lifecycle, we can give companies a complete picture of how their advertising programs are driving phone leads.

That said, this is a multi-component task.

Step One: Capture consumer engagement points prior to a call.

As a consumer yourself, you know that it’s typical to spend hours of time researching a product or service online, prior to making a call. According to Search Engine Land, “83% of people who search online for a product or service ultimately contact a business offline.” So, by using call measurement tools, we can online and offline activities back to the original lead source – say a display ad.

Step Two: Tracking the Pre-Call Behavior

In order to be as specific as possible when tracking leads, place call tracking numbers with in a search campaign. This will helpful in determining what drove that website visit in the first place, e.g., paid search keyword, banner ad, SEM campaign. Digging deeper, a company can discover what pages on their site were visited pre call. This additional information can help determine what consumers are looking for, such as coupons, inventory options, etc.

Step Three: Attribution

Proper lead attribution is paramount for anyone trying to optimize their ad strategy and performance, but it is especially critical for advertising resellers and publishers who use multiple distribution partners to service both large franchises and small businesses. – Search Engine Land.

This will allow you to determine low performing distributors and optimize your campaign.

Step Four: Routing

Though you may be creating a campaign for a large franchise, you can still give the campaign a personalized feel by routing calls to a specific geographic location.

Search Engine Land reports – For example, if a consumer searches Google for auto repair services, finds a national brand and calls the number listed in the paid search ad (call tracking number), he or she will be automatically routed to their local franchise location.

Thanks to these kinds of call tracking techniques, data-driven marketers can give clients a better image of advertising performance and correctly attribute lead sources.