High-quality data is being used more frequently to fuel marketing decisions. Yet with the vast amount of marketing initiatives out there, which initiatives are the most pressing for marketing executives? Right now, B2B marketers are investing in high-quality data to support these top three marketing tactics: cross-channel marketing, cross-device marketing, and lookalike targeting initiatives.
And as more and more marketers shift their investments into data-driven marketing, they’re expecting to see a rise in revenue. This mentality makes sense, but in order to grow revenue with their data-driven initiatives, marketers must embrace this secret weapon.
What’s Data-Driven Marketing’s Secret Weapon?
It’s simple. The secret weapon to creating high-quality data that will help marketers conquer the top three marketing tactics mentioned earlier is the call conversion. Digital marketing is driving billions of call conversions. As more and more consumers adopt smartphones, and advertisers allocate more of their budget to mobile, you can expect to see these conversions rise. Call conversions will become a staple in the omni-channel customer journey and, as such, marketers will need to adopt a call attribution technology to gather and analyze their call data.
Here’s how call conversion data will help you conquer cross-channel marketing, cross-device marketing, and lookalike targeting initiatives.
Cross-Channel Marketing
Omni-channel marketing. Multi-device marketing. Cross-channel marketing. No matter which term you prefer to use, they all require the same thing: Creating a personalized and engaging experience for customers and prospects across every marketing channel, on every device they use.
Consumers rarely engage with brands on only one channel. The customer journey often begins on one channel before segueing into a few others and ultimately converting. Think about it. If we see a TV commercial for a product or service and it sparks an immediate interest, we might visit the website for more information or call if there’s a phone number being promoted. As a result, it’s important (and not necessarily easy) for marketers to create a seamless experience across their marketing channels.
Where do call conversions fit in? There’s an opportunity to collect more data as consumers engage across channels. Let’s say you’re running paid search ads to a mobile audience. You’re trying to get them to buy online, but for some reason, your conversion rates are underperforming. They abandon their shopping cart and never come back. Here’s the catch: they actually didn’t leave you. They called.
Call attribution empowers you with insight into the marketing activities driving phone calls. When you’re armed with call conversion data, can make stronger optimization decisions because you’re analyzing it alongside your other important conversions, such as clicks and impressions. Here’s one example of how the customer journey includes phone calls:
Cross-Device Marketing
This leads us into a deeper dive of cross-channel marketing, which requires the understanding of cross-device marketing. Users see your ads on different screens (devices) depending on the channels. Creating a holistic experience across screens is an important challenge for marketers to master. Especially when:
- Digital consumers own 3.64 connected devices.
- 90% of consumers will switch between devices before completing a purchase.
For example, while sitting on the couch one night I make a quick mobile search when an idea randomly pops into my head. But then during my lunch break the next day, I might conduct more extensive research on my computer. Or perhaps I call a local agent before scheduling an appointment. Here’s the point: we engage on different devices at different times and at different stages of our customer journey.
Where do call conversions fit in? When you know which devices drive conversions, and the types of conversions at different stages in the customer journey, you’ll know how to bid on keywords or place ads on certain devices.
For example, maybe you notice you’re getting a lot of calls at one geographic location. And you identify that a specific paid search campaign is driving quality calls from smartphone users early on in the customer journey. You can reallocate some of your desktop budget and work to optimize your mobile campaigns.
Lookalike Targeting
Your marketing is going to be much more effective if it reaches the right audience, at the right time and place, and at the right price. Lookalike audiences are a great way to reach the right audience. They’re exactly what they sound like. They’re new audiences that look just like your current customer base. By pulling data from your CRM system you can easily create lookalike audiences to target consumers on a variety of marketing channels (e.g., Facebook). You can even target people by location, interest, demographics, email address, and more.
Where do call conversions fit in? You can take your targeting up a notch by creating lookalike audiences based on caller data. And if you didn’t want to drive phone calls from existing customers, you could exclude them. After all, you already have their business. Calls from them are likely for customer support, so it will be good for your CPA and CPL if you exclude them from your acquisition campaigns. No matter what your needs are, it’s good to know that call data provides you with additional audience targeting abilities.
Once you integrate call attribution data into your marketing tools, you’ll be equipped with more high-quality data to aid in your data-driven marketing optimizations. Interested in learning more? Get the Digital Marketer’s Guide to Call Attribution today.