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How To Track Phone Calls Generated From Your Landing PagePosted by guestblogger on February 6, 2009 in Landing Pages / Increasing Conversion Rates |
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This week we are featuring guest articles from our PPC Hero allies! We requested submissions from our readers and we received excellent responses from some great PPC bloggers! The PPC Hero team will return to our regularly scheduled articles next week. Enjoy!
Unfortunately for us search engine marketers, not all retailers take advantage of the e-commerce technology available to them. Some rely on the phone and others rely strictly on face-to-face sales. Most of us want to calmly explain to them the financial opportunities that come from selling their products or services online as opposed to simply promoting them. Some of us want to tie them in a chair until they agree.
A large number of business owners simply can’t sell from their web sites. A custom furniture builder, for example may need to price each job individually, and of course there are those who are simply too set in their ways.
This makes conversion tracking and ROI data difficult to ascertain. But there’s hope!
Dozens of company’s offer call tracking, e-mail tracking and source tracking. Who’s Calling, for example, will place a trackable 800 number in place of the local number on the consumers web site. This allows marketers to trace calls back to the web site or any other endeavors that they employ (including e-mail and affiliate marketing). Click Path, a subsidiary of Who’s Calling takes it a step further. The 800 number ONLY appears when a consumer visits the web site from a specified location (designated by the marketer). Their reporting interface narrows each call down by search engine (or other source), campaign, adgroup and even keyword. They also offer the consumer an option to record the outcome of a call by typing a code into the number pad (12 for sale, 13 for lead and so on). This is possibly the ultimate solution to determining the ROI for any given keyword.
Professionals who don’t have the advantage of working for a big agency who offers in-house technology to their consumers have the opportunity to use the services of company’s like Click Path so they too can offer this reporting to their consumers.
Most call tracking companies offer e-mail tracking as well. Put this on top of the basic conversion tracking that we can all achieve through Google Analytics, and you have acquired a competitive edge.
Other sources for call tracking are:
Rather than risk jail time, or worse, losing a client, forget about the rope and the chair and offer offline tracking solutions.
Guest Blogger Bio:John Stancliffe is the SEM/SEO Coordinator for the EW Scripps Co. and is the owner and author of www.KnoxvilleSEM.com. Since 2001, John has managed various search engine marketing and search engine optimization projects for various outlets including manufacturers, retailers and service industries.
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February 6th, 2009 at 11:27 am
[...] ads and figure out how many offline sales your online marketing efforts generate. PPC Hero has a good post on some of the ways to track phone calls generated by your search marketing campaigns. This is not an ideal solution but it is a step in the right direction. For more information on the [...]
February 6th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Nice post.
Here’s how we’re handling PPC spill-over to call centers.
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2009/01/13/discovering-untracked-ppc-sales/
February 6th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
I’ve been looking into having this set up as well. A lot of these services at pretty pricey. Has anyone had any experience with Mongoose Metrics? http://www.mongoosemetrics.com/
They were the most affordable phone tracking service I found and I also liked how well it seems to tie in to Google Analytics. (their website frankly looks nicer and more up to date too, heh) Any thoughts on their service?
Thanks!
February 10th, 2009 at 11:16 am
In reply to Mongoose Metrics – their Customer Service is absolutely horrible. I have called and emailed them dozens of times over the last 2 months and they just don’t respond.
It’s a shame because it is exactly what I need. Services like Who’s Calling cost too much and give me features that I already have with my other analytics packages.
I will try some of the other examples – thanks.
February 11th, 2009 at 9:57 am
I believe one of your links is broken for the “Who’s Calling” service. It should be http://www.whoscalling.com. Alternativley, there is another service you left out – http://www.WhoCalled.com
February 11th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Sorry… That second link should be http://www.MyCallTracking.com
February 11th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
@Adam: Fixed! Thanks for the note.
February 13th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
@ Hayden,
Thanks for the reply about mongoose metrics, what a shame!
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
As a Newbie, I am always searching online for articles that can help me. Thank you
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:32 am
Just a note to say that we use http://www.mongoosemetrics.com and are very happy with them. Have used them for about 9 months.
They are not geared up on the phone support side and given their pricing I can understand why!
The web site is simple and easy to use and all the information you need is available.
Sign up, commission a number in your area and you are good to go. Their integration with Google Analytics (or other packages) is pretty straight forward. As an example we generate an email every time a call is made.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:17 am
we have been using KeyMetric (www.keymetric.net) for about 8 months now and the data we get from them is incredible. Not only do we get real-time web analytics but they can track phone calls back the PPC keywords and search queries – so can look at how people are searching and pull new keywords that are very relevant. They also integrate into our call center applications so we can see the data in real-time. Nothing like mentioning to a customer that they came from Google searching for surf boards as you are speaking to them – blows them away and allows us to upsell them based on how they found us.
July 8th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Great post! There’s so many small to medium size businesses out there that can utilize this service, but they don’t even know it’s available to them. I work for Ifbyphone and the hardest part is informing them of this service.
Call Tracking
July 12th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
We have used ClickPath (sucked), Mongoose Metrics (sucked even worse =really bad data) and finally KeyMetric (Thankt goodness – YEAH!!!) http://www.keymetric.net. We now get real-time call-to-keyword and search term information with KeyMetric, but also get simplified online conversion data that extends far beyond Google analytics yet takes 2 minutes to set up (unlike the big analytics players that take weeks).
July 15th, 2009 at 5:51 am
@James: Thanks! Sorry to hear you had to go through to so many iterations to get to the right software. But as long as you get the where you’re going.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Keyword radar has a system to track sales by phone. You can track phone sales down to the keyword that the visitor used to get to the site. I tried it for my business and it works great. It’s at http://www.keywordradar.com
Good luck.