When was the last time you asked a “lead†how they heard about you? Was it from your Google Adwords campaign? Perhaps a Facebook ad? Or maybe even your billboard up in town? What if there were an easier way… One that connects each call that comes in to a particular marketing effort you have created. A no-grey-area type of marketing measurement that tells you exactly how each campaign is performing, and what is driving sales to your dealership. Well there is, and it’s called Call Tracking.
The internet may well have changed the way we market and invest our advertising dollars, but not all interaction and transactions take place online. In fact, people often still pick up the phone to ask questions, but if you are not tracking what steps they took before they dialed your number, how can you know which marketing efforts are leading to the best conversions?
The truth is, you can’t. Which is why we thought we’d introduce you to Christy.
Christy is a potential customer of yours. She lives within a 20 mile radius of your dealership and just received a promotion today. On her drive home this evening, she decides she’s fed up with her old Ford and can afford a more luxury vehicle. In fact, she’s got a small Mercedes in mind and as soon as she gets home, she does a Google search for Mercedes lease deals. It brings up an ad you’ve got running and she realizes it’s in her price range. She calls your dealership to see whether you have the car she is looking for in white and voila, a lead is born! But wait a minute — you’re in the dark about where that lead came from. Was it your Adwords campaign, you Facebook ad, or your dealership website? Heck, you’ve got a billboard ad running too right now which is on her route home from work. Could it have been that? You’re not sure, so you ask Christy, then hope that the information gets entered into your CRM and something useful eventually happens with it.
Now imagine this scenario instead. Christy called the number from your Adwords campaign. You know that for sure because you have a unique number for Adwords, a different one for your Facebook campaigns, and yet another on your website. This can become as granular as assigning a different number to individual keywords. You can even embed calls from directly within your ads. Because you are tracking which marketing efforts are generating which calls, you can see how each campaign is working, and you have a wealth of evidence-based data upon which to make future marketing decisions.
Besides the measurement aspect of tracking your incoming calls, there are a multitude of reasons why you should focus your “lead†effort on calls, period. Just look at your own online habits. When you perform a search on your mobile phone, are you more likely to fill out a form, or simply hit the “call number†button on the screen? I think that one answers itself. Filling out a lead form on a mobile device is challenging, while making a call is seamless. And then there’s the human aspects of calls. You still can’t beat a live person answering questions and handling objections, giving driving directions, or explaining product details. Unlike emails which can get lost in overflowing inboxes, or completed lead forms that might get missed altogether, with a call you have a call you have the opportunity to engage the prospective customer immediately. Finally, any concerns about having more than one number — or changing your business number — are long gone, with virtually everyone performing a real-time search for your contact details online rather than storing numbers in a contact list. And for those that do? You can simply route the number to one of your tracking numbers.
The moral of this story is, you cannot take credit for what you do not measure. We live in a complex world of splitting budgets between different marketing avenues, measuring conversions, and optimizing based upon that information. Now you can do all of that with the insight and accuracy your hard earned dollars warrant thanks to call tracking, and the best part is, it’s a relatively inexpensive yet highly effective way to track campaign performance.