Have you ever felt like giving up and letting your paid search campaigns run on autopilot? You think, “There’s no way I’m squeezing more conversions out of these campaigns without more money.” I can’t tell you how to get more money, but I can tell you where to get tons of new actionable data with the potential to make a big difference – and it’s phone calls.
Phone Calls and the New Customer Journey
Let me explain. As it turns out, the new customer journey is all about the phone. You can see from Invoca’s infographic (embedded below) that mobile search drives 45% of phone calls, and according to Google, 61% of people say they always or frequently need to call a business from a mobile search ad. In fact the vast majority of phone calls are referred by digital marketing.
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The point is, people are responding to digital marketing by making phone calls, and those calls are chock-full of insights with the power to boost performance. Here are just a few examples:
1. Top Campaigns Driving Calls
This is a basic insight with big implications. Think about what you can do when you know how people respond to your ads.
For example, if you know one campaign is driving a massive volume of phone calls, but few online conversions, you can:
- Invest more in that campaign – because calls are typically high-value leads!
- Optimize your messaging to encourage phone calls
- Make sure you target people on their mobile devices
2. Peak Call Times
If you’re using any type of call tracking solution, this is a standard data point. But have you ever thought about how this could inform your advertising strategy?
Let’s say you have a campaign that drives the most calls on Tuesday between the hours of 11:00 am and 2:00 pm. With this information, you can make sure to only serve ads with click-to-call buttons at this time. Alternatively, encourage an online-only experience during days and times when you receive the fewest calls.
3. Demographic Details
Who doesn’t want to know their customers on a deeper level? Demographic information can be used to improve targeting, messaging, and your overall strategy. For example, capturing the geographic location of callers’ ads lets you focus your efforts on key regions and where your most valuable customers come from. Some call intelligence solutions can attach demographic details to each call so you get details like age and gender. Yes please!
4. Caller Intent
Now this is where the story gets really juicy. Phone calls provide almost limitless insights into your customers’ priorities, questions, and overall state of mind. Using call intelligence to scan each conversation you can capture important signals and events that happen during a phone call. Did the caller mention a competitor? Was the caller conducting early stage research? Was this a current customer that needed help? Was it a junk call from someone looking for a job?
Having the answers to these questions will help you craft extremely personalized campaigns and a highly relevant consumer experience.
5. Call Outcome
Knowing the outcome of each call can significantly improve your targeting, budgeting and overall digital advertising ROI. When you know if a call resulted in a sale or other important conversion action, you have a much better understanding of your campaign performance and how best to optimize.
For example, if most of your calls result in lost opportunities, you may need to adjust your targeting or do a better job of qualifying prospects with the type of language and imagery you use in your campaigns. And you know that while a campaign may be driving a lot of calls, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a successful campaign generating revenue.
About the author
Amber Tiffany is a marketing manager at Invoca with a background in SEM, lead generation, and content marketing. Invoca is a call intelligence solution that helps marketers learn who's calling and why.
