Are Contractors Leveraging Their Call Tracking to Their Full Potential?

13 MIN READ
Power up your marketing plan with call tracking

If you’re not tracking your customers through every step of their journey, what’s stopping you?

If you’re like most contractors, you use a number of different marketing methods to generate leads, fill schedules, and close business. But do you know exactly which methods are the most effective for making the phone ring? What about which landing pages are generating the most appointments, or which channels give you the best ROI?

To answer these questions, you need to pinpoint where every single lead comes from and decide on what type of attribution model you are going to put in place. Consistency here is key.

“Once you choose an attribution model for your leads, stick with it for a while, know where your ‘blind spots’ are, and remember when you make changes so you know how the data you are looking at was compiled,” says John J. Antognoli, Senior Client Advisor at Company 119. “Comparing data from different attribution models is not an apples to apples comparison.”

Some businesses will use a “last touch” model of attribution for leads, which means they are giving 100 percent of the credit to the last marketing channel a customer came from. Others apply a “first touch” model, where they give credit to the first marketing channel a customer interacted with. And still others use complex approaches where they give partial credit to the multiple marketing channels a consumer interacts with as they go through the sales funnel. 

Let’s look at how these different attribution models might work with an example: Maybe your last customer called you—but before that, they clicked on a PPC ad, went to your website, went back to Google and did a few more searches, then typed in your website address to get your phone number, and then placed the call to you. 

  • Last Touch attribution model: This would give credit to “direct traffic” as the lead source for the phone call, since the customer typed in the website address and then called you.
  • First Touch attribution model: This would give credit to PPC, since a paid ad was the first marketing they interacted with.
  • Hybrid attribution model: This might give direct traffic and PPC 50/50 credit each, or it might change the weighting by the amount of time that passed between the two touchpoints. In this model, you could use any other number of variables to try and best give accurate credit to the multiple marketing touchpoints a consumer might have in their journey.

“Applying an attribution model to your phone calls can help you paint a clear picture of the customer journey so you better understand what marketing channels are working for you,” says Antognoli. “Once you know what works, you can ideally replicate more of that success–or as we like to say, ‘you begin optimizing your marketing.’”

 


 

Are You Leveraging Your Call Tracking Metrics to Their Full Potential as a Contractor?

Even in today’s always-on 24/7/365 digital age, the total number of calls that businesses receive has increased—and it’s only going to keep growing. After all, most homeowners start their customer buying journey by finding providers online. When they’ve completed their search, they often call to schedule an appointment, get a quote, or make a purchase. These calls are often the most valuable marketing conversions—and you need to start using them to your advantage.

According to 2021 marketing data, 40 percent of home services customers who call from search end up making a purchase. What’s more, homeowners shopping for roofing, home remodeling, and deck and patio services spend the most when they call from search to make a purchase. On average, local homeowners spend anywhere from $84 to $4,589 when they convert on a call placed after a search. 

 


 

How Does Call Tracking for Contractors Actually Work?

Let’s say your business is running PPC ads on Google to generate leads. With call tracking, if someone arrives at the website from your search ads, the phone number will be different from the one used if they came to the site organically–based on the rules you make, you can have different phone numbers dynamically swapped on your website.

So each channel, online or offline, can be attributed to a different phone number, all of which are forwarded to your mainline–making it easy for both you and your customers. No need to ask them where they found you unless, of course, you want to make conversation. You can just log in to the backend of your call tracking provider and view your data, generally in real-time.

Call tracking goes beyond the simple capabilities of caller ID and allows you to tap into advanced analytics from phone calls to make the most of your marketing dollars. Beyond the number of calls that came from a specific campaign, call tracking provides you with data that can help streamline your efforts and lock in the best possible ROI on your budget.

For instance, call metrics like call duration and caller location provide important data on the overall effectiveness of your company’s marketing in a specific neighborhood–and you won’t have to wonder if it was your email campaign, a direct mailer, or a billboard.

If you’re not leveraging the right data, you’ll never truly optimize your marketing efforts to maximize your success. From improving the customer experience to upgrading your landing page copy, it’s time to start leveraging your call tracking metrics to reinvent your marketing strategy.

 


 

Best Marketing Channels for Call Tracking

Whether you’re a call tracking newbie or veteran, you can use call tracking to collect valuable data on the phone leads you receive from nearly every marketing channel, including:

  • PPC (Google Ads)
  • Landing pages
  • Social media
  • Billboards
  • Direct mail
  • Email

To get the most out of your data, we recommend using a different call tracking number for each marketing channel and campaign. This way, you can track your performance more accurately and adjust your ad spend to optimize your budget.

For example, if you’re running a Facebook campaign to raise brand awareness and a Google Ads campaign to advertise a seasonal discount, you’ll want to assign each campaign a different phone number. You’ll not only be able to see how well your individual campaigns are performing, but you’ll also gain insight into which types of campaigns drive the best results for your business.

 


 

What Call Tracking Metrics Should You Pay Attention To?

To know what marketing works, you need to know what marketing converts. According to an eMarketer study, less than 10 percent of marketers say their company’s attribution knowledge is excellent. That’s right—over 90 percent of marketers aren’t confident in their analytic capabilities.

But you’re going to be different. You’re not going to flush precious marketing dollars down the drain to fuel campaigns that aren’t driving any results. 

Instead, you’re going to track call metrics so you know the ins and outs of every single marketing channel. And to do that, you’re going to track every conversion, including phone calls. Here’s what metrics will help you get the job done right.

 

1. Call Volume

Any basic call tracking tool should record the number of calls you receive. This way, you won’t have to waste precious time manually tracking each call in an Excel spreadsheet (or worse, carrying a binder with you wherever you go). 

As the calls roll in, you’ll collect important information on call patterns. For example, you can identify which times yield the most calls, which days of the week are best for conversions, and what type of callers contact your business most often. 

Even if you’re already tracking calls manually, call tracking software can give you incredibly detailed information. It’ll save you time by identifying patterns you might not notice on a spreadsheet—and it’ll leave you with actionable data you can use to finetune your marketing plan.

The best part? You can categorize your call data into different marketing campaign metrics reports. You might segment your PPC campaigns from your offline campaigns—or get even more specific by segmenting your lead generation Facebook campaign from your brand awareness Facebook campaign. This makes it easy and convenient for your business to drill down a specific campaign’s performance and ROI.

 

2. First-Time Callers

Since call tracking tools record every incoming call, you can effectively track first-time callers who are contacting your business. First-time calls are key—and you should be listening to each call to start better qualifying leads and guiding your callers down the sales funnel. Better yet, you’ll be able to identify exactly which strategies are driving those new calls.

 

3. Call Duration

Not every call is created equal. Some calls yield more qualified leads—and some calls won’t ever turn into paying customers. As a general rule of thumb, the longer the call, the more likely the caller is to turn into a quality lead. Think about it: Why would you waste time talking to a sales agent if you weren’t interested in that company’s product or service?

Call tracking software tracks the duration of each call, so you can figure out which strategies open the doors to longer conversations—and the callers that are more likely to convert down the line.

Like call volume data, you can filter call duration reports to highlight specific data about a call. For example, if you’ve set a minimum call length that is considered a quality lead, then your call duration data is going to be more accurate and actionable. By tracking the duration of each phone call (and filtering out spam calls, wrong numbers, etc.), you can quickly identify which callers are likely to convert and which aren’t worth your time.

 

4. Call Time of Day and Location

If you’re running PPC campaigns, you’ve probably already experimented with changing bids by the time of day and location. Call tracking data reveals which time of day and which locations lead to the most conversions so you can tailor your bids and get the most bang out of your advertising budget.

For example, if your data shows that you receive its best lead calls on Tuesday mornings, you can increase your ad spend for that timeframe. On the other hand, if you know your Saturday afternoon calls don’t lead to conversions, try lowering your bid during those hours.

 

5. Landing Page Performance

Most of the time, prospects have two options when visiting your landing page: They can fill out a contact form or call your business. Without call tracking, you’ll only be able to see how many completed forms were sent in. As a result, your PPC conversion rate will seem drastically lower than it really is.

Once you start tracking phone calls from PPC landing pages, you’ll get a better picture of your campaign performance. Call tracking metrics can give you essential insights into your landing page performance—from the pages that generate the most phone calls to the pages that convert the most leads. After you’ve figured out which pages aren’t driving results, you can implement some of our landing page best practices to ignite your conversion rate.

 


 

Unique Ways to Leverage Call Tracking for Contractors

Now that you know what call tracking can do for your home services marketing plan, it’s time to take the next step. Here’s how to integrate call tracking metrics into your marketing plan so you can start driving the right results.

 

1. Track the Customer Journey Offline

Even when phone calls drive your customers beyond the reach of traditional marketing tools, you don’t have to miss out on important data. Call tracking bridges the gap in online-to-offline conversions, giving you a full picture of how customers interact with your brand. With detailed reports at your fingertips, you’ll be able to optimize the customer experience, tweak your campaigns, and maximize your ROI.

When it comes to offline call tracking, how many tracking lines you use will depend on your marketing goals:

  • For source-level attribution, you need a tracking line for each channel. 
  • For keyword attribution, you need more phone numbers to track each session on your landing pages.

 

2. Streamline the Sales Process

Imagine knowing exactly which members of your sales team are best at converting leads into paying customers. Once you get a phone call from a qualified lead, you could connect them with the right salesperson at the right time and close the sale. You won’t have to waste your lead’s time with unsuccessful outreach attempts and you’ll set your sales team up for success when they need it most. Sounds like a win-win, right?

Call tracking metrics can help. How? By showing you what percentage of leads each salesperson actually converts. Sales data is invaluable to your marketing success because it can help you:

  • Determine which salespeople should handle the most calls
  • Identify salespeople that need additional training
  • Evaluate the performance of your team regarding promotions, bonuses, etc.

At the end of the day, empowering your sales team with the right data can make all the difference. It creates an open line of communication between your sales and marketing teams while making your team members that much more productive. Plus, with the right data, your sales team will be able to provide a seamless, personalized experience that makes your prospects feel valued.

So, what are you waiting for? If you want your sales team to be the best they possibly can, you need to start utilizing your call tracking metrics to their full potential.

 

3. Integrate Call Data With Your CRM

The best way to leverage your call tracking metrics? Integrate call data with your CRM and advertising tools. A comprehensive CRM tool can give you a better picture of the customer journey so you can effectively allocate your budget, track your performance across different campaigns, and bring your most important data into focus.

Call tracking software is crucial, but it shouldn’t be your only source of lead tracking data. Our clients combine call tracking solutions with other marketing tools, like a CRM, for a holistic view of their lead sources.

Once you’ve started collecting some call tracking data, you can see how your customers interact with your brand, figure out which keywords they’re using, and understand what channels they prefer. Then, you can tap into key insights from your CRM to refine your marketing plan.

To take your customer journey to the next level and speed up the path to conversion, feed that data back into your bid management platform to make real-time bid adjustments based on your conversion indicators. And if you’re not doing it already, start prepping your sales and marketing team with data to keep everyone on the same page.

 


 

Power Up Your Marketing Plan With Call Tracking

Even if you’re tracking every online lead, you won’t know which marketing channels actually drive conversions until you start tracking phone calls. Whether you’ve been playing the digital marketing game for years or you’re just getting started, you can’t afford to ignore the power of call tracking data.

Looking to gain more visibility into every conversion? If you’re ready to connect the dots between your online campaigns and offline conversions, our team can help you make the most of your call tracking metrics.

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