Call Tracking Defined
Call tracking is the technology that assigns unique phone numbers to ads, campaigns, keywords, and marketing channels in order to enable marketers to measure the effectiveness of their inbound marketing campaigns.
Unique Tracking Numbers
If you've ever seen the same commercial on two different TV channels or two different commercials on the same channel advertising the exact same product, there's a good chance that the phone number to call in each commercial is different. This is call tracking in its simplest form, predating the dynamic call tracking that is in use for many digital campaigns today. To see this in action, take a look at two versions of the legendary ShamWow commercial (version 1 | version 2). The content in each video is identical, but the phone number at the end of each video is different. If you call each number, you likely will talk to someone in the same call center - maybe even the same person! This is presumably because the company was placing this ad on many different channels and wanted to measure the effectiveness of each so they could throw more money at the higher-performing channels and stop spending money on the lower-performing channels.
Call Routing or Termination
Another important concept to understand with how call tracking works is routing, or termination. It's likely that each phone number that we saw in the ShamWow commercial actually was being forwarded to the same phone number that is owned by the call center. Your company may only own a single phone number, and there is no way to tell exactly which marketing effort every call comes from if every user dials the same number. However, with a call tracking solution, a marketer has the ability to distinguish calls generated by direct mail from calls generated by any paid search keyword because the number that appears on direct mail will not be the same number that appears on the website after a user clicks on a paid search ad.
Dynamic Call Tracking
To take it a step further, many call tracking platforms have dynamic tracking which assign a unique phone number to a user who makes it to your website. The information on how that user made it to your website is associated with that user, and any call placed to that number within a set period of time is attributed to that user. For example, let's say that you sell tennis lessons on your website, and you've been doing some digital marketing. I could search Google for the word "tennis lessons" and then click on your ad. At the same time, someone could search for "tennis instructor" and then click on your ad. Each of us may see a different phone number on the website, but when we call, we may both end up calling your cell phone because that is where your calls are being routed to. After we both call, you will be able to look in your call tracking platform and see that each of us used a different search keyword to find your website.
Why Your Business Needs Call Tracking
Famous consultant and author Peter Drucker once said "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." If marketing is important to your business, and your marketing efforts are focused on driving people to pick up the phone to give you their business, then call tracking is a must. Without it, you will not know how effective each marketing channel, campaign, ad, keyword, etc. are performing; therefore you can't measure it, and you can't improve it.
Call Tracking Platforms
Over the years, many call tracking platforms have come and gone. Many have merged or been acquired by larger companies looking to add call tracking as a core competency. Because call tracking is a mature technology, there are many reputable players in the space. Some of the companies you will encounter are:
Resources
There are many great resources for learning about call tracking as well as comparing providers. See below for a few of them:
Engage with Us
Whether you need help selecting a call tracking provider, or you need help with integrating your current provider with your other systems, we can help! Contact us by emailing info@fusion75.com or filling out the form below.
