Many local businesses rely on the power of the phone call to entertain inquiries, convert leads, and build customer loyalty. It’s tech that’s been around for over a hundred years, and as you can imagine, it’s received a handful of upgrades since it was introduced.
Now, few additions to the telephone are as important to modern businesses than call tracking: software that lets establishments record calls, collect data about them, and categorize them as needed. Most call tracking providers generate unique phone numbers that redirect callers to a specified line, and marketers can assign these unique phone numbers to different ad materials (say, one number on the Facebook page and another on banner ads) to see how many leads each one generates.
If your mind isn’t already spinning with the different ways this tech can boost your sales, here are three good reasons why it’s worth investing in:
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Call Tracking Software Means Easy Call Recording
Most local businesses don’t have the resources to keep a floor manager on payroll. In fact, the odds are you likely have one or two people manning your phone line—if you aren’t taking on the job yourself. This makes monitoring the performance of the people you have on your end of the line difficult, which in turn makes it harder to pin down ways to improve.
The most basic function afforded by software like CallRail is call recording. Each call, no matter how long or short, is recorded and stored for your reference. You don’t need to hover over the people answering your phones (or scramble to recall how conversations went, if that person is you) to trace where things go wrong, or note details lost to faulty human memory.
This makes it easy to identify errors in your call protocols, and perfect the script used when closing in on leads. For leads calling in with questions, you can track which sales tactics tend to land more conversions. For loyal customers suddenly dropping off the radar, you can try and see if a phone call turned sour and deal with it accordingly. Call tracking lets you identify common problems and best practices with ease, and evaluate your employees (or yourself) with objective findings.
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Gather Better Information About Callers with Call Tracking
It can be tough to track caller behavior and keep tabs on which ones fit into the categories that are useful to your business. The people answering your phones can understandably forget to jot down notes or time the duration of your calls, especially when calls happen either very frequently, or very infrequently. Even automated data collection software can lead to more headaches than insights, since only a handful of them can manage to be both thorough in the metrics they gather, and clear in the way they pass the data back to you.
Call tracking software is leaps and bounds ahead in these regards, centralizing data on caller activity and classifications.
Average call durations per type and peak calling hours, for example, are automatically noted and easy to reference. These are important to know so you can prepare yourself and your staff accordingly, making sure that you’re all on top of your game during peak hours, and ready to handle conversations of any length with the advantage of foresight.
Call scoring is also a build-in feature, with the software prompting those taking calls to dial the appropriate number that corresponds with the caller’s value to your business (ex. if they were a lead). It rarely occurs to people to do this, but it’s a massive help when it comes to organizing your sales and marketing efforts. Never forget to follow up on a potential customer again, and have your existing customers feeling well-taken care of by your business.
Better yet is call tagging. Like call scoring, an automated prompt lets you categorize your calls into groups that you determine beforehand. It’s a cool function that lets you take charge over your own data metrics, and sort your callers by categories that matter to the strategies you’ve designed.
While I’m not sure if it’s a standard across all software providers, I know CallRail has it built in since it’s the brand I use when doing business.
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Make Smarter Business Decisions Through Call Tracking
The final and most significant perk of call tracking is the way it lets you narrow down the effectiveness of your different sales and marketing strategies. We’ve already talked about how it lets you refine your approach when taking calls, but it’s important to note that it can also give you insights into how well you’re marketing.
Casting a wide net by running different ads on different platforms is necessary, but difficult to evaluate. Marketing on Facebook, for example, is hard to pin down. You can track engagement and see how many people follow your CTA button (which SHOULD lead to a great landing page, by the way) but never really measure how many of them wind up as solid leads (i.e. who among your audience wind up calling).
Since call tracking sets you up with a range of unique phone numbers, monitoring the effectiveness of your ads and campaigns is literally as easy as checking the number of calls each number receives. One number is hooked up to your Facebook, another is on a billboard, and another is plastered all across town on your fliers. You can tell which ones are the best performers by a click of a button and a quick scan of a page.
Now, if you’re advertising on Google (which you should be) then you’re in for a treat: the best call tracking providers are also integrated with Google Adwords and Google Analytics. With call tracking, they aren’t only easier to evaluate thanks to the fact that you can affix specific phone numbers to each keyword, but now have stats on your calls incorporated into their reports as well.
Finally, going back to the example of Facebook, CallRail has a cool new feature that sends your callers’ data straight to the website when they’re tagged as leads. This means instant remarketing: each lead is included as an audience for your Facebook marketing the minute they call and express interest in your product or service.
All of this information leads to the same conclusion: smarter marketing decisions. Call tracking eliminates guesswork from the equation and leaves you with solid, data-driven decision making that puts you on the track to success.
Set up call tracking today to see the wonders it can do for your bottom-line. You stop wasting money on failed calls, missed opportunities, and ineffective advertising. In short, you’re fully equipped and ready to win over customers!