January 2009
How to Triple Conversions Overnight
The ultimate goal of any website is some sort of conversion, whether it's a purchase on an ecommerce site, or a filled-out contact form on a lead generation site. While many in the Internet marketing field - including us - obsess about generating onlineconversions, we too often forget about the other ways that prospective customers convert.
Specifically, many pick up the phone and call the number posted on the website. While these leads are handled by sales staff who log the call and its resolution into some sort of lead tracking software, the source of the lead is lost. Did the caller come from the website? If so, how did they get to the website? Was it from an organic search engine listing, an email campaign, a banner ad, or a pay-per-click ad on a search engine? Most companies have no idea.
What if I told you that you could triple your conversions overnight? Well, okay, the number of conversions won't actually change at all, but your ability to track them may allow marketing departments to take credit for triple the leads as compared to what they're claiming now, on average. Let me explain.
We have been testing call tracking software on a few of our clients' sites, specifically Marchex Voice Services (fka VoiceStar). The way it works is that the company's real phone number is removed from the site and replaced by a small piece of code that automatically inserts a different toll-free number, depending on the way the visitor came to the site. For example, someone who clicks on an organic listing on Google will see one phone number, someone clicking on a Google paid listing will see a second phone number, someone clicking on a Yahoo organic listing will see a third phone number, and so on. Email newsletters, banner ads and other Internet marketing vehicles can have their own phone numbers as well.
When a prospect calls that toll-free number, it quickly forwards the caller to the real phone number - it's transparent, so the prospect doesn't know the difference. But the system logs that information so you'll know which marketing vehicle generated the lead.
We recently analyzed the results that our clients have experienced and were astonished at the results. Of all their conversions driven by search engines, only 34% on average occurred online (from a contact form, for example). A surprising 66% came via phone call instead. This data is from a limited sample of only three clients; however, it was surprisingly consistent among them. And the three companies are in very different industries (technology, construction, and professional services).
What this tells us is that anyone who is only measuring online conversions could be vastly underreporting their data, and is making important decisions based on a fraction of the data they could be gathering. If they were to include phone calls, they may instantly triple the number of conversions they can trace back to the marketing vehicle that generated it. Think of the impact this could have on market budget allocation decisions, not to mention the increased accolades that the marketing department could be earning from their executives!
Needless to say, we're convinced and are in the process of rolling out Marchex Voice Services' call tracking to all our clients. (There are other, similar services on the market as well, such as ClickPath and Mongoose Metrics, but we haven't tried them.) These services are surprisingly affordable - they can start at as little as a few hundred dollars a month for companies that don't have a huge inbound call volume.
More precisely identifiable response data means smarter, more profitable decisions — so if your company isn't already using call tracking technology, it's time to jump on this before your competitors do.
About Us
Prominent Placement, Inc., is a full-service, award-winning search engine marketing firm based in Atlanta, GA, serving clients throughout the US since 2001. We provide strategic search marketing solutions, delivering efficiencies that traditional marketing channels can't touch, with a level of client service that can't be matched. We manage the entire SEM process, so that businesses can focus on what they do best. Because every business is unique, so are the recommendations we make, backed by hard numbers that give decision makers the confidence and knowledge they need to make smarter decisions.
For more information, visit our website or call 888.SEM.MKTR.
