A phone call can have many outcomes and sometimes the result isn’t always the one we’d like. When tracking calls, it’s important to distinguish between unwanted calls and those that result in a conversion. A conversion is a desired outcome defined as valuable to your business. In many cases it means a sale took place, or an appointment was set. In the case of a sale, attribution back to a call is key to tracking ROI driven from your paid search and other promotional campaigns.
It’s important to keep in mind that a phone call and a conversion are two distinct but related concepts. When a phone call is tracked, it is simply a conversation that takes place between a representative and a customer, regardless of that conversation’s outcome. A conversion is an event outcome that is advantageous for the business. The two are related in that phone calls can result in no conversions, one conversion, or multiple conversions.
Our sales conversion tracking can help businesses:
- identify which campaigns are resulting in positive ROI
- adjust paid search strategy based on revenue
- prove the value of their marketing spend
- measure how individual locations are performing
Closed Loop Attribution
Using the Marketing Edge sales conversion tracking feature, marketers can achieve closed loop attribution by matching ingested sales conversions to their source calls. Closed loop attribution allows marketers to quickly differentiate the most successful marketing channels for driving positive sales outcomes from conversations with customers. Businesses can then identify which marketing sources generated phone calls, allowing them to deduce which channels and campaigns are working and which merit less investment.
You can automate the upload of sales conversion data from calls directly into your paid search platforms to better inform automated bidding. This data allows you to easily identify campaigns, campaign types, and locations that drive the most revenue from quality calls.
A dental insurer uses closed loop attribution to track sales conversions and monitor how their calls affect overall revenue. Marketing Edge serves two objectives while parsing sales call and conversion data: prove to clients that they are driving real value by showing positive ROI, and identifying which campaigns are resulting in that positive ROI. These insights influence how the insurer should then allocate PPC spend in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.
Tracking Sales Conversions:
If a sale conversion attributed to a call within the Marchex platform was driven by paid search, it can be uploaded into Google Ads, SA360, or Microsoft Advertising for campaign optimization and reporting within those platforms. Google and Microsoft must have a record of the call to click/link back to for a paid search conversion to be accepted for reporting and optimization.
A hospitality company utilizes sales conversion tracking technology to find out how their sales call efforts impact revenue. With the tools in Marketing Edge, they can match conversions to paid search calls—thus allowing them to prove the value of their internal marketing spend, and adjust paid search based on resulting external revenue.
An apartment complex utilizes Marketing Edge to track tours booked and measure how individual building locations are performing. This information can then be used to assess how lucrative each location is, and which locations should be expanded versus downsized or closed.
Determining which marketing campaign efforts drive revenue is key for overall business success. To maximize revenue, businesses must be able to identify which marketing channels lead to a conversion, or positive outcome. Whether that outcome is a sale made or an appointment set up, it is in a business’ best interest to attribute a positive outcome back to the channel that generated it so they can adjust their campaign efforts accordingly. To learn more, get in touch with our team here.
