We’ve put together this comprehensive call tracking guide to share our knowledge and practical tips and help you navigate the call tracking process.
Whether you’re a business owner, marketer, or solopreneur, invest a moment of your time and learn how call tracking software can impact your marketing attribution, campaign optimization, and ROI.
Get ready to uncover everything there is to know about dynamic call tracking and its marketing impact. Invest your time. Increase your ROI.
How do you typically invest your marketing budget: online form conversions or call conversions? While both methods have advantages, inbound phone calls have undeniable superiority over online forms.
Marketers and business owners used to turn a blind eye to the importance of capturing and analyzing call data either because of the time, effort, and technology it requires or the belief in the complexity of the call tracking process forced on them.
The technology, however, makes it simpler, not harder. With so many bold, dynamic call tracking solutions, phone calls are no longer considered an afterthought. After all, consumers who call a business are more likely to convert than those who fill out a web form, making call tracking data key for those looking to achieve higher conversion rates.
With such high value associated with inbound calls, it becomes essential to track and measure both — phone calls and digital marketing campaigns — so that companies can make improvements and optimizations. The key to accomplishing all this is call tracking.
Call tracking is a technology that tells brands exactly which marketing efforts drove customers to their business. Like a company asking a customer, “How did you find us?,” call tracking tools provide an automated and more accurate way to answer that question.
Making the connection between their marketing efforts and inbound calls is typically referred to by businesses as marketing attribution. It tells them what initiatives and campaigns they can attribute each call and web lead to. When a company learns its attribution, it gives them visibility on offline and online marketing performance.
But what if a brand looking to save time and money resorts to using a poorly designed call tracking system? Is it going to affect its brand awareness and reputation?
With the right software for call tracking, businesses can eliminate the guesswork, explore the entire customer journey, and more.
Let’s take a closer look at what a call tracking software can help brands discover.
| Call attribution | Assists brands with identifying marketing campaigns and efforts that drive the desired call outcomes. |
| Call tracking data and analytics | Helps marketers leverage automated call distribution systems to identify the best distribution methods. |
| Insights into the caller journey | Employ cutting-edge technology to streamline the call process through various call distribution features, enhance the customer journey, and instantly connect consumers to brand representatives. |
| ROI and call tracking reports | A software collects first-party data to calculate key marketing metrics such as cost per acquisition or lead scoring to focus and bring in more high-quality leads. |
On top of that, it enables marketers to capture critical caller information that can be used to ensure successful multi-touch attribution and improve customer service.
Today’s fastest-growing and most successful businesses recognize that providing an exceptional customer experience is one of the principal competitive differentiators. But without the right call tracking software, they can miss out on data derived from inbound calls like their sources, associated conversions, and, most importantly, their context.
Tracking and recording software can aid in the optimization of ad campaigns as well as the interpretation of captured data by both marketing and sales teams. Analyzing specific metrics enables companies to analyze phone calls and discover the outcomes of every customer conversation.
Most brands already use Google Analytics to assess website activity and customer interactions. But with the right call data, marketers also get insights into the caller journey and analyze visitor activity in more detail. The visitor-level tracking can help businesses capture all the essential customer information and assess every important metric.
Let’s examine the most important call tracking metrics that marketers should pay close attention to.
Understanding which campaigns and marketing channels generate the most inbound calls is critical to making educated decisions and allocating the marketing budget effectively.
With dynamic number insertion (DNI), brands can easily track and monitor customer interactions. Simply put, you can examine the path of every visitor who discovers your website and decides to dial up a call. In addition, it allows tracking customer journeys from the point of call origin, like an organic search result or a PPC ad, up to the conversion.
Businesses can fine-tune their ad targeting by determining which geographic region generates the most high-intent and high-quality leads. In addition, it can help them adjust ad frequency, depending on areas where their target audience is the most active and the most leads are generated.
It is generally believed that the longer the call, the greater the lead quality. But that’s not always the case.
Focusing on the length of the call is a rookie mistake. The software allows marketers to drill down to assess all the call data, including listening to recordings and qualifying them. Besides, it will help you filter out spam, robot, and telemarketing calls. Therefore, investing in the right software that offers a call recording function is essential.
By implementing keyword-level tracking as part of a call tracking solution, brands can attribute all the generated phone calls to keywords and assess the performance of standard and tailored search terms. On top of that, it can assist marketers with identifying new keywords to focus on and outperform the competition.
Every business had to deal with sources or channels that generated less-than-average quality traffic with a higher-than-average cost per visit. On the one hand, it would be logical to discard such sources and redirect your budget. On the other hand, this channel or source might bring in five times the number of inbound calls compared to other mediums.
That is one of the reasons why the VCR metric is so important to evaluate with a call tracking solution. It helps to identify the channels that deliver more high-intent phone leads while allowing brands to distinguish them from channels that generate only visitor volume.
Every marketer has launched ad campaigns and worked hard to optimize landing pages, which includes A/B testing and identifying the top-performing layout, design, and content.
Today, clicks get the marketers’ attention, while inbound calls offer much more real value. Optimizing your landing pages for call conversions can help you bring in more high-intent clients, convert more leads, and increase your revenue.
Call tracking solutions do a lot to help businesses understand their marketing campaigns. Yet, many companies and individuals don’t pay attention to crucial tracking metrics or don’t have a tracking solution. Why is that?
Perception is one reason. Many marketers can be so focused on other online metrics that the idea of using call tracking software never occurs to them or is perceived as “old-fashioned.” Businesses are more inclined to measure click rates and rely on website heatmaps without realizing that their call tracking metrics might be just as — if not more — valuable.
If a company makes assumptions instead of analyzing and tracking incoming calls, it risks investing in the wrong marketing efforts unable to boost call volume, offer more call data, and bring in more quality leads.
Marketing is always a multi-channel effort, presenting an excellent opportunity for phone call analytics that stands out in detecting patterns in various data sources and marketing channels. Let’s examine some of the most common and best-performing channels that make the best inbound call tracking service possible.
PPC provides marketers with actionable data like clicks and keyword performance that help fully understand consumer behavior, tailor ad campaigns, and improve marketing operations. Tracking and evaluating PPC campaigns ensures that they yield the best results and aid in achieving your company’s marketing objectives.
If you’re looking to prove that your paid ads are generating new leads regularly, assigning dynamic phone numbers to your pay-per-click campaigns is one of the surefire ways to demonstrate the impact of your efforts on lead generation.
Call tracking providers have successfully bridged the gap between two high-performing channels — inbound calls and email marketing. It’s no secret that the email’s return on investment remains among the highest, with the most effective campaigns generating a 3,000% ROI.
Combined, these two channels can offer insightful information on your campaigns’ multi-channel relationship, how they drive ROI, and how they can aid in developing other marketing campaigns.
While this ad type is widely used to boost brand awareness, it remains one of the top-performing channels driving direct conversions offline and online.
For instance, when you assign a phone number to a banner or video ad, it’s crucial to track what ad format and publisher bring in the most phone leads. Since very few inbound calls can be traced to a specific display campaign with traditional methods, advertisers need inbound call trackers to track quality phone calls and reinvest in high-performing display campaigns.
Here are several ways brands can bring in more high-intent callers and call data from display ad efforts:
Step 1: Use Click-to-Call as the CTA
Display ads work great for raising brand awareness, but if you’re looking to increase phone call conversions, you must give prospects a compelling reason to click. Make the most of your ad copy by telling leads exactly what action they need to take and why they need to take it.
Step 2: Make Calls Part of Your Targeting
Suppose a prospect has previously called your company, and a display ad is where the call originated. In that case, you can use this information as a criterion to fine-tune your targeting by incorporating the captured call track data in your CRM, DMP, or DSP.
Ultimately, businesses equipped with the right software can quickly identify the audience segment that’s more likely to call and, therefore, target their ads to that specific segment.
Step 3: Capitalize on Hyper-Local Targeting
One of the key ways to drive more high-quality leads is optimizing display ads for mobile devices, specifically smartphones. Apart from ensuring the CTA delivers the right message to the target audience, businesses also must focus on local targeting if they are represented in multiple locations.
With local call tracking and call distribution software, brands can use local vanity numbers and leverage DNI to achieve their mission.
Every business website is the focal point of the company’s online presence. Websites inform prospective customers about brands:
Therefore, SEO is crucial in driving traffic and showing where a company’s leads are.
Let’s take a closer look at the most prominent traffic sources companies focus on when implementing and optimizing SEO changes.
| Organic search | It implies the free traffic that the websites drive. Simply put, these visitors arrive at the websites through unpaid channels, i.e., search engines like Google or Bing. |
| Paid search | That’s traffic generated solely through paid methods. It is deliberately sent to a website when a consumer clicks on an ad placed on any SERP in response to a search query. |
| Direct traffic | It’s classified as traffic arriving on the website but with no data source. It can happen when consumers type in a website URL, click a bookmark, or click a link that call tracking software cannot identify. |
| Referral traffic | These visitors get to your website from other sites or social media platforms without performing a prior search. |
Knowing which keywords prospective customers clicked on or webpages they visited before calling your business gives you deep insights into the marketing efforts that perform well and serve customers right. With call analytics, brands can also identify the source where most high-intent phone leads are or are coming from.
Social media platforms have in-house analytic systems that track user activity, but tracking stops when a user leaves an app or a website.
Businesses can track sales calls from social media channels by assigning dynamic phone numbers to them. This way, companies can capture the crucial data and see the impact each social media platform has on the volume of inbound calls and customer journeys.
While using call tracking software for your social media efforts is important, the urgency of implementing specifically tailored tools depends on the number of your brand’s followers. If social media channels are part of your ad strategy, incorporating a tracking and call analytics tool into your martech stack will only prove advantageous.
Offline marketing is often perceived as old-fashioned or even obsolete. But the truth is that many offline marketing campaigns are compelling as additional or primary sources of high-quality leads for many companies and industries.
Many brands struggle to attribute offline phone call conversions to ads and campaigns that are not visible online. Since such marketing channels as direct mail, billboards, industry-specific publications, and conferences are frequently used to drive web and call leads, measuring call tracking data from offline marketing is crucial.
Businesses can use phone call intelligence to implement advanced analytics to offline campaigns and get instant data on traffic and leads generated by offline marketing efforts.
Software for call tracking and call intelligence both provide businesses with the information they need to analyze their inbound call traffic. But the question is, are they interchangeable? Let’s take a closer look at the principal differences between the two and establish how each can impact business growth.
| Call tracking service | Call intelligence platform |
| Captures basic information about each call lead. | Takes phone tracking software to a deeper level. |
| Offers accurate reporting with basic information reflected. | Offers reach data for accurate campaign planning and strategic efforts. |
| Identifies best-performing channels that help accomplish marketing goals. | Enabled brands to analyze call recordings and discover the caller’s intent and interests. |
| Utilizes DNI for multiple business locations and marketing channels. | Connects to CRMs and bridges the gap between marketing and sales team efforts. |
When used in tandem, they allow businesses to get more in tune with the interests and needs of their prospects. This way, companies can learn how consumers discovered them and their problems and last-minute concerns. Implementing tracking and analytics as part of phone call intelligence allows brands to look closely at other contextual data that helps foster long-term customer relationships.
There’s no denying that some brands would rather use call tracking services alone or by building a solution rather than using dedicated software. While there may be some situations for companies to use only specific tools, most businesses will implement call management software because it allows them to use a robust platform that can scale with their company.
For instance, features like “Traffic Flow”—which helps measure publisher quality—and “Waves”—predictive modeling with accessible visualizations—are among the exclusive features offered by Call Logic, Phonexa’s call intelligence platform.
Around 60% of companies rely on call-based campaigns to drive quality leads and revenue. They use a variety of strategies and efforts to reach and engage their target audience and keep their call centers busy.
When deciding how to track incoming calls, it’s useful to get an understanding of how call intelligence software works. Like a prospective car buyer interested in “a look under the hood” before taking a car out for a spin, businesses looking to implement call tracking solutions should know the broad strokes of how it actually works and what it entails.
A good phone call intelligence aids brands not only in learning how to track a call effectively. It ensures that brands understand how successful future marketing campaigns can be, how to make all the captured data searchable and analyzable, what keywords and action items have the most marketing potential, and what efforts require more focus or must be eliminated.
Phonexa’s Call Logic is equipped with all the right tools, including call analytics and tracking, interactive voice response service, predictive modeling, call recording, ping tree, automatic call distribution software, conversation intelligence, and more.
It enables businesses to respond to the ever-changing demands of modern consumers by defining the customer journey with in-depth call insights, managing inbound calls with data-driven automatic call routing, and offering real-time data for effective campaign optimization.
Since phone calls remain one of the main lead sources, it’s common for brands to use call tracking and lead management solutions to streamline the workflow. For instance, the tracking software offers visibility on phone conversations, the automatic call distribution (ACD) system accomplishes ACD call routing, and lead management software distributes inbound leads based on specific attributes to departments or agents.
As part of Phonexa’s marketing automation suite, these tools can help businesses utilize different distribution logic, reduce lead response times, and reach their prospective clients faster.
Here’s an example of a lead distribution logic that can be used by businesses offering financial services.
Companies of all types can leverage automatic lead distribution based on the location of leads, products they’re interested in, their origin, and much more. Naturally, the preferred distribution criteria can vary from business to business.
Many companies outsource their customer service by hiring third-party call center agents. Others establish in-house call centers for autonomy and better control of their performance. However, the times of manual call processing are over, especially when brands must have the capacity to handle multiple client calls and inquiries simultaneously.
But how do they prioritize calls and manage the distribution logic while elevating the customer experience and delivering excellent service? An automatic call distributor can move the needle on data-driven ACD routing, customer interactions, and personalized customer experiences.
So what is automatic call distribution, and how does it work? Here’s what you need to know about this feature.
A call distribution system is a typical feature of call management software that handles inbound calls and distributes them depending on the method chosen by a company.
Since call distribution routes and manages large volumes of incoming calls, it can come in handy for companies looking to improve customer experiences through customization, offering self-servicing options, and improving call flow through interactive voice response (IVR).
It helps small businesses and enterprises capture and track customer data. On top of that, ACD routing gathers all qualified agents or sales reps and identifies the best-suited recipients to transfer incoming calls based on custom rules that businesses create.
Phonexa’s ACD phone software works hand-in-hand with the IVR platform to automatically receive and distribute incoming calls and determine the caller’s interests, the reason for calling, capture customer demographics, and more.
Let’s take a closer look at how a call tracking solution and ACD software work together to help businesses transform calls into leads.
This way, brands can see all the call metrics they need to evaluate the effectiveness of ad campaigns while also choosing who handles phone conversations at any time.
Call centers that handle tremendous call volumes are no strangers to using interactive voice response services. Brands often use an IVR service in inbound and outbound contact centers specializing in customer service, technical support, market research, sales, or surveying to help streamline ACD routing and capture critical customer data.
For instance, companies offering financial services often use it to streamline routing, capture essential customer data, and enable telephone banking.
After studying analytics from the captured IVR data, brands can optimize IVR and enhance the customer experience by defining inefficiencies and reducing effort.
Agencies, affiliate marketers, and solopreneurs are always on the hunt to buy or sell leads. With Ping Post Calls 2.0, Phonexa’s solution for real-time call bidding and lead acquisitions, every customer touchpoint is fully automated, allowing interactions to take a split second.
It helps buyers bid for desired leads based on various criteria and campaign-specific components while allowing publishers to get the highest value for their leads.
When combined with call distribution and tracking, Ping Post Calls 2.0 empowers businesses to spend more transparently and strategically while maintaining consistency in how quickly they respond to sales opportunities and informing decision-making.
When businesses invest in call tracking, they commit to better understanding and serving their customers. With the rising usage of mobile search and click-to-call functionality that allows consumers to get in touch with your business immediately, it is vital to understand all your calls.
Ultimately, businesses may understand the value of call tracking and analytics and the problems they solve but not see the direct benefit to them. Here are several reasons why any company looking to boost its ROI and grow in the future would want to use call tracking:
Call tracking is an essential technology tool for those interested in driving more high-quality leads for their business or distribution. It helps identify potential fraudulent leads by alerting you if the same number has called multiple times.
Filters are also a key part of the software — the ability to restrict certain calls from ever reaching your call centers because they don’t meet your specifications or have been otherwise flagged.
Reporting is a significant feature of call tracking software because it uncovers revelations about your campaigns. You can use a publisher report to see the success levels of different publishers you work with, then make informed decisions on who you buy traffic from.
Any business that can handle and analyze the wave of calls puts itself at an advantage. After the uncertainty connected to the pandemic and followed by drastic market changes, the need for companies to be agile is clearer than ever. Hence, scalable and customizable call tracking solutions can go a long way in allowing businesses to adapt quickly.
Trust is a cornerstone of the insurance industry — a strong bond must be forged between policyholders and insurance providers. After all, phone calls provide consumers with the person-to-person connection that insurance thrives on.
Every adjustment and opportunity to improve your ROI matters in the ultra-competitive insurance world, which spends billions in advertising annually. Tracking and analytics can help insurance companies optimize spending to get the best possible outcome for all their campaigns.
Lead generators who work in financial services face various challenges in their verticals. They must reach consumers in a busy marketplace and provide prospects with peace of mind over complex financial decisions. As a result, call tracking data carries a great weight for companies and calls provide consumers with a forum to ask questions and have any concerns allayed.
Financial call tracking gives financial service marketers access to first-party data—the data they can collect from their marketing efforts. With tracking and analytics, financial service companies can learn more about their campaigns and any partners they may distribute leads to or receive leads from.
Ultimately, call data allows financial service companies to maintain a high return on investment for all their marketing efforts.
The home service industry is defined by being in the field. Consumers are looking for professionals that are trusted and close to them. Sometimes they need to speak to someone right away. For all these reasons, calls foster the person-to-person connections that keep home service companies in business.
Home service professionals and lead generators can turn to call tracking to manage calls and fine-tune their marketing practices effectively. Granular reports can show state-by-state comparisons, offering affiliate marketers a wider view of the states where campaigns perform best.
For instance, those looking to generate HVAC leads may be more focused on certain geographic areas — Northern states in the winter for heat, southern states in the summer for AC — and need to know where their marketing spending will have the most impact.
Call tracking fulfills many specific needs for lead generation experts. One of the benefits is the ability of lead generation companies to understand their lead funnel better. Call tracking offers details on every caller and insights into your filters and IVR journey, so it is clear when a caller drops out of your funnel. It helps lead generators to plug up leaks in their funnel.
It can also help lead generators because it can use dynamic call tracking numbers to track both online and offline leads. Phone numbers in real-world locations such as billboards or bus stops can be tracked as easily as those on Google Ads. That means lead generators will get insights into their marketing initiatives’ success for offline and online campaigns.
Here’s a short checklist you can keep in mind when choosing out of many providers available on the market:
There are seemingly endless benefits and opportunities for brands that use call tracking. By getting attribution on their inbound calls, businesses can understand what initiatives drive their call traffic, which is a critical step in creating more effective marketing campaigns.
The ability to track inbound calls provides businesses with key features and tools to understand their tracking data and enhance the customer journey. Companies can optimize their campaigns with the right software and see opportunities to scale and grow.
All of these possibilities stem from tapping into the power of the phone call. Investing in dynamic call tracking is one of the soundest decisions a business can make because phone conversations provide a necessary person-to-person connection. This bond between consumers and brands is made stronger over a phone call and further strengthened by phone call intelligence.
Call tracking software is a platform that allows a business to track its calls, often including many supporting tools for distributing calls and capturing and interpreting call analytics.
Businesses find incredible value not just in the process of tracking sales calls but also in the implementation of the software. The right software will include many features and benefits related to and support a company’s tracking and analytics initiatives.
Interactive voice response (IVR) is an automated phone system that interacts with consumers and captures customer information by providing them with options via a touch- or voice-based menu.
A phone tracking software typically has a monthly subscription cost, specific setup costs, and usage fees. How much your business will pay for the software depends on various factors.
Before moving ahead with the software of your choice, you may want to examine your needs:
Having an answer to these questions will help you understand what the costs will be.
Tracking at a more granular level requires assigning a large pool of call tracking phone numbers and using them as unique identifiers. For keyword-level tracking, the phone number pool should be determined by the total number of simultaneous Google Ads visitors to your website.
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