You track sales and leads on your website using sophisticated analytics tools. But, how do you track incoming phone calls? Most businesses drop the ball when it comes to offline tracking because they’re not familiar with it. But, tracking phone call metrics might just be one of the most important things your company can do.
What Call Tracking Does
Call tracking is nothing more than tracking incoming calls, recording either metadata of the call or being able to tally the raw number of incoming calls and the result of those calls.
For example, when a prospect calls in, tracking would count that incoming call and may also record the outcome of the call – whether a sale was made, an information request was made, a question was asked and answered, or something else happened.
What Metrics To Follow And What They Mean
There are so many metrics to follow, it can seem overwhelming. But according to popular lead manager, Blitz, a few of the important ones include number of calls, call duration, call time of day and the originating location, PPC landing page tracking integration to monitor where the calls are coming from (if you run a PPC campaign), conversions (sales from the call), and cost per lead.
Call duration and incoming calls measure the raw number of calls coming in to your call center and the amount of time spent on the phone with these people. The originating location monitors where people are calling from, while the PPC landing page tracking integration tells you which ads the leads are calling in from.
Conversion is all about sales, and it’s something your sales manager is probably most concerned about, while the cost per lead tells you how much it costs, on a per-lead basis, to run the campaign.
The Benefits
There are a lot of benefits to call logging and tracking, but the most important is the fact that you’re getting valuable insights about the campaign you’re running. No company really wants to waste money, and tracking helps you spend wisely as a business.
How Tracking Saves You Money
Let’s say you’re spending $5,000 per week on your PPC campaign. You generate 500 leads. How much are you spending on each lead? You won’t know unless you’re able to track incoming phone calls, because, if you’re taking phone orders, there must be a way to quantify the sales made.
Now, if you’re running both online and offline campaigns, then the tracking becomes even more important. Let’s assume you’re also running a direct mail campaign. You send out 10,000 mail pieces a month. It costs you $$6,000 to run the campaign.
But, when calls start coming in, you want to know how much money you’re spending on each lead. This is what phone tracking can help you do. As calls come in, you can have a system automatically track the calls, the sales generated, the sales lost or some other status. At the end of the week or month, the results are tallied and displayed in an easy-to-read graphical interface. This, combined with your online analytics, can be used to determine where you should be spending your money and how much.
Michell Redmon is a longtime business owner of a successful small company. Always on the lookout for better business ideas, he likes to write about what he finds to share online. You can read his enlightening articles on various websites and blogs today.
