With growing consumer adoption of smartphones and increased usage of "click to call," consumers are creating a blind spot for marketers. The blind spot? Phone calls. DialogTech, formerly known as Ifbyphone, a call analytics and automation company, created the infographic below to help marketers navigate the rise of customer service phone calls, as well as offer tips to eliminate the blind spot in your mobile marketing attribution.
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COMMENTARY: Breaking down which mobile channels generate the most phone calls, we found that search (51.9%) and landing pages (29.4%) are driving a combined 81% of calls for our customers. Compared to display (16.2%) and social advertising (2.5%), mobile searchers and visitors to mobile landing pages both have a higher level of intent to call a business.
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If a consumer searches on their phone for a local business, they can easily click a call extension to speak to the business right away from the search ad. Or if they are researching a business and reach a landing page, they can immediately talk to an agent instead of flling out the form and waiting to hear back. Callers from these channels know what they are looking for and are ready to talk.
The same cannot yet be said about calls from social media, but there is investment in its growth. Take Facebook and Twitter: both have recently introduced call buttons within their advertising. As people continue to adopt features like this, it’s helping power the 5X growth in calls from mobile social ads that BIA/Kelsey predicts will occur by 2019.
Opportunity #1: Attribution (You May Be Misattributing 49% of Your Conversions)
Accurately measuring mobile ROI is a challenge for many marketers – whether they know it or not. When marketers rely solely on measuring conversions from landing page web forms, they may be misattributing nearly half of their conversions. The missing piece of the attribution puzzle? Phone calls.
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While conversion rates vary widely based on factors such as industry or product, DialogTech found the average web form conversion rate for landing pages to be 2.4%. DialogTech also found the average phone-through rate (PTR) to be 2.3%. Combining the two conversion paths, the result is an average total conversion rate of 4.7%. Without call attribution, 49% of conversions could be missed or misattributed to the wrong source.
Consider a search marketer with a monthly Google AdWords budget of $50,000. Assuming they generated 250 web leads in one month, the result is a cost per lead of $200. But that’s with no call attribution. With call attribution the search marketer discovers a 49% ROI mistake: in addition to 250 web leads, they are also receiving 245 phone leads each month. Now with 495 total monthly leads, the cost per lead decreases 49% to $101.
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Without call attribution data, the search marketer in this scenario has a 49% ROI blind spot that inhibits their ability to measure what’s really working and accurately bid on the right keywords driving both web and phone leads. The result: inaccurate ROI data with an infated cost per lead and potentially lost sales opportunities and revenue.
Opportunity #2: Personalization (Personalize the Call Experience to Close More Sales)
Callers are more likely to become customers: when they call they are ready to purchase. In fact, 62% of mobile searchers fnd it extremely/very important to be able to call a business during the purchase phase.
It’s no surprise then that 66% of sales managers rate phone leads as good or excellent, more than any other lead type. Not when call conversions become revenue 10x more frequently than web conversions.
Mobile marketing is all about personalized and relevant ads, content, and experiences. The same holds true for the call experience: offering consumers a personalized, one-to-one call experience can go a long way in helping businesses convert more callers to revenue. There is signifcant metadata around each caller that marketers can use to create a more relevant call experience, including the marketing campaign and referrer information that drove the call, the search inquiry they used, the caller’s location, the webpages they viewed before calling, what device they are calling from, and more.
Opportunity #3: Disposition (Understand Intent to Increase Customer Acquisition)
When digital marketing was focused exclusively on desktops, understanding a lead’s behavior and intent was simpler. Consumers often began and ended their journey on one device, with conversions occurring via a web form or online purchase. With everything confned to the desktop, tracking each consumer’s digital footprint -- where they came from, the webpages they viewed, if and how they converted -- was easier.
In a mobile-frst world, however, measuring the customer journey is more challenging. While some mobile purchases are simple (buying music, for example), many are more considered due to their complex, infrequent, or expensive nature. Buying life insurance, enterprise software or hardware, a new car, real estate, or senior care services are just a few of the many considered purchases for which buyers need more detailed information before making a decision. The customer journey for these goods and services often includes mobile, desktop, and offine touch points.
It was mentioned earlier the average phonethrough rate for DialogTech customers is 2.3%. In the chart below there are customers with a PTR over 10%, and others as high as 10X the average. Their common denominator? They are industries that are either considered purchases (e.g., insurance, consulting) or require conversation (e.g., listings, pest control, repair).
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When leads convert by calling, marketers need the same level of analysis to understand what happens as they do with desktop-exclusive purchases. What was their digital footprint? What web pages did they visit? What exactly happened on the call?
The chart below shows DialogTech data on the industries with the longest average call duration. Longer calls are often a strong indicator of quality sales leads. However, long calls aren’t a guarantee of a sale.
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Marketers need insight into what happens on calls from their marketing to truly measure call quality and ROI. Did a call result in a sale or an appointment? What was said that infuenced the caller to convert? Call recordings and transcriptions – and technology to scan conversations for specifc words and phrases spoken on the call – give marketers more insight to help them improve campaigns, optimize marketing messaging for the words callers actually use, or measure agent performance on the call.
Conclusion
The mobile opportunity is clear: call volumes are exploding and callers are ready to buy. Marketers are shifting their digital ad budgets accordingly, yet many are making a critical ROI mistake without even knowing it. By 2019, inbound calls from mobile advertising will increase 114% and marketers who fail to track these leads may be misattributing half of their conversions.
Call attribution and optimization is key to capitalizing on this opportunity. By correcting the 49% ROI mistake they are making without tracking calls marketers will have closed-loop attribution for every conversion, and be able to prove exactly how their mobile marketing is driving revenue. They can then optimize spend for what’s really working, increasing their impact on the business. And by controlling how each caller is routed and analyzing what happens on calls, marketers can help sales agents convert more callers to revenue faster.
Courtesy of an article dated October 2, 2015 appearing in eMarketing+Commerce and DialogTech's whitepaper "The 49% ROI Mistake Marketers Don’t Know They’re Making"
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