The most important rule to keep in mind when doing any kind of marketing is “track your results.” It’s imperative that you have the ability to justify your marketing efforts. What’s working? What isn’t? If you don’t know the answer to this question, odds are you’re wasting a significant chunk of your marketing budget.
In 2012 spending on internet advertising is at an all-time high, with significant growth projected in the future as more and more businesses drop print-media advertising and focus on generating leads with their website. Internet Marketing is an incredibly cost-effective way to advertise, but the rule still applies; you’ve got to track your results. If you don’t, you’re losing money.
Our Internet Marketing Services are a natural—after we’re done building a website for a client, we’ll offer to market their site on the increasingly competitive web. Our success has been phenomenal because we can track almost everything. In case you didn’t already know, when advertising online, you can track the number of visitors your website is getting; where your visitors are coming from (by country/state/city); what pages they’re looking at; and you can even find out how they found your website in the first place, whether that was a Google search or a link on another website or online directory.
This powerful information equates into cost-effective targeting. And, of course, the standard practice is to build your site so that you ask people to fill out a contact form with a compelling call to action. Because we have those powerful tracking tools in place, it’s easy to figure out where each web lead came from when somebody actually does fill out a contact form.
But what if a potential client finds your website and then calls you on the phone? All your best efforts at lead tracking go out the window because those analytical tools can’t track calls. Short of asking each person that calls you “how did you hear about us?“, there’s not much you can do. And there’s a fatal flaw in the “how did you hear about us” approach as well: people frequently forget (or will “mis-remember”) how they first heard about you. In our experience, we’ve found that customers will often simply say “I found you online,” but they won’t remember how they found your website in the first place. They just remember that they were on your website, and now they’re calling you. So you may never know, unless you can actually track the source of phone calls. But can you?
Yes! That’s the good news. At Infront, we have a special system in place to track phone calls with vanity phone numbers. You may remember this from the old days when you’d advertise in a phone book: you’d sign up and get your ad, and you’d be assigned a special phone number that’s only used in the phone book ad. Theoretically, you could track calls that way if you took the time to check on the stats. But the system we use goes much further than that.
Our Internet Marketing clients get to choose from one or several vanity phone numbers that, when called, route to the phone number of their choice and we’re able to track every single call and collect the data in an electronic report. On top of that, our system will tell you exactly where the phone call came from as the phone is ringing. Yes, you read that correctly—as soon as you pick up the phone, you’ll be greeted with a short recording telling you exactly which advertising campaign generated that phone call, and all the while, the potential customer on the other end will only hear the phone ringing.
This feature, called “Whisper,” means you’ll know as soon as you pick up the phone where your potential customer came from. So if you own a Pizza shop and you’re running an internet-only special that offers discounts for people who found your website through an AdWords campaign, you’ll be greeted with the message “this phone call is coming from Infront’s AdWords campaign for your $5 off a large pizza coupon,” and then you can start talking to the customer. Magic!
Our marketing clients get a call report once a month, showing a summary of their call activity. Here’s a recent report from a client of ours:
With this report, you’ll know where your phone calls came from, how long each call was, whether the call was answered or went to voicemail, and which specific campaign generated the phone call in the first place. Combine this with the Whisper feature, and you’ve got all the data you could possible need to track just about any campaign.
If you’ve been interested in marketing your website but have hesitated due to the inability of tracking phone calls, contact us and we’d love to talk about how you can implement it in your marketing strategy. You’ll be amazed at how well it works!
Matthew is the President of Infront Webworks and is a New England native now calling Colorado Springs home. Matt attended The University of NH where he pursued a BS in Natural Resource Economics & Business Administration. Aside from Infront; Matthew has owned and managed two other online agencies based on the seacoast of New Hampshire and been a key player in multiple technology mergers & acquisitions. When he’s not bathing in technology, online marketing & business; he’s probably spending time with his wife and daughter, boating, skiing the trees, hiking or cooking..he is a foodie for sure!
