5 Reasons Call Tracking is Essential to Lead Generation

Whether you are trying to generate leads for your own company, or you work for an agency that traffics in leads, chances are that  you aren’t taking enough credit for your efforts. There’s a lot of talk amongst marketers about creating a culture of accountability, in which marketers are able to report the ROI of every campaign. But at the end of the day, if you aren’t tracking how efforts impact phone calls, then you are missing out on the opportunity to truly prove which leads resulted from your efforts.

How Call Tracking Works

Call tracking is a way to associate marketing sources with leads, opportunities and revenue generated over the telephone. By associating specific campaigns and keywords with unique phone numbers, marketers can report how many calls each campaign is driving. Call tracking solutions that integrate with CRM tools like Salesforce enable marketers to go even further, associating efforts with opportunities and ROI closed over the telephone. If you’re brand new to call tracking, we recommend checking out our quick primer on call tracking. 

5 Reasons Call Tracking is Essential to Lead Generation

If you are interested in getting full credit for every lead and dollar of ROI that results from your efforts, then you should seriously consider investing in a call tracking system. Here are 5 of the top reasons why call tracking is essential to successful lead generation.

Not Every Lead Converts Online

Imagine that you work for a lead generation agency that set up a Google AdWords campaign for a B2B software company. Without call tracking, you might be able to take credit for leads that click on an ad and then fill out a conversion form. But what happens when a lead that clicks from a Google ad sees a phone number on your site and just calls? Unless you’ve associated that Google Adwords campaign with a unique call tracking number, you would lose credit for that leads.

And you might be surprised to discover how many leads do convert over the phone. When I worked as an agency marketer, it was common for me to work with clients that were closing 50% or more of their business through inbound calls generated from marketing efforts. By using call tracking, I could adequately take credit for all of those leads and make smarter advertising decisions as a result.

Phone Calls Are Likely Your Most Valuable Leads

According to BIA/Kelsey, 65% of businesses consider phone calls to be their highest quality lead source. If you are truly part of a business culture that values ROI, how could you resist the opportunity to take credit for your best leads? We built our call tracking tool with ROI marketers in mind. Our marketing customers are currently using Revenue.io to get a real-time view of revenue that closes over the telephone.

Mobile Is Driving More Inbound Calls

Some of your most vital leads are the ones that call. And you should be expecting a lot more calls in the coming years. Savvy executives, such as venture capitalist Mark Suster, have already identified inbound phone calls as being more vital than ever. In a recent article, he presented data showing that inbound calls are set to increase.

The influx of inbound calls, of course, correlates with increased mobile adoption. Clicking to call is just easier than filling out a form when using a mobile device. But beyond that, a Harris Interactive survey also showed that 77% of online shoppers would prefer live assistance with their purchases. Your customers want to call, and now it’s easier than ever for them to do so. If your company or agency isn’t adequately prepared to track this deluge of incoming phone leads, you’re liable to get left in the dust by competitors.

You Can Get Credit for Offline Leads

Call tracking is the best way to measure leads driven from offline campaigns.  Several of our clients are lead generation agencies that leverage offline direct response tactics, such as mailings. They love Revenue.io because it makes offline campaigns as easy to measure and optimize as online campaigns. Simply including a call tracking number in one of these offline campaigns allows marketers to gain a real-time view of which campaigns are most valuable. Then they can invest more in the offline efforts that drive the most leads, opportunities and revenue.

You Can Capture Phone Leads in a CRM Automatically

Without call tracking, leads that call have a tendency to fall into a void. Leads names might get written down on a notepad by a receptionist and subsequently tossed in the trash. I’ve seen it happen. Heck, early in my career, I was even the one writing leads’ names and numbers down on a notepad. Let’s face it, most companies not only fail to log every hot lead, but they also don’t ensure that every qualified lead gets a call back. But the true beauty of integrating a call tracking system like Revenue.io is that telephone leads are logged automatically. Marketers can get credit for every lead, while sales managers can ensure that hot leads are getting the attention from reps that they deserve.