032. Benefits of Call Tracking for B2B Brands

Foreign hello everyone, this is Emilio Garcia. Welcome to another episode of Demand Gen Studio. I'm really happy to have the opportunity to talk to you today. I hope everybody, everybody is doing great. Today. We are going to have a conversation around a specific feature or feature that I kind of recommend for most of our clients and prospects around B2B marketing efforts and is that of call tracking. Today we are going to explore what call tracking is, how it works, and mostly what are the benefits that usually are misunderstood or undervalued. And I think they are very beneficial to most B2B campaigns in general. So without further ado, let us dive right away into the topic and obviously the first question is what is exactly call tracking? What do we mean by that? Well, call tracking is a series of technology mostly that allows brands to track and record phone call conversations and more importantly allow us to attribute the source of those phone calls. So it's usually accomplished through software and in the market there are many options out there. The ones that we have used or know in the past are mostly call rail and call tracking metrics. But there are many in the, in the market they usually have a combination of features around the actual tracking of the phone calls recording. And also there's a little bit of routing or IBR features that allows you to forward the call to the right rep or the person in charge of managing those phone calls. Now the way it works is very interesting. Usually what you do is that through a series of dynamic or static phone numbers you are allowed to track the source of the call. And this can be offline and online, not only online. So in a sense you are able to have multiple phone numbers instead of the one that you usually use for both your website and your offline relationships or interactions with your potential clients and current clients. And because you're using these multiple phone numbers, it is possible to track the source with different degrees of detail. Right? You can track at just overall mediums like online versus offline. You can track a specific channels like comparing paid search to organic or social media. And if you want to, you can be very detailed to the level of campaign ad, group ad specific keywords and things like that. Now one key distinction on those call tracking features is the comparison between static and dynamic call tracking. So the first iteration of this technology usually was around static call tracking. And the best example that I can use that, and it's actually pretty old, is, is to assign a static phone number to a specific effort. Imagine for example that you say, well I'm going to do a radio ad or a billboard ad, and I want to track to some extent the impact of that advertising. And so I have my regular phone number for the business. I want to use a specific phone number for that specific effort. So you can put a phone number that is static, it will not change or on the billboard or mention a specific phone number on the radio or for a newspaper or television. And that will work to some extent to at least narrow down the channel. Right. If you happen to have multiple billboards or you have multiple radio efforts or different locations, you can use different numbers of static phone numbers. And that way you will be able to separate or have a clear understanding of attribution. So the same can happen online to some extent. You can put phone numbers that are fixed on landing pages and then people will call to those, or you can put static numbers on specific ads or campaigns and you will have that definition very clear. But obviously, if you have a lot of efforts going simultaneously over time, which is usually the case for B2B brands nowadays, then would you run into the issue of having too many static numbers? And the solution to that is dynamic call tracking. So instead of fixing a phone number for a specific effort, in this case you assigned a pool of numbers that change dynamically over time. So that way you can have is not as accurate, right? Because you will not have a specific number all the time, but at least you don't have to have a big amount of numbers. And that's pretty much what software companies do, right? They will usually build these pools of numbers. Imagine 10 or 11 or 8 phone numbers. That will mostly depend on the volume that you have from the sources. If you have a lot of traffic coming from multiple sources sources at the same time coming from different parts of the country, you will need a larger pool to differentiate one visitor from the other that are simultaneously at the website. But if you have a smaller traffic pool, then usually a small number of dynamic tracking will do the work. So that's important for you to know. There are cases where dynamic is not possible. Again, that example of the pearlbore, unless it's an electronic one, you can change the number dynamically for every single viewer and there's to some extent not point because you cannot do with that information very much. But in on the web, usually you use dynamic. So it depends on the channel and obviously it's ideal to have dynamic rather than static, but depends again on the situation. Now, once we have established, you know, once we have pick one provider and we decided we want to go with static, dynamic or a combination which I usually recommend. The next question obviously is what are the specific benefits of having this technology? And that's, that's usually the pushback that I get from prospects when we are talking about attribution, right. Obviously for demand generation efforts like the ones that we do, especially for pay media is super important to tie attribution. And while I agree that most, most efforts will have a, you know, will have a hard time making the right attribution for some of them is still really important to set up some baseline web analytic metrics so you can at least understand the impact of your different efforts, at least in order of magnitude, right? So everybody feels comfortable saying, well, we will need to track web forms, we will need to track chat conversations. But sometimes the rationale of tracking phone calls makes no sense, especially because it's considered like an older technology, right? And businesses or managers, marketing managers, tend to think that phone calls are not as important as just tracking web forms and chat conversations. And I will argue that there are way more benefits, especially for B2B brands to track phone calls rather than not at least for a time, right? At least for three or four months until you have a baseline and you can make decisions out of that and then you can pause it if you want. So definitely, definitely tracking those benefits is important. I will cover some of them, the ones that I think the most important. And the first one is allows you to increase conversion rates. And this happens in many different forms. The first one, the most simple one, is that usually when you put phone numbers into your landing pages on top of forms and chat, you are allowing the client to choose more ways to contact you, which is always better, right? Having more options is always better. So some people will not feel comfortable filling forms. They are wary of the data being held by the company. Some people will not feel comfortable starting chat conversations for the same reason, but they will feel comfortable picking up the phone and giving that phone number. It's a way that you can increase conversion rates. The other reason is that usually when you don't track them, you don't count them as a conversion. So your conversion rates will increase automatically the moment that you start tracking those phone calls. Because usually this tracking software allows you to save that information on the CRM. So you will start creating contacts out of the information from those phone numbers. And also call tracking software usually is able to source some information about the caller, like potentially the location, the first and last name, sometimes even the email depends on the technology. So you are able to at least create in principle a contact that has some information and that the sales rep can add later. So that will be helpful. The other reason is because usually call tracking allows you to record the conversation and because of that you can listen to it. And you know, obviously you have to disclose that you are doing it to the caller. So they know in most jurisdictions. But once you do that, it's possible to listen to those conversations for training purposes and improve the way that people answer. How did they route the person to the right department even? It's possible to understand callers that just left a voicemail and they need follow up. So the moment that you give that visibility into the system, you will be able to increase conversion rates. And especially for B2B brands, this is valuable because usually for B2B campaigns, the lead volumes themselves are very small, right? We are not talking about like E commerce where you have maybe tens or hundreds of transactions per month and you have even more people filling out forms and subscribing to newsletters in B2B that the volumes are very small. So if you start tracking phone calls, you will see your conversions increase by a significant amount. And it's not just that they are actually increasing, it's just that you probably didn't have visibility of them. And you will attribute them to, you know, worth of mouth referrals or to other efforts. And the moment that you start tracking, you will discover that your website through the different channels is contributing to a lot of the phone calls that your business is getting, right? So that visibility by itself will help you to see an improvement on your conversion rates, right? Very closely related. Another big benefit is that it will allow you to discover the value of the different online and offline campaigns that you have going on. So the first one is you will see the overall conversion rate increase. But another technique that I highly recommend is that you assign a value to your phone calls, right? The easiest way to do that is to, for example, take your CRM data, discover how many of your deals, including revenue, were sourced from phone calls. If you have that information available and if you don't have, you can make some estimate. And so out of the deals, estimate how many opportunities you needed and therefore how many contacts. And therefore you can get a number or assign a value to your phone calls, right? Maybe it's $500, right? For a brand new phone call from a prospect is worth that to you. And if you feed back that into your different channels and it's possible to do on paid channels like Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads and Facebook ads, and you start tracking, you will discover the value that the different channels bring to your organization. Right. It's possible actually to separate, for example, repeated phone calls, which are usually from current clients, from brand new phone calls that are usually from prospects. And so if you make that separation and if you assign some value, you will start discovering that some campaigns, even offline ones, are bringing more value than others. Right? So using again, that example of the billboard, if you have been investing in a billboard on a radio ad or a TV ad for a very long time and then you start advertising efforts, you will be able to compare the cost of each of them. Of course, that information you have. But now you will be able to compare the phone calls you are getting from both platforms and, and start seeing the return on the investment, right? So it is very important to start tracking so you can do that. That moved me into the next reason and is exactly that determine the true return on investment, right? So if you do those steps, you will be able to estimate the return on investment. And while it will not be perfect, it's always, there's always opportunity, especially for example, for the phone calls that you will get organically. Because most of those phone calls come from people that is searching for your brand because of another PR effort. Right? Let me put you an example. Someone looks at the billboard where you have your phone number, but they don't call right away because maybe they are driving. And so they just ment a mental note. And then when they're home, they will just go into the website and and search your website, they remember the brand name and then they pick up the phone and that phone call will be attributed to your organic channel rather than that billboard or any other effort that you might have online too. So there's going to be a little bit of mismatch between the actual attribution and the one that you get from the software. But again, you will have some level or orders of magnitude for reference. And once you have those return on investments, actually the biggest part is that your allocation of additional resources changes completely, right? Because if in the past you were having all these channels and you have additional budget, or you want to reduce the budget without the information from the phone calls, you will just take up an approach where you may be increased across all channels or decrease spending across all channels, you have no choice because you have no idea of which ones are performing better or worse. But if you start having this information, you will be able, for example, to determine which channels are working better, maybe within the medium, what campaigns are working better, and especially for paid search, for example, where you can be very granular, you will be discovered what keywords are bringing the most phone calls. So you will be able to, to maybe create an isolated campaign where you've, where you put only your best performing keywords in terms of phone calls and you dedicate more budget to them than to the rest. And, or you can start using bidding strategies where you reward the campaign for return on investment rather than just conversion volume or clicks and put more money into those investment. And the same happen if you want to reduce them, right? Right. If you are forced to or need to reduce your investment, usually you will diminish that on the one that is bringing you the less value. So that's another critical reason why you want to implement it. Another one very related to that is that you usually are able to eliminate wasted ad spend, right. Based on the same idea. Even if you don't have to reduce your budget, there's no, if you have a constant, there's no reason to keep spending money in keywords or efforts or channels that are not bringing any return. And if you have a specific campaigns, for example on social media where your whole goal is to get phone calls, then it's possible to track those calls either on the ad itself or on the web session and discover if you are bringing phone calls and compare that to other channels. And if you are not bringing enough, then you can take that money that waste and put it to work in another effort, either another campaign that brings you more phone calls or just another goal. Right. It can be just getting more forms or getting more chat conversations, depending on which of all of them brings the most business at the end of the day. Right. So obviously that helps you eliminate waste. And finally the last reason is again because you are able to track, but not only track, but to record, then you will be able to understand how many phone calls are now being answered and how many of those phone calls are sent to the voicemail and if they are being follow up or not and how many phone calls are answered and the sales rep have a conversation, but then there's no follow up or the prospect stop answering after a couple of touches. And usually when you build a large database of those kind of interactions, it is quite helpful for the marketing team to reach out and recover those leads. Right. So going again into the flow, if someone called but nobody answer, you can call back and you will have the capability of knowing which channel bring that person, what ad they click and what keyword they use. So you can be more, you know, you will have more context into the phone call and be more relevant to the to the caller if they just left a voicemail and nobody follow up in a few days. Then another way that you can improve your marketing to sales ratio by bringing visibility into the sales team about the phone calls that are not being answered. And you can make changes. Maybe you put that phone call only on the time frames where there's someone available to answer. Maybe you build a branch of potential answers to make sure that if it's customer success or sales, you have different teams answering and they give different priority so your potential leads don't get lost. Right? Or you simply extend the hours that you take care of potential leads. You might hire a service that cover, you know, weekends and similar ways to understand if there's a way to recover those leads. And finally, obviously, if you are discovering that you have a first conversation but no business is created after that, listening to the conversation might help you to understand. Is it because it's not clear we are not clear on the offer? It is because maybe we are not targeting the right audience and we don't have the right message. So you will do changes on the campaign to compensate for that. And obviously, even if the prospect is just interested in understanding a little bit about your offer, but is not ready to commit right now, you can from those phone calls understand when they will be ready and follow up in the CRM at a later pace. All of that can be lost if those conversations, those interactions are not registered in the CRM because then it will be just on the phone number or the mobile phone number of the rep. Right? And this is something very important. Call tracking doesn't prevent you from allowing reps to answer phone calls from their mobile and from other phones are not the ones from the company. Because the way that technology works allows you to forward the call to what is convenient. So you can have the profits, you know, being professional about it, and have the phone call answered by your IBR system in a way that is coherent with your brand. But at the same time having the flexibility of forwarding those phone calls to your reps where they are available the most. Their mobile phone number, for example. So that's the way that you can take advantage of that. So those are some of the ways that you can take advantage of call tracking. I definitely recommend it. I will suggest for you to explore the options out there and understand how they track, how their static and tracking works, if they're in, if they integrate with your current CRM, with your current advertising platforms, which is quite important, you set up some conversions based on that, that you differentiate between first phone calls and repeated phone calls. That you assign a value and compare that value to other sources of leads like phone calls, direct emails to your share inboxes and chat conversations. And from there you will be surprised of the impact that implementing this technology can have on your B2B campaigns. So that's all that I have for you today. I hope that you have found value out of it and don't miss the next one. And until then, have a great day. Bye Bye. Sam.