ULTIMATE GUIDE TO BUSINESS CALL TRACKING

& PHONE LEADS

CHAPTERS

1. How 3 Companies Pugged Their Revenue Leaks

2. Call Tracking 101

3. What Are The Dangers?

4. My Process for Setting Up a Solid Call Tracking System

5. How to Get More High-Value Inbound Calls

6. Call Intelligence: Advanced Call Tracking

7. How to Use Call Intelligence to Make More Money

8. The 3 Core Benefits to Using Call Intelligence

9. What’s the Next Step?

Leaking money is common in small to medium enterprise.

Much too common.

It’s especially tough when you don’t know where the cracks are. This is called the “black-

box effect”, when a process in your business goes on without a way to properly supervise it.

The reason for a black box might be that you don’t fully understand the work (most SEO

agencies love to stay in a black box). Or it might be that it’s hard to track the results without

some hardcore time-consuming micromanagement.

Up until now, the phone has been a common place for the black-box effect to appear in

small to medium businesses. By tracking and monitoring phone calls, thousands upon

thousands of businesses would immediately find huge potential for optimization and

growth.

The technology is here. We can now do this affordably. Here’s how…

CHAPTER 1

HOW 3 COMPANIES PUGGED THEIR REVENUE LEAKS

If you’re just about to get into call tracking, I’m

excited for you. You’re about to identify and plug up

major revenue leakages, and grow your bottom line.

Here are three cases of companies doing just that.

Fannit was being wrongly accused.

The problem was in sales.

The phone agents didn’t know the answers to many

of the questions that leads had. Spotting this gap in

their process added $250,000 of potential annual

revenue for the client.

Knowing what’s working is sometimes enough to transform a business from “flirting with

broke” to stable and growing.

As a luxury vacation resort in the Bahamas, Hotel Grand Lucayan spent most of their

marketing budget on Atlanta. That’s where most inbound flights to the Bahamas came

from, so it seemed to make sense.

After implementing call tracking, however,

they found advertising int the US Northeast

and Florida worked far better. They knew their

highest performing areas down to the zip

code. Grand Lucayan’s phone conversion

rate went up by 157%.

We live in a multi-channel world. To win, you

need to be omni-channel.

To be omni-channel, you need to have a clear view of your customers’ buying cycles. No

gaps. If you’re tracking click through rates but not inbound calls from specific ads, for

example, you simply can’t know how well they’re performing.

Paychex reduced cost per acquisition by 43% and increased leads generated by 95% when

they started tracking calls.

They found their Adwords campaign was doing more than twice as well as they thought,

and they zeroed in on their best keywords. They also reduced their ad spend during peak

times when the staff was often overwhelmed by call volume, thereby reducing their cost

without losing any sales.

I, for one, like to know where my money is going. I like to see how each dollar is performing,

and how much return I’m getting from my investments.

I’m willing to bet you do too.

CHAPTER 2

CALL TRACKING 101

Imagine if you could track calls like you track clicks.

Wouldn’t you like to track the results produced by individual sales reps, individual calls, or

calls that come from particular marketing channels?

Once you have this knowledge, you’ll never go back. It’s like going from tunnel-vision to

20/20. The phone is often the critical junction where a sale is made or lost.

I know you’re busy, so to prevent any wasted time for you or your team, I made this guide.

Below you’ll find the step by step system I use with my clients to set up basic call tracking

from scratch. Also, learn how to move into advanced call tracking (known as call

intelligence).

WHAT IS CALL TRACKING? Basic call tracking is

Basic call tracking is the use of unique numbers (generated automatically) to track the

source and efficacy of your inbound phone calls. Use a different number for each marketing

campaigns, and your call tracking software can measure the true results of each channel.

Advanced call tracking involves the automatic analysis of phone conversations,

prerecorded voice menus, and auto-scheduled call flows. We’ll cover that later on.

WHAT YOU STAND TO GAIN

There are five main benefits to call tracking:

• Know your ROI. You’ll know for sure how much money all your marketing efforts (and

investments) bring into the business.

• Watch the right KPIs. Forget bounce rate. The phone contains much more critical

metrics.

• Increase call conversion. Inbound calls convert extremely well already, and by tracking

results, you can run tests to optimize sales.

• Call intelligence. With advanced call tracking, you’ll know the full picture of every lead

who winds up on the phone.

• Find and fix money-leaks. Uncover gaps in knowledge or skill within your staff that

would otherwise go unnoticed.

1. KNOW YOUR ROI

Time and again, businesses who try call tracking find massive gaps in their knowledge

about their own business and sales processes. You might be pouring money into something

that you assume is giving you a good return when it’s

just not, and simultaneously ignoring something that’s

doubling every dollar you put into it.

Without call tracking, how will you keep your

marketing channels accountable? Instead of hearing a

monthly tally of keyword rank, bounce rates, unique

visits, and other “potentially useful” figures, wouldn’t it be simpler to see how many phone

calls each investment has generated for you?

With call recordings, you’ll also know the quality of calls coming from various channels. You

can find real gold mines this way!

2. WATCH THE RIGHT KPIS

“Key Performance Indicators” are simply metrics that matter to your business. Many of us

working in local SEO have focused on KPIs based on rankings and traffic. Not because

they're necessarily the best, but because it's easy to track them. Relying on these metrics

nowadays does not make sense. With the rise of personalized search and internet

directories, they miss a lot of conversions.

For example, when someone searches for a local

plumber and calls directly from the SERPs, you

wouldn't see that as a click-through. And yet, it could

be the hottest lead you got that day! A rankings

& traffic report forgets about those valuable phone

calls.

3. INCREASE CALL CONVERSION

Calls are highly profitable.

According to Google, inbound phone calls are 10-15 times more likely to convert than

inbound web leads. BIA/Kelsey notes that 61% of businesses rate their inbound phone calls

as "excellent leads," while only 52% rate leads from the web as excellent. Most high-ticket

products and services depend on phone calls to close the sale, and they’re the most

important sales to be tracking!

You can only sustainably improve what you measure. When you know what’s bringing in the

most calls, and how many calls vs. sales you get, you can start running tests and optimizing

your sales systems. Until then, you’re in the dark.

4. CALL INTELIGENCE

Going beyond call tracking and recording, those with the budget can also get “call

intelligence” to get to work for them.

Know how many phone calls are first-time and how many are repeat.

Get alerted when someone who was on the phone a week ago shows up on your

website again.

Automatically assess the sales skills of your telephone sales reps.

Track how many times a customer showed interest in purchasing, without having to

sit through recordings.

And much more.

5. FIND AND FIX MONEY-LEAKS

It’s time your receptionists and other call agents were accountable for their performance on

the phone. It’s not about being “Big Brother” or pointing fingers. It’s about helping them

improve and become masters of their job, to

become an even more valuable asset to the

business that pays their wage!

For example, they might have knowledge gaps

that they feel too busy or too embarrassed to

mention or fix themselves, leading them to

stumble through customer questions and lose

sales. Advanced call tracking is great at figuring

out where phone performance can be improved.

As long as your workforce is happy to learn (as they should be!), then performance-tracking

will be good news for everyone.

CHAPTER 3

WHAT ARE THE DANGERS?

I hear a lot of common concerns about call tracking. Most are

quite valid, so let’s address them here to make sure you don’t

make the mistakes that some do.

Keeping the same number (for NAP consistency and vanity

numbers).

Your Name, Address, and Phone number ought to be

consistent across the indexed web. This is NAP consistency,

which is an important ranking factor in modern local search.

Solution:

1. Dynamic Number Insertion

2. Using Javascript to swap out numbers, depending on the visitor.

3. Keep the number semi-consistent

4. Your rankings won’t take a massive hit. Keeping one number per paid campaign, for

example, will help you much more in marketing intelligence than it could hurt you in

SEO.

Your SEO guy holding onto your numbers

I wish I didn’t have to say this, but some shady SEO practices

are going on out there. Some agencies try to keep their finger

on the button of your campaigns, so if you want to show them

the door, all the progress they’ve made for you goes with

them.

There are two steps to preventing this:

1. Educate yourself on how call tracking works. Use it on your own for at least one

advertisement, just to get a solid understanding of the process.

2. Make sure any contract you have with an external marketing team addresses the

ownership of numbers generated for call tracking purposes.

Dirty numbers

Eventually, a phone number goes around the block. It doesn’t commonly cause a problem,

but from time to time you might get a brand new call tracking number that another

business once used. It might have been a spa resort or a drug dealer. There’s often no way

to find out. Either way, you’ll get a few calls from disappointed

callers looking for the other business. It’s a small price to pay. The

longer you use a dirty number, the fewer wrong calls you’ll get

(and it’s rare in any case).

If you’re concerned with having a number which used to be

associated with something shady, simply do a Google search

with the number in quotation marks, including the various ways

phones are written (with/without the area code, with/without the digits grouped

together). If it’s not indexed by Google, there’s nothing to worry about.

Legal concerns

In the United States, call recording is legal from cost to cost. There are some regulations,

which depend on the state. See this article by Digital Media Law to read up on these

regulations. Before you begin, simply check whether you need to be registered as a call

recorder in areas you will be targeting.

Most regulations simply require you to notifying the caller that

their conversation will be recorded. I’m sure you’ve heard a pre-

recorded message telling you this in the past.

*Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, and nothing I say qualifies as legal

advice.

CHAPTER 4

MY PROCESS FOR SETTING UP A SOLID TRACKING

SYSTEM

PHASE 1: CHOOSE A CALL TRACKING PROVIDER Always use a SaaS service with cloud PBX technology. They will be able to handle any

sudden peaks in traffic, and troubleshoot other issues.

In-house call tracking is what large corporations have been doing for a long time, and it

takes the resources of a corporation to make that option viable. SaaS has opened this

technology up to the rest of us.

It also makes sense to choose a call tracking provider who is also a Google Partner. Click

here for the list. My personal preference is RingoStat.

PHASE 2: SET UP A TRACKING NUMBER If you’re a business that operates locally, get a local number. This helps give you an SEO

bump.

Get a call-tracking enabled phone number.

Set the destination number.

This is your business’s root phone number.

Use that number for a marketing campaign that you want to illuminate.

Don’t muddy the waters by using it everywhere. When you want to compare two different

marketing channels, use two different numbers.

PHASE 3: HOOK UP ANALYTICS If you’re using Google Adwords, you’re now ready to get maximum mileage out of the “Click

to Call” feature. Pop a tracking number into that field, and you’ll have added a layer of

Google Analytics on that number.

Google Analytics is a common integration for call tracking platforms, so you can use it even

without an Adwords campaign. Double check that the platform you want to choose has this

feature before you hand over your credit card number.

Focus on one metric above all others – First-time callers. It will take about 3 to 6 months of

call data for this metric to emerge from the noise, since at the start, everyone will

“technically” be a first-time caller.

PHASE 4: GENERATE MORE CALLS

The next chapter is packed with my favorite techniques for increasing the volume of

inbound calls.

The “master technique”, however, is deceptively simple.

Test.

Now that you have tracking in place, you can watch any change you make to your

marketing systems ripple through your results. However, that won’t help you much if you

make changes at random.

Be a scientist about it. Choose one thing to test at a time, and keep everything else the

same. Implement the test, and wait until you have statistical significance before you make

a decision on the change you’ve made one way or the other.

This is the one principle to rule them all when it comes to optimizing your results in

business.

Test, track, analyze, repeat.

CHAPTER 5

HOW TO GET MORE HIGH-

VALUE INBOUND CALLS

When you have a robust call tracking system in place, you feel excited to invest in a new

campaign, because even if it doesn’t work the way you’d hope, you know the data you’ll get

from it will be true and useful.

Website Make your site call-friendly. Independent market

research company Ipsos found that 70% of mobile

searchers use click-to-call. At the very least, this

means hyper-linking the telephone number on

your website with “tel:+441010101010” for example.

Be sure to include the area code at the start of the

number to make it clickable.

Callback Widgets

Add more design and functionality with a callback widget. Most digital marketing blogs will

persuade you to put share buttons on your website that follow the user as they scroll. But

you don’t pay the bills with shares, do you? You pay them with the sales that happen on the

phone. So why not replace your share buttons with a call button that follows the user as

they navigate your website, and keep your call staff only a quick tap away at any moment.

Landing Pages

Pages with a telephone number convert better than those without, even if the number is

never called. If your goal is to get calls, do one better by making the number more inviting

with a callback widget or other click-to-call button. You don’t have to be techy to pull this

off. There are many tools available today for creating beautiful landing pages. Among my

favorites are:

• Unbounce.com

• Instapages.com

• Landingi.com

Add coupons to your landing pages to help prompt on-the-fence leads to action. Make sure

they know that quoting their unique coupon code over the phone is the only way they will

get the discount. Don’t be afraid to give them a fat discount either. The phone is a great

place to upsell, and repeat custom is worth the initial cut in price. The critical thing with

a landing page is getting them past the hump of tapping that call button.

Adwords

With Google Adwords, the majority have focused on getting people to click, but search

advertising can be even more effective for inbound calls. You can create as many different

campaigns as you have target demos. Optimize them for calls

with phone-specific calls to action:

• Call Now

• Call Only Promotion

• Discounts Over The Phone Only

• Free Estimates Fast Over The Phone

• Discover What We Can Do For You Over a Short and Fast

Phone Call

Pro Hack: In the Adwords interface you can add a location

extension, which will present your phone number listed in Google My Business. Maybe

people, especially from desktop, will call that number without clicking. No click means you

don’t pay a penny. Free calls!

Bing & Yahoo

When you’ve found a groove that works in Google Adwords, it’s a cinch to

import the same campaign into Bing or Yahoo Search. These widely used

Google-alternatives might not have as huge a user base, but they are certainly

big enough, and they are more relaxed about what you can do in your

campaign.

Pro Hack: Add your phone number in the display URL of your Bing Ad. This can lead to free

calls.

Social Media

With a Facebook business page, you’ll have the option to set up a call campaign.

You’ll have the same audience targeting features as you would with any other

social ad campaign.

Use promo numbers for your profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram,

Snapchat, and any other platforms where your target demographic spends time. Have your

social media managers handle the phone calls from those platforms so your other sales

agents can focus on their own specialty channels.

Citations

Your business citations should be plastered all over the internet, and be as consistent as

possible. The same title, the same email, the same description,

and the same telephone number on all your citations helps your

search results in Google Maps.

The downside of using the same number on every citation

means that you cannot differentiate traffic from different citation sources. My

recommendation is to take this trade-off. Citation traffic is organic traffic and therefore is

not the most critical kind to dissect.

CHAPTER 6

CALL INTELLIGENCE: ADVANCED CALL TRACKING

In today’s multichannel world, people bounce from device to another. Call intelligence

helps you connect the dots to understand the journey your customers are taking to get to

the point of sale on the phone.

The technology is new, and therefore still expensive, but it is amazingly useful. With where

the industry currently is in 2016, I doubt we’ll have to wait very long before it becomes as

affordable as basic call tracking.

CASE STUDY: CALL DURATION VS. CALL INTELLIGENCE

A large publisher (you will have heard of them), based their billing system entirely on having

calls that lasted more than 2 minutes.

They hired Convirza, a call intelligence company, to optimize their phone sales systems.

Convirza analyzed millions of calls over a few months, and compared a number of metrics

with sales results. It turns out that, while phone duration did correlate a little bit with the

success of a call, it was a incomplete picture.

There was much more that predicted whether a call resulted in a sale, such as:

• Percentage of silence. More than 50% meant the customer was on hold. So many

2 minute calls contained only 40 seconds of actual talking!

• Call spam, usually made by bots. This is a big problem in many call based industries.

• Lead quality score. Calls under 2 min had almost the same lead score as those over

2 mins.

They found that call duration is not the main thing to determine lead quality. It’s still

important, but there’s a lot more to it.

Duration

Sales Inquiry

Price Request

Depth of Sales Process

Caller Sentiment (are they excited?)

Objection Language

Negative Emotions

Buying Signals

Personal Information

Basic call tracking can tell you where calls come from, it can record your calls for manual

review, and it can be linked with Google Analytics to assess things like which ad keyword

generate the most calls.

Quality of lead, however, is difficult, if not impossible to track in an automated fashion

without call intelligence. This is where call intelligence shines, and can blow the doors off

your current marketing campaigns.

CHAPTER 7

HOW TO USE CALL

INTELLIGENCE TO MAKE MORE MONEY

What would you do if you could track the number of times your leads expressed interest, or

raised objections, or even the level of sales skill your phone reps exhibit?

These are known as conversational metrics, and they’re only possible with call intelligence.

It’s expensive now, but in the near future I’m sure it will become much more affordable.

Using call intelligence to its full potential requires following these three basic steps:

• Gather Useful Insights

• Personalize the Customer Experience

• Strategize with the Data

• 1. GATHER USEFUL INSIGHTS

Call intelligence addresses the blind spot in your marketing analytics. Use it to attribute

revenue and conversions back to your marketing campaigns

and get in-depth insights about your customers.

Call intelligence can capture the following data points (and

more):

Peak phone call times

Repeat vs. new call

Call outcome

Average call duration

Geographic location

Caller intent

Phone type

Demographic data

This kind of data is either impossible or time-consuming to track any other way. That’s why

I’m so sure this is the future. When this technology becomes more affordable (just as basic

call-tracking has done over the past decade), any business will be able to fill up the last

gaps in their analytics and see exactly what’s making them money.

2. PERSONALIZE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

• Custom Call Experiences

For example, set up distinct menu prompts for first-time callers and repeat callers. This

customization can even be based on the caller’s online activity.

• Leverage Conversation Analytics

Use signals from a phone call to customize a caller’s experience after the fact. For

example, put them on retargeting or nurturing campaigns depending on keywords

they say during the call. Or use the results of phone calls to test different sales scripts,

thereby improving the experience of all callers.

• Follow-Up Right

Put callers into follow-up campaigns based on call activity. Since you know their entire

journey, online and offline, you’ll make sure the right message goes to the right person

at the right time. No more accidently retargeting a converted customer with

a discount for something they just bought!

3. ACT ON THE DATA

• Double Down on Successful Campaigns

With call intelligence, you don’t just know which channels bring you the most calls. You

know which bring you the best leads.

• Determine actual conversion paths

Do most people call straight from a well placed search ad? Or do they decide to call

only after some email nurturing? See their whole history laid out in front of you.

• Tie revenue to phone calls

Instead of measuring success by call volume (which can be very misleading), measure

it by actual revenue, and know which cogs in your machine are making the cash

register ring.

• Test and Optimize

There are many things that could make your sales jump up, and with a stable tracking

system it’s fun to experiment. Review the

results at the end of the week or month or

quarter.

Phone number tests:

• Position

• Size

• Font / Style

Landing page tests:

• Calls to action

• Messaging

• Design

CHAPTER 8

THE 3 CORE BENEFITS TO

USING CALL INTELLIGENCE

• Increase in call volume

• Better lead quality

• Greater marketing ROI

You don’t have to change your phone number or do anything with your phone system.

1. INCREASE IN CALL VOLUME

With insights into what’s actually driving phone calls, you’ll know how to drive more.

e.g.

2. BETTER LEAD QUALITY Improve the entire customer journey, including their experience on the phone, so you

can get more of those high-value calls.

3. GREATER MARKETING ROI With proper analytics set up, you can improve all your channels constantly. The first step

is seeing the exact ROI of every channel, laid out in front of you. The second is watching

it go up.

CHAPTER 9

WHAT’S THE NEX STEP?

So, you have a business that profits from phone calls, and you want to fill in the gaps of

your analytics and know the true ROI of your marketing. What do you do next?

Unfortunately, advanced call intelligence is still quite expensive for many SMEs, even

prohibitively dear for some. That is the nature of new technology. But have hope. It’s also

the nature of technology that as it ages, the quality goes up, and the price comes down, so

if you don’t have space in your budget for the deep stuff just now, keep an eye on the

market, because one day you will.

Basic call tracking is much cheaper, you can get your system started today, and it will give

you the most important insights. If advanced call intelligence is a “100”, basic call tracking is

still about a “60”. You’ll still be able to track how many phone calls you generate from each

marketing channel. For most businesses, that’s more than enough to raise your revenue this

quarter, if you do it right.

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