Let's Talk: Tracking Phone Leads Online

For local businesses, marketing success is often measured by how often the phone rings. Local businesses like pest control, lawn service and home improvement contractors live or die by generating quality leads. Typically these companies prefer phone leads over trading emails with potential customers because they can build rapport, ask questions, and provide personalized recommendations. In other words, they can close more business.

Of course, competition is stiff. For every well-known, well-funded national competitor, there may be 100 other local and regional competitors to contend with. Having a strong presence in search engines and social media and a usable website that drives leads isn't easy, but many companies do it well enough. We often find that the missing piece is optics into which marketing channels most efficiently drive leads and revenue. This information is essential to businesses and their agency partners for prioritizing, budgeting and making better decisions.

While web leads are easier to measure, they might only represent 5-10% of total leads. Understanding what drives phone leads really matters. So how do we get there?

We start by working with clients to identify what data to extract from their data. This might include:

• How many phone calls are from new prospects compared to existing customers?


• How are callers finding the phone numbers?


• Where do calls originate? Does the client serve those geographies, or are calls coming in from outside the client's territory?


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Next, we make sure the right analytical tools are in place and evaluate how the tools can be integrated:

1. Website analytics solution, such as Google Analytics


2. Call tracking service that integrates with the website analytics package, such as IfByPhone


3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system


4. User testing platform, such as Visual Website Optimizer


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The data we gather through this analytical framework informs our recommendations on how to drive more leads and encourage more people to pick up the phone.