Imagine: An employee answers the phone and talks to a caller for a few minutes. Moments later they’ve hung up and you’re left wondering how that caller found out about your business.
It doesn’t have to be that subjective.
There’s a better solution than throwing advertising dollars at different marketing channels (assuming your call handlers perform their best on every call without knowing their true lead to appointment rates).
Call tracking provides real data to take away the guesswork.
What is call tracking?
Such software ensures that you can accurately determine how callers find and reach your business.
At its simplest, call tracking requires publishing a unique phone number (local or toll free) for each marketing campaign (website, direct mail, newsletter, radio ad, etc.) that you want to track. All calls to these numbers are routed to your main line(s). This allows you to see which ad sources make the phone ring the most.
Source: www.callsource.com
Call tracking can benefit both your offline and online marketing efforts. Unique call tracking numbers should be placed everywhere that you are advertising your business.
While most consumers may do some research before they contact you, a lot of them are still picking up the phone as their first point of communication with your dealership.
Instead of going the old-fashioned route of relying on phone handlers to ask each caller how they heard about you, which can lead to misattribution, call tracking reliably and accurately displays where the caller dialed from.
Some advertising companies promise to bring you a specific amount of calls or leads by advertising with them. Call tracking gives you the extra security to see from your own data how well all of those ads truly perform.
If you use an agency for all of your marketing, ask to see the call data to prove the ROI on your investment. If the agency isn’t using call tracking or providing you with ROI metrics, ask why.
Call tracking lets you invest more in the ads that actually bring you leads.
How does call tracking help my appointment conversion rate?
By listening to your tracked phone calls, you can determine what happened on each phone call, and whether or not a successful appointment was set.
But if you do not have time to sit and listen to calls yourself, most robust call tracking systems can take that work off of your plate with their own call analytics.
In addition to showing where calls originate, your call tracking provider can show you which calls are actual prospects versus non-prospect callers, how many set an appointment with your business, and which were missed opportunities.
Source: www.callsource.com
How do I get started with call tracking?
If you are new to call tracking, make sure there is a support team who will help you interpret the data and provide additional services that will help you grow.
After determining which call tracking provider sounds best suited for you, you’ll have to start swapping out your existing phone number with call tracking phone numbers on all advertisements that you’d like to track, and start getting the data to make the best decisions for your dealership.
