Mobile searches will surpass desktop searches, in 2016. 61% of mobile searches result in a phone call. 66% of sales manager rated phone leads as “good” or “excellent”, than any other lead type. Thus, inbound phone calls are considered to be a better quality lead than web lead because they tend to convert 10-15X. This means the value of a phone call surpasses that of a web conversion and, with content creation & distribution on the rise, wouldn’t you want to be able to track and prove how much ROI a whitepaper or article is actually responsible for?

• Content Marketing Budgets on the Rise
  55% of B2B and 59% of B2C companies will increase spending on content marketing in 2015
• Content Marketers Struggle to Prove ROI
  Only 21% of B2B and 23% of B2C companies say they are successful attacking ROI from content marketing
• Most (46% and 53%) struggle or don’t track ROI at all

The benefits of simultaneous content marketing & call tracking:

1. With call tracking you can attribute calls back to content and the channels that are driving the leads. With call tracking you’ll be able to attribute what content generated that call and what keyword they used. The perfect example for this is a campaign I work on for a garage door repair company.

Personal story:
I manage a client campaign that’s a psychology office trying to get more appointments. They average approximately 25 web leads and 145 phone calls, a month. If I did not have them set up with call tracking, I would be under-valuing our agency efforts and missing out on a massive amount of conversions that I generated for the client. Being able to track phone calls is critical to a campaign, because we’re able to really validate your services to a client, and validate spending more money on content creation.

2. Call tracking can identify the exact keyword that led to the phone call. This makes it easy to figure out what content piece or landing page is really working. When the phone number changes dynamically, it allows tracking that call on a keyword level. This helps identify campaigns that are really, truly driving the most qualified leads.

Personal story:
One of the campaigns had not had a web conversion in months and I was going to pause or remove it. After digging through the call keywords, I discovered that this particular campaign was driving all the phone calls but users were not converting via web form. If I was not tracking calls on the keyword level, I could’ve easily killed a campaign that was delivering the most qualified leads.

3. Call tracking can be used with e-mail nurturing and phone leads can be attributed back to an e-mail campaign. With call tracking, you’re able to include a unique phone number with an e-mail campaign and identify the effectiveness, of that e-mail campaign, for driving revenue. This is just another way to tie calls (and revenue) to a drip or list segmented e-mail blast.

4. Call tracking allows you to listen to phone calls, from campaigns, to ensure quality and relevancy. Many times, I review the quality of the leads we’re generating. Whenever a client is upset, it’s very convenient to be able to pull up a phone call where a sale occurred and relate it directly back to in-direct marketing efforts.

5. Call tracking makes it simple to accurately map conversion paths. You’ll be able to see what pages are driving the most visits, which pages are driving quality leads and what marketing efforts are best at driving conversions. Attribution modeling is very important for understanding the buying cycle and decision-making process, which a user goes through, before converting. Call tracking adds another attributable funnel, to the conversion path.

6. Call tracking lets you identify different geographic regions that calls are coming from. This enables you to track and transfer phone calls depending on time zone and business hours and helps identify geographic regions that may be more of a “hot spot” than other regions.

8. Call tracking can be integrated with your Google Analytics. This allows you to analyze website data side by side with call data.

9. Call tracking can be integrated with your CRM system. This allows you to track leads through the entire sales process. Since, calls convert to revenue more than web leads do, it’s critical to be able to show how your content marketing & indirect marketing efforts, can really affect the bottom line of a business.

10. Call tracking allows for a more personalized inbound call experience. 1:1 marketing is becoming extremely important in 2016. You can personalize inbound calls by automatically routing calls based on caller’s location, keywords, business hours, sales agent or IVR questions. Personalized inbound calls ensure that a call is never missed and a lead is never neglected.

Don’t start another content strategy without setting yourself you for success. Call tracking is an incredible, non-invasive way to monitor your content marketing efforts and show how important branding and content creation really is to the buying cycle. Most CEO’s and business owners are all about the numbers and the bottom line, but nothing excites C-level executives more like being able to attribute your content marketing efforts to measurable ROI.