Is Call Tracking a Necessity For Your Industry?

Almost every industry is moving toward greater dependence in online communications. So, it’s easy for businesses to forget how important traditional phone calls still are. Roughly 61 percent of customers still like to call a business they’re planning to purchase from. This method of communication allows them to have their questions answered by a live human representative. Significant as this statistic is, the number is even higher for customers preparing to make high-dollar purchases.

Given the enduring popularity of phone calls with customers, it’s relatively easy to see why call tracking software is an essential component of a well-rounded marketing analytics toolkit. With that said, call tracking is still more important in some sectors than in others. Here’s what you should know about the industries in which call tracking software is most useful.

What Industries Absolutely Must Use Call Tracking?

In industries that rely on both digital and print marketing campaigns, call tracking is almost necessary for success. Following are a few of the businesses in which the use of call tracking to monitor conversion rates and ROIs is most critical.

Real Estate

One of the industries in which call tracking is most important is the real estate industry. Real estate agents typically use a wide variety of advertising channels that can range from online pay-per-click ads to local billboards and radio ads. Call tracking is the best and easiest way to gain insights into the conversion rates and ROIs of these many different campaigns.

Using call tracking, a real estate agent can even track conversions from the yard and roadside signs they use. Thanks to this fact, real estate agencies use call tracking to determine conversion rate and ROI by geographic location. By assigning unique numbers to signs in different neighborhoods, agents can find out where their signage is most effective.

Automotive Sales

For car dealerships, inbound telephone calls are a significant source of sales leads. As of 2016, 46 percent of connected calls to dealerships resulted in an appointment being made with a sales representative. Dealerships then track the efficacy of all promotional efforts and attribute calls to the correct marketing channels. Therefore, tracking inbound calls is a great way for dealerships to improve their landing pages through split testing.

Tech Services

IT and SaaS companies are less likely than real estate agencies or car dealerships to use offline advertising channels. However, they still must run ads on multiple online platforms to promote their services. Call tracking gives them the ability to see which platforms are producing the largest volumes of calls, leads, and conversions.

Being able to track calls from various digital ad campaigns also makes optimization possible. With the added data, it’s possible for them to optimize the keywords, images, copy and other elements used in their ads. Gradual refinements made to ad campaigns via tracking and split testing mean technology service companies can achieve better conversion rates and ROIs across platforms.

Hospitality

Companies in the hospitality industry still do a great deal of business with their customers over the phone. From booking hotel rooms to renting out space for events, customers often prefer phone calls. For this reason, it’s absolutely critical that hospitality businesses properly attribute calls to the marketing campaigns that generate them. Without this capability, hospitality businesses lose the opportunity to track the sources of a large number of their conversions.

Dentists and Optometrists

Your local dental and optometry practices often work with limited budgets and marketing resources. These businesses need to use the budgets they do have as wisely as possible. Call tracking helps these practices find out which marketing channels are generating the most calls. It also enables dentists and optometrists to track the rate at which calls from different sources convert into appointments, which is a vital metric for any healthcare service business.

Legal

Law firms require call tracking for many of the same reasons as dental and optometry practices. Using call tracking technology, a legal firm measures its ROI and improves its marketing campaigns. This analysis attracts more calls and ultimately leads to more appointments. Recent statistics suggest that most law firms are remarkably behind the times when it comes to implementing data-driven marketing. A 2017 report found that more than 90 percent of law firms could not identify either their average cost per lead or the cost of acquiring a new customer.

Can Other Industries Still Benefit From Call Tracking Systems?

If your business doesn’t operate in one of the industries listed above, there’s still an excellent chance that call tracking technology is a good investment for your marketing toolkit. If you’re using multi-channel marketing and relying on phone calls as a primary means of contact between yourself and your customers, call tracking software gives you useful insights into how effective your campaigns are. Finally, you know which campaigns are delivering the best returns on your investment.