1. Phone Call Facts You Might Have Not Known

2. It’s the rare American over the age of 12 who goes anywhere without his or her smartphone. Businesses often overlook this fact in the age of Analytics and AdWords by Google. That means they’re not paying as much attention as they should to inbound calls. Marketing is far too competitive of a business to allow that to happen. As your business handles its phone calls, we will examine some things about them that you may have forgotten or assumed incorrectly.

3. Phone Calls Aren’t Going Anywhere You may have heard the argument that people prefer text and chat and have no time for something as old-fashioned as a phone call. However, it’s simply not true. They may prefer those mediums when talking with friends, not when contacting a business. If you don’t believe it, consider this: Consumers made 30 billion calls to businesses in 2013, and analysts predict they will make 73 billion calls in 2018. That is nearly a 150 percent increase!

4. It’s Easier to Make a Phone Call Than Filling Out a Form It’s rare to go anywhere and not see someone using their mobile device. Whether it’s to look up directions to a restaurant or surf on social media, Americans are attached to their phones. In fact, they’re so committed to using them that people now make more searches on their phones than they do on their desktops. That means someone who arrives at your website via their smartphone has the following options to consider:

5. Complete a form • Talk with a bot • Tap the click-to-call button or dial the number to speak to someone right away • Of the three options, the last one requires the fewest taps. When you don’t publish your company phone number, a consumer might not view your business as legitimate. More smartphone doesn’t mean less phone calls. The opposite is true, and that’s good news for marketers.

6. Want Better Conversion Rates? Focus on Inbound Calls Which would you prefer? A conversion rate of two percent or one at nearly 50 percent? Assuming it’s the latter, you can achieve it with inbound calls. When a prospect completes a form, it takes an average of 54 hours for him or her to receive a response. That’s too long in our instant gratification society, and it results in very low conversion rates. When someone calls your business, you already know they have an interest and are more likely to follow through with a purchase.

7. They simply need more information to help finalize their decision. When you can provide details right now, you’re much more likely to make a sale.

8. Track Your Inbound Calls if You Don’t Want to Lose Money You may wonder why call tracking is necessary when you have already invested in tracking how every online lead found you. Google Analytics does a good job of using cookies to give you the data you need about every website visit. Unfortunately, the trail for your lead ends when he or she decides to call your company using the phone number on its website.

9. That means you now know nothing about your once-promising lead. He or she could turn into a conversion, but for all you know, the prospect simply disappeared because you don’t have a click path for phone calls. According to a recent study released by comScore, 63 percent of people who visit a website complete their purchase offline.

10. While that’s good for your bottom line, it leaves you with no information about nearly two-thirds of your customers. That means you lose future chances to refine your marketing efforts as well as credit for getting the customer this far through the sales pipeline. That doesn’t have to be the case when you invest in call tracking.

11. Call Tracking Defined With call tracking, you see the entire picture behind each customer’s path to making a purchase. This includes all data about phone calls he or she made to your company.

12. You learn the keywords your prospect entered as well as which marketing efforts directed him towards your company in the first place. This information enables you to make smarter decisions about investments in marketing campaigns. You can tweak the ones that work best and drop the ones that don’t perform. A well-run advertising campaign means additional phone calls, greater sales volume, and an easier time making sense of it all when it comes time to do the accounting work.

13. Simply put, ignoring phone calls means throwing money out the window. Call tracking isn’t hard to implement, and it eliminates customer blind spots that you really do need to know about.