Innovative Trends for Recovery Services Marketing Professionals
A study from JupiterResearch shows that 43 percent of marketers don’t or can’t accurately measure the ROI from Search Engine Optimization (SEO). (Source: JupiterResearch, SEM Executive Summary, 2007).
Call Tracking helps you measure the ROI of your online and offline marketing efforts.
How do I know if we are bidding on the right keywords?
How do I know if we are spending the appropriate budget on SEO/SEM?
What does it take to get started using call tracking on our web site? How long is the process?
How will I know if call tracking is working?
What do the reports look like and can we integrate them into our existing web analytics platform?
How much of my monthly advertising spend should I invest in call tracking?
How do I know if we are bidding on the right keywords?
The real question is: how do I measure the performance of my PPC campaign? The answer is found in a combination of web analytics, online conversion tracking and offline conversion tracking. When a PPC campaign is started, you have visibility into keywords which have generated clicks, but not into which keywords have generated sales. If your business does online sales only, there is no need for offline conversion intelligence through call tracking. Regardless of whether your business sells or generates leads via the phone, you need to implement web analytics and conversion tracking.
There are a variety of web analytics providers costing from zero to tens of thousands of dollars per month and with data from a simple set through very detailed visitor information. The goal of web analytics is to allow you to visualize how a potential customer is navigating through your site so that you can better convert them. In tandem to implementing web analytics, you want to build conversion pages which upload data back to your PPC network indicating a purchase or conversion event has happened.
If some of your conversions happen via the phone, you want to also implement call tracking. Advanced call tracking can attribute conversions back to keywords.
The goal is to visualize the full conversion chart for your keywords taking into account the conversion values (and ROI) generated by both online and offline methods. Once you have this intelligence, you can more accurately adjust your bidding on keywords in your PPC campaign.
How do I know if we are spending the appropriate budget on SEO/SEM?
Before you can answer this question, you need to understand what is being produced from your SEO/SEM efforts as well as the cost for your SEO/SEM efforts. If you are strictly employing an outside firm to handle SEO/SEM, cost is easy. If you are employing internal resources as well (including web page design and development) you need to add the fully loaded prorata share of those internal resources into your aggregate cost.
Once you understand your true cost, you then need to understand how your existing efforts are performing. As with the previous question, a combination of web analytics, conversion pages, and call tracking will let you understand how many sales your SEO/SEM marketing efforts are generating.
Once you understand your performance, you can then evaluate your SEO/SEM budget. This generally involves a reallocation of funds from areas that are not performing to areas that are performing if you wish to remain budget neutral. Additionally, the performance evaluation process can identify underserviced areas where additional marketing funds can generate substantial returns. The important item is that you now have in place tracking technology to understand the conversion impact when you apply more marketing funds. Without tracking (both web and call) you are flying blind with your budget.
What does it take to get started using call tracking on our web site? How long is the process?
With most call tracking providers, the installation process takes less than 30 minutes. Once the product is installed, you will need to navigate through that provider’s reporting web portal so that you understand the data being produced.
How will I know if call tracking is working?
For the initial installation, you can make test calls from web sessions. The data should be reported in realtime so you can see yourself and how you interacted with the site. Once you have verified that the basic implementation is working, let the system collect data for a few weeks so that you have a reliable sample size. Once you have a decent sample size, you can start looking for patterns regarding which marketing efforts are generating conversions. The goal would be to take the data from your call tracking software and marry it to data from your web analytics software to get the full picture of your conversions.
What do the reports look like and can we integrate them into our existing web analytics platform?
You can export conversion data from call tracking providers into an automated computer system for your portal report generation. If you do not have a web customer portal, you can also export conversion data via Excel format for integration into your existing reporting mechanisms. You can also be granted reporting-level access to your call tracking provider’s portal so that your employees can review campaign performance in real-time.
How much of my monthly advertising spend should I invest in call tracking?
The answer to this depends on how valuable having the offline conversion information is for influencing future advertising spend decisions. If you do not convert customers via the phone, call tracking should not be part of your budget. If you convert more than 10% of your customers on the phone, you should implement advanced session level call tracking. If your conversion rate is between zero and 10%, consider implementing basic call tracking. Overall, when it comes to call tracking, you should allocate an additional 2-5% of your monthly ad spend to add call tracking intelligence.