Konstantin Cherviakov, ССO of Ringostat named typical mistakes of the majority of marketers that they do during the work with call tracking systems. This article is a long read so prepare your coffee, take the cozy blanket and discover the world of analytics. Stay tuned!
- Mistake #1. Tracking the general number of calls only without considering proper and junk ones
- Mistake #2. ROMI calculation by all calls
- Mistake #3. Not relevant calculation of the cost per target and unique calls
- Mistake #4. Ignoring call tracking opportunities to optimize the advertising workload and work of sales reps
- Mistake #5. Being sure that keywords are enough for the full analysis
- Mistake #6. Ignorance of additional analytical tools
- Conclusions
Mistake #1. Tracking the general number of calls only without considering proper and junk ones
It is considered that the main task of call tracking is to optimize ads with the aim of increasing the number of calls. On the one hand, it’s true. Helping marketers to drive more calls for a client is one of the tasks that a service has. On the other hand, it’s important to have these calls from potential customers.
Let’s set an example and give more details. Imagine that your client sells car tires. There are no brake disks in the online store. But he gave you incorrect information and you launched an ad campaign. Thus, some keywords attract junk traffic — customers who came to buy disks but not tires. These topics are very close and visitors start to call when they don’t find what they were looking for.
As a result, your client receives calls. Then you open a report in Google Analytics and make the conclusion that an ad campaign is effective. Just imagine what if you increase the budget for such a campaign, based on that report. It will turn out that you spend the client’s money on ineffective advertising only because the fact of the call wasn’t a relevant metric.
Ringostat team decided that a conversation made by phone with a potential customer lasts much longer than with random people. If we go back to our example with tires, a junk call will end with a short response from the operator “Unfortunately we do not have discs, only tires”. The duration of such a conversation is no more than 30 seconds.
A totally different thing is when a call is made from a potential buyer. He will definitely be interested in the availability, country of the manufacturer, shipping cost, etc. Such communication lasts longer than two minutes.
Therefore, it is crucial to see not only the number of calls and keywords that worked out. But also how many of them were proper. Experts in the field usually emphasize that it is necessary to configure and view reports on proper, answered and missed calls.
Ringostat created a new metric to count the cost of proper calls — CPPC. Discover what is it and how it works in the article “Ringostat integration with Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook Pixel”.
Сost of the proper call shown by each ad channel in the Analytics section
In addition, listening to recordings of conversations, especially junk ones will be as well useful. This will allow you to understand what went wrong. And why the caller was not targeted. For example, spam, junk call, etc.
What understands a good marketer?
- Not every call is made by a potential customer.
- Tracking all calls without dividing them to proper, junk, answered and missed won’t show the real picture.
- Considering only the “All calls” metric you can make wrong conclusions about the effectiveness of an ad campaign. As a result, you can optimize and work with it in the wrong way.
What does he do?
1. In the settings of the Ringostat project, he sets the duration of a proper call, considering the specifics of his client’s business.
2. He customizes and looks at least at 6 the most important reports:
- report on proper calls;
- report on missed calls;
- report on calls from a specific channel;
- report on calls via callback widget;
- report on calls accepted by a certain sales rep, for a certain phone number;
- report on inbound calls.
3. Listens to junk calls to discover their reason, makes conclusions and optimizes paid ads.
Goals completion overview in the Google Analytics
Experts’ opinions
To make it fairer, we decided to ask professionals from different companies about their experience in Ringostat usage. So here are their answers:
For example, to push a potential customer to call the sales department. Therefore, Ringostat helps us fully monitor the effectiveness of our work. It also helps us to build sales funnels and make adjustments to the work of ad campaigns on time and based on clear conclusions.”
Mistake #2. ROMI calculation by all calls
If the previous paragraph was evident, and you do everything as it is mentioned above — receive a medal of a good specialist 🙂
We move on to the fact that makes impossible the objective evaluation of the effectiveness of an ad campaign in principle — ROMI calculation. So the question is the following. It is true that we have to consider proper calls during ROMI calculation, but whether all types of calls must be considered?
Mostly, yes, if your client’s business is a taxi service or other urgent services with repeated purchases.
Everything is completely different if your client works in real estate, with motorcycles, quadrocopters or furniture at retail. These niches are not used to repeated purchases. So the sales cycle may consist of several contacts with sales reps during a long period.
Knowing this peculiarity of various businesses, we transfer unique calls to Google Analytics as a separate event. Thus, we also added the event of a unique target call.
Unique call and Unique target call events in the Google Analytics
What understands a good marketer?
- Count ROMI considering all calls is a wrong strategy.
- Usage of repeated calls during the cycle, won’t show the real cost-effectiveness of ads.
What does he do?
Sets the sales cycle by days in the Ringostat account. Thus, repeated calls and spam calls won’t be displayed in reached goals by targeted calls.
To set the sales cycles in the Ringostat account go to the Settings section — Project settings — Call settings
Expert’s opinion
That’s how one of our experts works with similar reports:
For example, the sales cycle in real estate is long enough. So the activities that we did in summer can only show results in September. Therefore, it’s crucial for us to know whether a person called for the first time as a result of the ad campaign we launched in September. Or he called for the second, third time after the one that we launched in July“.
Driving unique calls to a separate category gives our customers a real picture of the effectiveness of ads. You can see more precise statistics only by integrating call tracking with CRM systems and end-to-end analytics system (Ringostat also provides such an opportunity).
Here are the advantages that are offered by Ringostat end-to-end analytics.
- Understanding the cost recovery of your investments in each ad channel. End-to-end analytics gives an understanding of the ROI of ad campaigns up yo the keyword.
- The maximum flexibility of settings for a specific business. It differs Ringostat end-to-end analytics from other same-titled solutions. You can set any attribution model, time decay and weight for different goals. You can also manually import costs if you use advertising systems that are not integrated with Ringostat yet.
- Work in one window. You don’t have to create dashboards and manually consolidate data from different systems. Ringostat end-to-end analytics will do it for you. Receive key metrics via ready-made reports. Test Ringostat end-to-end analytics 14 days for free.
Discover more information about Ringostat end-to-end analytics in the article “4 ways to boost your business via end-to-end analytics” on our blog.
Mistake #3. Not relevant calculation of the cost per target and unique calls
The work of a good digital marketing agency is not only about attracting target calls but also about reducing the cost per each lead. Therefore, it is highly important to make the calculation of the cost of conversion as correct as possible. Pay attention that this can’t be achieved if we take into account the whole marketing activity in general, without dividing it into separate ad channels and without making the additional analysis.
Example of the Google Analytics report that shows ad channels that perform better than others
Let’s say one of the advertising channels attracts a lot of conversions. In most cases, the Google Analytics report will show it. Now imagine that customers used your client’s offer and bought 100 units of the product. The last one was offered at a discount or a promotion. But the product turned out to be of poor quality, and 70 buyers returned it.
Google Analytics will show revenue, although, in fact, the company is losing money. In this case, ROMI can’t be calculated correctly using Google Analytics data. Here you need additional tools or more precisely, a CRM system. It will not only display data on canceled transactions but also transfer them to the web analytics system.
For sure, not all clients give marketers data on closed transactions and allow them to configure the sending of their value to Google Analytics. However, it is necessary to get the correct ROMI value.
What understands a good marketer?
Correct ROMI calculation is impossible without additional analysis and tracking all ad channels separately.
What does he do?
- “Fills out” blank spaces in analytics by connecting Ringostat to CRM systems via data transfer with WebHooks or integration with the API interface.
- Evaluates the revenue with the CRM systems and finds out weak points in all communication channels.
- Asks a client for data on closed deals or convinces him to configure the sending of the information to the analytical system. Thus, he has an opportunity to correctly count ROMI.
- Optimized ad campaigns based on the received data, making everything the most profitable for a client.
You can find out more information about API, Webhooks, and the process of Ringostat integration with different CRM systems in our knowledge base.
Mistake #4. Ignoring call tracking opportunities to optimize the advertising workload and work of sales reps
Using call tracking, you can not only track the number of answered and missed calls but also understand their reason. For example, in case if the percentage of the second one is high (14% of missed calls is already a lot).
From our experience, we can say that a high percentage of missed calls often does not mean the fault of sales reps or a call center. It might be about the incorrect distribution of the advertising load by the day or time of the day.
Example of Ringostat report on daily calls distribution
To give you more details and set an example, let’s go back to a customer with tires. He starts a sale. For example, he offers a discount for a set of winter tires: 4 tires for the price of three. The offer is excellent and relevant in the season. An ad campaign is launched, and one of the channels is the radio. The advertisement goes there into prime time: 8-9 pm.
The specifics of radio advertising is that a potential customer calls immediately, as soon as he hears it. But, all in all, he doesn’t reach sales reps as there is no one in the office, and no one answers the calls.
A special report on the time of day in the Ringostat account will show you how to optimize the advertising load by removing it from inconvenient hours and transferring to more convenient ones. Or, on the contrary, optimize the work of sales reps or a call center so they will receive calls during peak hours.
Example of Ringostat report on the distribution of calls by the time of the day
What understands a good РРС Specialist?
To increase the effectiveness of an ad campaign, it is necessary to monitor the work of sales reps and analyze missed calls.
What does he do?
He configures and works with the report by day and time of day in the Ringostat account. Optimizes the advertising load, by knowing when he can increase the turnover of ads and when he needs to show them less.
Mistake #5. Being sure that keywords are enough for the full analysis
We are constantly working on the development and improvement of the Ringostat platform, adding integration capabilities with various end-to-end analytics services, and making all our best to improve the service quality. So it was a big surprise for us when we found out that many marketers consider tracking calls up to a keyword as a sufficient metric for analytics and optimization of an ad campaign.
For sure, such data is useful. But there are other opportunities that give a more objective picture. Why won’t you use it then? For example, using the Ringostat report on multi-channel sequences, you can determine the advertising source that has driven the direct traffic. One of our experts will give you more details:
Using such reports, we can see on our own and show our clients that all advertising channels are very important — you can’t say exactly what worked out — a banner or a keyword. But at least these two channels helped the customer to make a decision.
If you disable one of them, there will be no conversion. Yes, it’s possible that keyword tracking is enough for some very narrow business area that is focused on a search only. But it’s hard for me to imagine a target audience for which this would be enough”.
What understands a good marketer?
Keywords tracking and optimization are not enough to receive the full analysis and build an effective advertising campaign.
What does he do?
He analyzes the report on multi-channel sequences and knows which groups of advertising channels give a conversion. Thus, on the basis of this, he optimizes the ad campaign.
Mistake #6. Ignorance of additional analytical tools
Work with data is highly important for web analytics. And the wider the range of these data you have, the more accurate analytics you’ll receive. Another issue is those end-to-end analytics systems that provide a large amount of data are not relevant for all business models.
If we are talking about a small business with a small flow of customers, it’s enough to configure the data from Google Analytics or CRM systems and data from the call tracking system to Google Spreadsheets. Then you can make the necessary calculations using the built-in formulas or manually. Ideally, the cost of analytics should not exceed 10% of the company’s advertising budget.
Today, almost all the tasks of high-quality web analytics can be solved by platforms like Woopra, Kissmetrics, OWOX.
Woopra is a service of analytics and statistics, focused on studying the behavior of visitors in real-time. Who they are, a source that has driven them, how they work with the website, etc.
Kissmetrics is an analytics platform with advanced statistics, data visualization in the form of a sales funnel.
OWOX platform makes it possible to work with a large array of data, find out the value of each session and get a more realistic picture, by dividing analytics by groups of products or types of devices that use potential customers. Using OWOX, you can drive call tracking and Google Analytics data to Google BigQuery, and get the necessary calculations in a few minutes.
What understands a good marketer?
The larger the array of analytics data, the more efficient it is to build an ad campaign on their basis.
What does he do?
Integrates Ringostat with Kissmetrics, Woopra, OWOX and other systems that provide advanced web analytics capabilities.
Conclusions
You need to remember that determining the source of incoming calls up to the keyword is an important metric but not the only one that offers call tracking. As the service provides many opportunities for high-quality web analytics.
Our experts confirmed this statement, as well as the fact that in order to obtain the correct data and, as a result, to effectively optimize the ad campaign, it is necessary to consider several important points:
- track not only the total number of calls but also target and junk ones;
- make sure that you set the sales cycle in the settings in order to drop repeated calls;
- while calculating ROMI, analyze each advertising channel individually, integrate call tracking with CRM systems;
- optimize the advertising workload by working with the report on time of day and day of the week;
- analyze the report on multi-channel sequences to find out which channels work out and optimize the ad campaign;
- use dynamic content substitution and test the substitution options;
- use more advanced analytics systems that allow you to work with an extended data array.
Such work with call tracking systems (and analytics in general) can be called a professional. The one that is focused on the effective optimization of ad campaigns as well as the maximum benefit for clients of digital agencies. Another workflow is ineffective and pointless today. Clients will simply choose other, more effective specialists.
