We love this statistic: Forty-six percent of local online searchers contacted a business by telephone following their Web research.  It’s from a scientific survey by TMP Directional Marketing and comScore in summer of 2009. 

What does it mean for marketers?  If you solely rely on web contact forms, electronic shopping carts and frequently-asked-questions (FAQ) pages to service customers you’re most likely missing out on a huge slice of business. 

For local marketers — whether you’re doing mobile marketing, managing online directories or running a local service business such as a doctor’s office or auto dealership — connecting with local customers is paramount.  But how do you know who’s calling as a result of your online marketing efforts? 

Call tracking solutions provide the answer.  You can provision anywhere from one to thousands of local phone numbers to place on your Web sites.  When your customers call these numbers, Mongoose tracks their searching behavior from keyword to completed sale.  Yes, it’s true.  You can quickly learn which key words are driving phone calls and then adjust your bidding accordingly. 

You can learn more about provisioning local phone numbers for call tracking by visiting our local coverage page.  Here’s a comprehensive list of available local service numbers across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

1. See phone calls next to clicks in Google Adwords with Google Call Tracking. This clever tool allows millions of Google Adwords users to quickly and easily aggregate offline conversion information (phone calls) with online conversion data (clicks) to illuminate which keywords are driving phone calls. For the first time ever, marketers can view a complete picture of their online spending — and conversions — with an integrated platform showing phone call data alongside Adword data in the Google Adwords Placement Performance Report dashboard. 
2. Simplify Your Life by Tracking Phone Calls with Google Analytics. For more advanced web marketers, it’s just as simple to track phone calls next to clicks within the Google Analytics platform. Google Analytics is a free web visitor tracking program offered by Google. It provides data related to how people interact (and convert) on your web site. Mongoose Metrics provides an integration which allows you to visualize your web form conversions alongside your phone conversions directly within the Google Analytics interface. 
3. Provision Local and Toll-Free Trackable Phone Numbers. Whether your business needs toll-free numbers to convey a national presence or local phone numbers to serve hyper-local communities, a good call tracking solution will provide both options. International businesses which want to connect to local communities in Los Angeles, Montreal or London can do so with either local or toll-free numbers displaying on their web sites depending on specific marketing objectives. While toll-free numbers help your business appeal to a wider audience, local phone numbers are attractive to visitors who feel only comfortable doing business with people in their own backyards. Call tracking solutions which use local phone numbers are a natural fit for any business which receives geographically-oriented calls such as storage companies, auto dealerships, pizza parlors, hair salons and service professionals (doctors and lawyers).
4. Identify Which Keywords are Driving Phone Calls with Keyword Call Tracking. Whether you’re spending six figures or $600 each month on pay per click (PPC) advertising it’s imperative to know which keywords are performing and which ones should be discontinued. Call tracking provides the intelligence to drill even deeper by illuminating which keywords are making the phone ring. When web visitors visit your site and call your designated phone number, the call tracking software places a cookie on the visitor’s browser which tracks the entire click path from browsing through to completed sale. Action items from understanding this data would be to modify your PPC spending campaign as well as optimize your existing site to target terms which convert well via web forms and phone. 
5. Become a Call Tracking Reseller with a White Label Call Tracking Product. A white label product allows call tracking agencies and resellers to take full ownership of Mongoose Metrics’ robust call tracking services, expert technical support and full suite of keyword call tracking intelligence. Features and benefits include: Choice of sub-domain which is fully customizable and branded; branded log-in page with logo; No visible reference to Mongoose Metrics; Full access for resellers and/or their clients to Mongoose Metrics’ technical support, and a time investment of less than five minutes for implementation. 
6. Quantify Offline Conversions Resulting from Online Advertising. In addition to seeing phone calls next to clicks in numerous web analytics dashboards, call tracking features such as the interactive voice response (IVR) and ROI feedback tools let call tracking clients enter data related to the phone call for use in later correlation. For example, your customer service representatives can seemlessly enter in call-result data via a Mongoose Metrics IVR system at the end of their call. 
7. Track Phone Calls in Canada and the United Kingdom. Until now it’s been difficult for Canadian and UK businesses to use toll-free and local phone numbers to follow visitors from web-to-phone to understand how their websites drive phone calls and ultimately, sales. Technology now makes it possible for multi-national businesses which need a presence on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and north of the border to seamlessly integrate their online marketing strategies with one call tracking solution. Mongoose partners with only toll-quality providers such as Virgin, O2 and British Telecom. 
8. Integrate Phone Call Analytics into your CRM. Take call tracking to the next level by integrating phone call data into customer relationship management (CRM) systems to provide even more granular data for sales professionals. Mongoose Metrics data easily integrates with Sugar, SalesForce and Microsoft CRM. The goal of this integration is to provide your sales and marketing team with a path analysis so they can understand why someone is calling and provide tailored information to potential customers. 
9. PPC Call Tracking Integration with WebtrendsTM, OmnitureTM, Acquisio and Unilytics. Many larger marketers use a PPC Bid Management system like Acquisio or Marin Software to simplify the task of managing multiple PPC campaigns across numerous advertising networks. These bid management softwares allow marketers the ability to visualize and automate their PPC bidding. Mongoose Metrics integrates into bid management software like Marin and Acquisio so that our customers can see their online conversion metrics alongside their offline conversion metrics.
10. Quantify Click to Call Conversions. For applications where it is easier to click to place a phone call, Mongoose Metrics provides a seemless drop-in interface to allow your client the ability to contact a representative of your company immediately. The Mongoose Click-to-Call interface is layered with many of the other Mongoose features enabling you the ability to visualize your complete offline conversion funnel within your existing business process.

Today we launched Mongoose Metrics’ White Label aka Private Label Call Tracking product for call tracking resellers who want to gain credibility and increase profits by offering their clients our powerful tool for quantifying the offline impact of online advertising.

This white label call tracking offering features:

• Choice of fully-customizable, branded sub-domain.
• Branded login-in page with logo.
• No visibile reference to Mongoose Metrics.
• Full access for resellers and/or their clients to Mongoose Metrics’ technical support.
• Time investment of less than five minutes for implementation.

Call tracking resellers now have the ability to provide call tracking services with their brand attached as well as structure costs which make sense for their business needs.

Bradley Reynolds, Mongoose Metrics chief executive officer says, “Agencies and resellers who specialize in PPC, organic, e-mail, web analytics or even offline advertising can realize the benefits of adding call tracking to their suite of products to help clients visualize a complete marketing picture that illuminates which marketing efforts are driving phone calls, and ultimately, sales conversions.”

Noted author, blogger (Occam’s Razor) and thought leader in the field of web analytics, Avinash Kaushik’s new book, “Web Analytics 2.0″ (Sybex 2010) details specific strategies and execution models to evolve from simply leveraging clickstream tools to incorporating the insightful elixer of qualitative data, experimentation and testing along with competitive intelligence tools. 

The 442-page tome provides hundreds of insightful examples and debunks myths, identifies traps and reveals specific, simple and advanced methodologies to transform your thinking about web analytics. 

He mentions Mongoose Metrics on page 379 as a viable vendor for call tracking.  Thanks Avinash!

Mongoose Metrics’ team of call tracking experts will attend the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo in New York City on March 23-24 to teach attendees about the power of call tracking.  Mongoose co-founders Steve Abbey and Jeff Tirey will lead the group which includes Matt Fay and Drew Johnson, in showing marketers how call tracking provides the missing piece of the web analytics puzzle.

“Every business gets phone calls,” says Abbey.  “And with call tracking you can simply measure and analyze the offline impact of all your online advertising such as PPC, organic, e-mail and more,” he adds.

Stop by the Mongoose Metrics booth for a demonstration about how call tracking can enable your business to:

• Optimize online campaigns: Know which campaigns, keywords and marketing tactics drive callers and whether those calls generate revenue – offline or online.
• Improve site design: Understand which pages drive calls – customers may be confused, and there may be opportunities for site usability improvement.
• Save money: Find new ways to more effectively close business online and reduce call volume.
• Save time: Our integrated reporting environment saves time in analysis by consolidated call information with your analytics and CRM providers

If you’d like to schedule an appointment while you’re at SMX, please contact Mongoose Metrics’ Sales Director Rob Bisker at rob.bisker@mongoosemetrics.com or 1.877.784.0496.

SES New York takes place from March 22 through March 26 at the Hilton New York.  Approximately 5,000 marketers and search engine optimization professionals attend SES New York each year to network and learn about topics such as PPC management, keyword research, SEO, social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability and more.

Savvy web analytics practitioners now have another option to accurately and powerfully analyze a complete picture of their online advertising campaigns.  Mongoose Metrics today announced a partnership with Unilytics, a world-leader in web analytics consulting.  Unilytics is known for their prowess in helping clients leverage Google Analytics(tm) and Webtrends(tm) platforms for maximum efficiency and return-on-investment.  The partnership is a win-win for clients of both companies. 

“Our partnership creates an even more powerful tool for marketers who want a full analysis – online and offline – for every form of advertising they buy.  At the most basic, yet perhaps most illustrative level, we can tell you which keywords are driving phone calls,” says Bradley Reynolds, chief executive officer for Mongoose Metrics.  He adds, “Whether you’re spending $600 or six figures each month on advertising, it’s imperative to know everything possible about your return-on-investment.  With Mongoose Metrics’ call tracking technology, advertisers can finally understand who’s clicking, who’s calling, how and why. “

“We believe our customers will see tremendous advantages by integrating Mongoose Metrics into their web analytics products,” says Peder Enhorning, president of Unilytics.  “Measuring campaign conversions is critical and web analytics products do this well, except when visitors instead decide to pick up the phone and call in. Mongoose Metrics neatly fills this void and offers our customers an attractive way to better understand which campaigns are working and which are not.”

Mongoose Metrics and Unilytics have a number of clients in common and the collaboration takes advantage of both companies’ assets to provide more value to customers. 

When it comes to doing business with any telephone service supplier it’s important to know the quality-level of the connections.  The best way to measure for voice quality is with a metric called the Mean Opinion Score (MOS).  At Mongoose Metrics, we use only old-school, toll-quality TDM lines and have a high MOS score of 4.5.  Many VOIP providers don’t reach this level of quality so it’s very important to ask any vendor you engage, “What is the MOS score for your service?”

Here’s an article from About.com which details the elements of the MOS score. 

Mean Opinion Score (MOS) - A Measure Of Voice Quality

By Nadeem Unuth, About.com Guide

What is Mean Opinion Score?

In voice and video communication, quality usually dictates whether the experience is a good or bad one. Besides the qualitative description we hear, like ‘quite good’ or ‘very bad’, there is a numerical method of expressing voice and video quality. It is called Mean Opinion Score (MOS). MOS gives a numerical indication of the perceived quality of the media received after being transmitted and eventually compressed using codecs.

MOS is expressed in one number, from 1 to 5, 1 being the worst and 5 the best. MOS is quite subjective, as it is based figures that result from what is perceived by people during tests. However, there are software applications that measure MOS on networks, as we see below.

The Mean Opinion Score Values

Taken in whole numbers, the numbers are quite easy to grade.

5 - Perfect. Like face-to-face conversation or radio reception.

4 - Fair. Imperfections can be perceived, but sound still clear. This is (supposedly) the range for cell phones.

3 - Annoying.

2 - Very annoying. Nearly impossible to communicate.

1 - Impossible to communicate

The values do not need to be whole numbers. Certain thresholds and limits are often expressed in decimal values from this MOS spectrum. For instance, a value of 4.0 to 4.5 is referred to as toll-quality and causes complete satisfaction. This is the normal value of PSTN and many VoIP services aim at it, often with success. Values dropping below 3.5 are termed unacceptable by many users.

How Are MOS Tests Conducted?

A certain number of people are sat and are made to hear some audio. Each one of them gives a rating from within 1 to 5. Then an artihmetic mean (average) is calculated, giving the Mean Opinion Score. When conducting MOS test, there are certain phrases that are recommended to be used by the ITU-T. They are:

You will have to be very quiet.

There was nothing to be seen.

They worshipped wooden idols.

I want a minute with the inspector.

Did he need any money?

Factors Affecting Mean Opinion Score

MOS can simply be used to compare between VoIP services and providers. But more importantly, they are used to assess the work of codecs, which compress audio and video to save on bandwidth utilization but with a certain amount of drop in quality. MOS tests are then made for codecs in a certain environment.

There are however certain other factors that affect the quality of audio and video transferred, as mentioned in that article. These factors are not supposed to be accounted for in MOS values, so when determining the MOS for a certain codec, service or network, it is important that all the other factors are favorable to the maximum for a good quality, for MOS values are assumed to be obtained under ideal conditions.

Software Automated Mean Opinion Score Tests

Since the manual/human MOS tests are quite subjective and less than productive in many ways, there are nowadays a number of software tools that carry out automated MOS testing in a VoIP deployment. Although they lack the human touch, the good thing with these tests is that they take into account all the network dependency conditions that could influence voice quality. Some examples are AppareNet Voice, Brix VoIP Measurement Suite, NetAlly, PsyVoIP and VQmon/EP.