Enterprise marketing and sales departments are often in charge of huge budgets. It is the responsibility of department managers to allocate these funds in a way that delivers the greatest return possible.
These managers rely heavily on a combination of web analytics and CRM programs to help analyze and evolve campaign initiatives and sales tactics.
Unfortunately, what often gets overlooked is a call tracking solution to better understand leads that prefer to pick up the phone rather than fill out a web form. Depending on the industry, offering or audience, phone calls may make up a significant portion of lead volume.
Following are some reasons enterprises are starting to integrate call tracking software:
Increase ROI of marketing spend
Enterprise marketing may consist of both offline initiatives — such as TV ads, radio spots, print ads, billboards and trade shows — and online campaigns — including PPC, banner ads, mobile display ads and social media.
To understand the ROI of all these activities and improve their performance, enterprise marketers assign call tracking numbers to specific campaign elements. This tracking data can then be layered on top of web analytics to form a complete lead-activity snapshot, including traffic sources, site activity and conversion rates. Then, the data can be used to evolve marketing initiatives, and invest in activities that drive the best results and ROI.
Improve sales performance
The more information sales professionals have, the better position they are in to speak directly to a prospect’s needs and close the sale.
With call tracking, sales professionals can understand how the lead found the company, what pages they viewed on the site, and what other activities the lead has already taken (i.e. requested collateral, downloaded an ebook, read blog posts, etc.).
This information empowers a sales professional to qualify new leads and prioritize follow-up communications, and then customize a sales pitch to speak directly to what the lead appears to be most interested in.
From a training perspective, call tracking solutions also give the option to record calls. These recordings can be used to:
• Help sales professionals understand ways to improve their performance.
• Provide examples of objections and how best to overcome them.
• Evaluate an individual sales professional’s performance and progress.
Where to start
Following are three ways enterprises can get started with call tracking:
1. Start Small — Pick a division of the company, or a specific marketing campaign, that is an ideal fit for call tracking. It should lend itself to phone conversions and involve a team willing to learn how to use the solution. This will be the test case for the entire organization and become the example of how call tracking can work. Success here will make it easier to sell to other areas of the enterprise.
2. Think Scalable — Prior to selecting a call tracking solution, take a big-picture look at what type of features other divisions of the enterprise may require. By doing this homework upfront, you can avoid having to switch solution providers mid integration and waste time learning a whole new system.
3. Get Trained — Request training from your call tracking solution provider as a means to get familiar with the tool’s features, and to understand how best to utilize the analytic data.
We’d love to hear from some enterprise organizations that have integrated call tracking solutions. How have you used call tracking? What type of success have you seen? Please share your stories in the comments below.
Tags: Call Tracking, enterprise marketing, Marketing, phone call tracking
