Features, Tips, & Announcements

Features, Tips, & Announcements — No Comments
25
Aug 11

Blog ROI: Complete Your Blog Analytics with Call Tracking

The 2010 B2B Marketing Trends survey of more than 1,000 North American marketers found that while blogs are popular with more than 50 percent of marketers, only 40 percent rated blogs effective. In addition, A Smart Insights’ poll found that among companies that don’t blog, 15.8 percent say it’s because they can’t track return.

With a comprehensive lead-tracking program that measures online and offline conversions, it is certainly possible to measure the ROI of your blog.

Using web-based analytics and a CRM, you can track when visitors enter your company’s website through the blog, follow their activity, and determine the return from resulting leads when action is taken. But when a lead picks up the phone to call your company, do you have a way to associate them back to your blog if that’s how they found you?

How to Integrate Call Tracking on Your Blog

While most activity prompted from your blog will likely be online, it’s ideal to integrate call tracking for a comprehensive look at conversions. Achieve this through: the use of Javascript snippets, tracked downloadable resources and blog-specific phone numbers.

Install Javascript Snippets

Often your blog is one of the best gateways to your website. For example, readers may find blog posts through Google searches, and if they like what they read, they may click through your website for more information about your company and products or services.

Installing a Javascript snippet from your call tracking provider into the code of your blog and website will give you information about callers’ online activity, including source data and their paths through the site. When someone calls that came through your blog, this data is tracked and available to you.

Track Downloadable Resources

As a source for industry insight, some blog posts direct users to a specific action, such as downloading an eBook, whitepaper or other resource. But how many resources do you promote only through your blog? It’s likely that the same resources are available for download on other pages of your company website.

These high-value resources are intended to move prospects further through the lead funnel, and often encourage readers to call for more information.

So, to track whether a user is prompted to call based on content downloaded from your blog versus another location on your website, make two versions of each content piece. Give the content hosted on your blog one call tracking number, and the content on your site another. Based on the number called, you’ll know whether the asset was downloaded from the blog or the main site.

Differentiate Blog Phone Numbers

To track a call prompted by a specific blog post, give your post its own call tracking number. This can be featured in the header, as in the example below, or as a call-to-action button in the blog’s sidebar, within the author page, or in a standard call to action at the end of posts.

Is this the same phone number you see at the header of our blog?

Keep in mind, however, that if you want to test different placements to see which generate more calls, you don’t want to place two different numbers on the same screen, as this could confuse readers.

Track Your Success

Measure the online and offline return your blog generates, qualify leads, and compare your blog’s ROI with other marketing tactics. If it’s not producing the results you expect, try adjusting your blogging strategy, topics covered and CTAs.

Do you track your blog’s ROI? Share your challenges or best practices in the comments below.

Features, Tips, & Announcements — No Comments
17
Aug 11

How Conversion Tracking Can Drive Content Marketing

Content marketing strategies are often based on market trends, business objectives or messaging. However, to help guide content marketing efforts to best meet buyer
needs, marketers should use analytics and conversion metrics to ensure that content is both topically relevant and easy for qualified audiences to find.

With web analytics and call tracking solutions, marketers can collect conversion information and track secondary lead activity generated by content, which can be used to
further optimize efforts and improve ROI.

Develop Content Ideas and Promotion Strategy

Analytics can help marketers identify the topics that drive visitors, and then use this information to develop related content to spur download-driven lead conversions. Following are metrics your marketing team can use to identify content topics, and the best place to publish:

Traffic-Driving Keywords — Review the keywords that drive visitors to your website, and to your competitors’ website. You can do this through your own web analytics, and using tools like alexa.com, which shows high-impact search queries for any website. What products or services are they interested in, and can you develop relevant content about that topic to convert these searchers into leads? Also consider long-tail keyword traffic for common themes or questions that arise
Top Landing and Content Pages — What pages do visitors land on and click through to most often, but have limited conversions? Develop related content to feature on these pages as a way to promote lead conversions.
Traffic Sources — What website traffic sources have historically driven the most leads? Consider partner websites, guest posts, social media, eNewsletters, advertisements and more. Identify your leading sources, and integrate them into your content promotion strategy.

Track Content Marketing Success

Strengthen your content marketing efforts by tracking resulting conversions. Integrate analytics tracking code and call tracking to know what content spurs secondary action from your leads.

Within Actual Content — Offer users multiple ways to convert throughout content pieces. For example, include a campaign-specific phone number in eBooks and white papers that you associate with the asset in your call-tracking platform. For audiences that prefer to contact you online, or may not be ready to buy, include links to web contact forms and subscription pages for your blog or eNewsletter
Throughout Your Website — Make sure to capture as much visitor-activity information as possible. With call tracking, you can install a Javascript snippet that tracks sources of phone calls, enabling you to associate a call from a web visitor that clicked through to your site from a content piece. In addition, use web analytics to track online conversions, as well as their related sources, mediums and campaigns.
Test and Evolve— By strategically developing content for your buyers and properly tracking all conversions, you can continually adjust campaigns, messages and calls to action based on ROI.

If you’re interested in more information about conversion tracking and content marketing, check out the blog post How to Track Content Marketing Lead Conversions.

How has your company used conversion tracking to drive its content marketing efforts?

Features, Tips, & Announcements — No Comments
10
Aug 11

From “Like” to Lead: How to Integrate Call Tracking into your Facebook Campaign

Facebook has more than 750 million active users. More than half of these users log on to Facebook daily and the average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups or events. With numbers like this, it’s no surprise that millions of businesses use Facebook Pages to connect with and engage their audiences.

Tracking Facebook conversions will provide insight into the success of your marketing efforts by establishing an ROI. While much Facebook activity can be tracked through web analytics, what happens when a Facebook lead picks up the phone? To account for this activity, you need call tracking.

Where to Integrate Call Tracking into Your Facebook Campaign

Below are four ways you can integrate call tracking with Facebook to capture conversions that happen via the phone:

In Your Profile — Always have a tracking phone number in your company bio and contact information. That’s the most standard place Facebook fans will look if they want to reach you.
In Your Updates — If you direct Facebook users to call through a status update or special Facebook fan offer, use a specific tracking number for that campaign so you can tie a lead directly to it.
On Your Website — By integrating your call tracking solution’s JavaScript snippet into your website, you can track all calls that come from website visitors that were referred by Facebook.
Within Your Facebook Ads — If you’re using this targeted form of advertising, track offline conversions by adding your call tracking number directly to the ad copy or design. For those audiences that click on your ad and visit your website, make sure the call tracking JavaScript snippet is integrated into your landing pages, and throughout your site. This way the call tracking solution can associate calls with a specific ad campaign, or ad.

How much time will your team need to analyze call tracking results?

While more phone numbers in your call tracking strategy are great for accumulating detailed analysis, they will also require more complex reporting that takes time to evaluate. Be realistic about your objectives and the resources you can devote to reviewing results.

Facebook can be an effective marketing tool, and its success can be measured when you have the right systems in place to track its impact.

Has your company integrated call tracking into its Facebook marketing? If so, what successes have you seen, or what challenges have you run into?

Call Tracking / Features, Tips, & Announcements — No Comments
28
Jun 11

Social Proof: Testimonials for Call Tracking

Social Proof: Assuming the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.

You like us on Facebook and more than 12,000 of you follow us on Twitter. Thanks! But with all the buzz about social media and the benefits of social proof, marketers often overlook one of the simplest – yet often elusive – tactics for building credibility with prospects: the testimonial.

Brian Clark, of Copyblogger fame, says testimonials are, “Intermediated word-of-mouth marketing, and they do work when credible.” He adds, “In fact they work very well indeed if you work hard to get the right kind of testimonial. They can provide the much-needed social proof that tips a wavering prospect into a paying customer.” Read more about Clark’s best practices for generating customer testimonials.

Testimonials for Call Tracking

Mongoose Metrics CEO Bradley Reynolds draws two winners for the company's testimonial contest. Winners received a new iPad2.

In the spirit of garnering good word-of-mouth about the benefits of call tracking, we’re delighted to announce the winners of Mongoose Metrics’ testimonial contest. Our CEO, Bradley Reynolds, randomly drew the winners in a drawing today. Each of these lucky customers is the proud owner of a new, iPad2:

Ben Pate, Co-Founder & COO of Web1 Syndication, Inc. www.web1syndication.com

Daniel G. Hidalgo, Senior Marketing Director, www.baldwinresearch.com

In all, 12 Mongoose Metrics call tracking customers entered our testimonial contest by providing us with stories about how and why they use call tracking to better understand offline conversions and optimize their marketing spending accordingly.

Read what they had to say about how call tracking helped their businesses grow.

Many thanks to all who entered:

Randy Abair, iMarket Solutions

Larry Bloodworth, Certified Transmissions

Ken Diamond, www.myoxygencontrator.com

Richard Guy, Dynamite Veterinary Marketing

Kristen Rakoczy, Ferocious Media

Tom Elliott, CKMG

Isaac Berkovits, AceWeb

Jason Owen, iContact.com

Michael Cohen, Green Dot Advertising & Marketing Solutions

Andy Anderson, CDC Federal Credit Union

How do you use testimonials to create social proof for your business?

Features, Tips, & Announcements / Offline Advertising — No Comments
15
Jun 11

Three Tips to Maximize Offline Advertising Conversions with Call Tracking

As we discussed in our post “Call Tracking for Offline Traditional Advertising,” offline advertising — billboards, radio, TV and direct mail — is a great way to reach target audiences, but you need to accurately track conversions to understand which ads are driving leads/action and generating an acceptable return on investment.

Armed with conversion data, you can more effectively evolve ad campaigns, including medium selection, headlines, messaging, promotions, calls to action and budget allocations.

However, since billboard, radio, TV and direct mail ad campaigns are offline, they are naturally more difficult to track than online banner ads and PPC campaigns.

We’ve detailed three call tracking tips to maximize the ability of each ad to produce results.

1. Use Strong Calls to Action

Depending on the medium, your audience may only be exposed to an ad for a brief moment, such as, the time it takes to drive by a highway billboard, listen to a :15 second radio commercial, or watch a :30 second TV spot.

In addition, your audience is not sitting in front of a computer, so ads and calls to action need to be highly motivating and memorable.

For this reason, when integrating a tracking number into your ad, make sure it is combined with a strong call to action.

• Make it Directive: Eliminate any unnecessary wording and simply tell them what you want them to do — “Call Today [Tracking Number].”

• Make it Valuable: Clearly explain what the prospect is going to get in return for calling — “Get 50% off your first month.”

• Create a Sense of Urgency: Make them feel like they will be missing out on an opportunity if they don’t act fast — “For a limited time only.”

2. Account for Geographic Location

When integrating tracking numbers into offline advertisements, make sure to take into account for the geographic locations of your audience:

• If you’re running an ad in a different part of the country than where your business is physically located, provide a toll-free call tracking number.

• Conversely, if your business is local, it’s probably better to display a local area call tracking number to show your community presence.

3. Tag Call Tracking Numbers and Integrate with CRM

For effective reporting, in your call tracking platform, tag tracking numbers with the corresponding medium (i.e. billboard, radio, TV, etc.), ad, messaging, call to action and any other details you feel are important to capture.

Next, feed these conversion details into your CRM software. This allows:

• Sales professionals to prioritize and customize lead follow-up communications.

• Tracking of which offline advertisements generate leads that convert into customers.

How have you used call tracking to improve offline advertising campaign performance?

Call Tracking / Features, Tips, & Announcements / PPC — No Comments
19
May 11

HOW TO: View Call Tracking Data Inside Google Adwords

Mongoose Metrics customers have the unique opportunity to view phone call tracking data alongside Google Adwords PPC data within the Google Adwords dashboard. No other call tracking provider offers this feature.

This document outlines HOW TO view Mongoose Metrics call tracking data within Google Adwords.

Once you have integrated your call tracking data you are ready to begin (contact your sales representative or our dedicated support department if you need assistance).

1. Verify you are receiving Mongoose Metrics call tracking data within Google Adwords.

To view your data, log into your Adwords account and click on the “Reporting and Tools” tab and select “Conversions”

2. Verify that Adwords is showing Mongoose Metrics conversion data.

To do this, look for your conversion event. Normally this is titled “phone calls” although the title is up to you.

If everything is working properly then the column “Conversions” will display data — as long as calls have been completed through the Mongoose Metrics system.

3. Check your account to verify that calls have taken place.

Once you verify the integration is working correctly, you can view the conversions within your Google Adwords account. Keep in mind that when you look at data inside of the Adwords interface that Mongoose call tracking conversion data will combine with your other standard conversion data. When you look at the conversion column, remember that the data is a sum of all conversion events.

4. Segment conversion events to an Excel spreadsheet.

If you need to segment the conversion event you can do a data export from Adwords into Excel. To do so, go to the report you would like to generate and click on the “Download Report” button.

Then, click on “Add Segment” and select the “Conversion Action Name” option.

Chose the “Create” button and download the report.

5. Download the report and view the data.

Your report should look like this:

This report shows which keyword triggered a particular conversion event. The name of your conversion event is represented in column A.

If you do not see your conversion events, double check that you are exporting the correct columns. Do so by going back to the Adwords interface and click the “Columns Button” and select “Customize Columns.”

Make sure the following columns are selected:

By following these steps you will gain a clear picture of which keywords are driving calls. By understanding high and low-performing keywords you can further optimize your PPC spending.

For assistance with integrating your Mongoose Metrics phone call tracking data with Google Adwords, please contact your sales representative.

Analytics / Call Tracking / Features, Tips, & Announcements / Integration — No Comments
13
Apr 11

Mongoose Metrics Call Tracking Partners with ion interactive LiveBall

It’s official.

Mongoose Metrics has partnered with ion interactive, providers of LiveBall, a cloud-based landing page software platform. The partnership brings marketers one step closer to seeing and understanding online and offline conversion data in one dashboard.

By combining the power of call tracking data with LiveBall’s landing page conversion data, marketers no longer need to scramble to marry offline and online conversion information in one place.

LiveBall customers now can immediately access Mongoose Metrics robust set of call tracking statistics directly within the LiveBall dashboard. Read the simple and specific directions on how to activate phone call tracking within LiveBall.

Customer demand prompted the partnership as more marketing professionals see the value in integrating online and offline data across silos into one manageable dashboard.

We’re working with a number of new partners to bring more intelligent offline data to more online platforms.

The possibilities are endless when you think creatively and integrate reporting systems to find better answers. For example, does your marketing automation software track leads from social media and report them to your CRM as well as populate Google Analytics with the data from conversions and phone calls?

What data points and diverse platforms make up your analytics and measurement wishes?

Call Tracking / Features, Tips, & Announcements / Integration — No Comments
30
Mar 11

Track All of Your Conversions in One Place

One business. One dashboard.

The solution for tracking online conversions in the same dashboard with offline (phone) conversions is now a reality. Our recent partnership with ion interactive, providers of LiveBall, a cloud-based landing page software platform, allows clients to integrate call tracking data alongside online conversion data for a full and accurate conversion picture.

By combining both online and offline data, marketers gain a deeper understanding into how their marketing efforts are driving conversions to make more informed campaign adjustments.

When you inject call tracking data into the LiveBall platform, you can:

Automatically track phone calls as conversions.
Optimize online creative based on phone tracking data.
See conversion reporting of phone calls in real-time alongside lead generation data.

This integration is accomplished with Javascript provided by Mongoose Metrics. When a respondent visits your web page, the script triggers a dynamic phone number which replaces the “base.” When a respondent calls this phone number, a conversion (or tag) is tracked back to LiveBall. The conversion populates LiveBall performance gauges and reporting. Ion interactive provides full set-up details for LiveBall clients in their support center.

At the core, combining these two data silos in a simple, accessible and easy-to-use platform like LiveBall allows multiple team members — from the CEO and CMO to data analysts, graphic designers and ad buyers — to access a powerful data set in real-time in which to make daily business decisions.

Tell us: What business intelligence systems do you use to integrate marketing data?

Call Tracking / Features, Tips, & Announcements — No Comments
22
Mar 11

Has Call Tracking Transformed Your Business? Tell us and win an iPad.

Satisfied call tracking clients often tell us how call tracking has completely optimized their marketing spending. If this is the case for your business we’d love to hear about it.

Tell us your Call Tracking Success Story and win an iPad

All responses will be entered into a random drawing to win one of two iPads. We will announce the winners here on the Mongoose Metrics blog on June 30, 2011.

How to enter (do one of the following):

Send an email to our director of marketing and content, Kathleen Colan (kathleen.colan@mongoosemetrics.com) describing your experience with Mongoose Metrics call tracking.
Write a blog post about your experience and send us the link.
Upload a video to YouTube and share the link with us.

All entries must be received by June 27 to be eligible to participate in the random drawing for one of two iPads.

All submissions become the property of Mongoose Metrics and may be featured on our Customer Testimonials page or in other content.

Mongoose MetricsConversion & Call Tracking Blog