7 Most Common Questions About Call Tracking Technology

Some questions appear every time when a new company wants to implement call tracking service. Such questions are closely connected with essential aspects of effective business marketing strategy. As being a CСO at Ringostat, I tried to give the comprehensive answers.

1. Why do I need so many numbers?

The pool of phone numbers you need depends on the number of visitors staying on your site at the same time. You can determine this by checking your Google Analytics or Woopra account. That is, if you plan a large-scale promotional campaign, it would be reasonable to provide yourself with extra numbers for this period. This will make analytics more accurate. But at the same time you’ll need less phone numbers during the periods of recession. If speaking the technology language, an intersection algorithm used in dynamic call tracking requires a big quantity of phone numbers. Each visitor receives a unique ID and sees the number that is free at the moment. In order to calculate how many phone numbers you need, here at Ringostat we use the smart algorithm based on the traffic volume per day and the number of visitors staying on the website at the same moment of time. This approach allows us to reduce the discrepancy and provide the 95-97% accurate final result.

2. What will be with my well-known vanity number?

Call tracking services like Ringostat allow to leave a "beautiful" number for specified traffic flows. To reach this you need to utilize combined model of call tracking: a mix of classic and dynamic. Thus, if you use a short and simple number in outdoor advertising or on the staff branding clothing, you don’t have to change it. It will be connected to the system by the scheme of the combined call tracking. You’ll see how your outdoor advertising works and how many clients wrote down this number. But this doesn’t exclude successful work with the substituted numbers, when the marketers can register the number of leads from each advertising channel. If you still have some doubts about using call tracking with a vanity phone number, check this article.

3. What will happen with my phone numbers when the rental period is over?

In Ringostat, the phone numbers will pass through the standard procedure of “purification”: they belong to your company for some period, so the clients who wrote down these numbers (practise shows that there’re not so many clients like this) will be able yo use them. Taking into consideration that the number won’t appear on the website anymore, the dynamics of such requests will come to nought within a month. As a result, the number will be considered as “clean” and the operator will rent it to another company.

4. Will the sales raise after call tracking implementation?

Advertising budget allocation, callback widget installation, reducing the number of missed calls – these are the reliable sources of sales growth. We don’t propose you a “pill” that will solve the problems of your business. Call tracking is a good “lever” to incite changes in your sales department and marketing department, but no more. Missed calls you can record with Ringostat won’t disappear the next day, as well as the customers lost because of the long wait. It’s also possible that the problem lies in your sales-managers behavior. For example, don't be surprised with low sales, when your managers pick up the phone after 11-12 seconds of customer’s waiting. According to our calculations, this is the average time that buyers are ready to wait before their call is answered. After this, they’ll will begin to irritate. Sales can raise only when you use the data effectively by optimising advertising costs and improving customer service. Moreover, you have to use call tracking properly.

5. Are you sure that call tracking cost will be recompensed?

In each situation it’s necessary to calculate the economic effects and to try different things. Using new instruments is risky in any case, though it’s often justified. Our experience shows that the majority of companies have reserves for more efficient use of contextual advertising and for more effective sales department work. That’s why the main limitation is the willingness or unwillingness of your customers to be ready to internal changes that are vitally important for attractive results. Here’s the scheme we demonstrate to all our new leads and customers on trial period in order to understand whether it’s profitably to implement call tracking for your company or not.

6. When the introduction of call tracking is inappropriate?

Despite many positive cases of tracking calls introduction, it’s quite natural that there are some companies unable to use this technology. There are two reasons: Small number of calls. Poor development of IP-telephony in the region. The first problem is clear. If your clients prefer not to call, but to write you or fill in the online forms, call tracking will be too expensive and unprofitable. Though there are situations when the value of each client is high, and it’s worth to track calls even if their number is not significant. The second problem is purely technological. IP telephony develops rapidly, however, the communication and the cost of renting numbers varies depending on a region. This can be a serious reason to use a promo codes method, not a number substitution. In this case a client’s ID number is added to an item code.

7. Why to keep tracking phone calls constantly?

There’s a common wrong belief that the ratio of calls and online requests doesn’t change in process of time. That’s why it’s enough to calculate this ratio once and use it further. In fact, it’s not so simple. Firstly, there’s the natural dynamics of the search engines when the advertising campaigns change value and their place in search results, and this affects the amount of traffic. Secondly, there are seasonal variations associated with activation of one part of users and a passive behavior of another part. That’s why the analytical results are very difficult to use for the future periods. To prove this, we publish a chart from one of our case studies in real estate, where the ratio of online applications and phone calls may vary up to 20%.

If you don’t see an answer to your question in this article, feel free to ask us in comments.