When I talk to business owners most of their phone calls with potential clients and customers go a similar way. They chat with the customer about the product or service that they offer and either try to sell them on it or have them come in to the showroom/set a meeting. The ending to that phone call typically is the same for every business. It usually goes something like this…

*ring, ring*

• • “Hello..this is Robert at Web Centre. How can I help you?”
  • “Hi! I’m looking for a new website for my business.”
  • “We can definitely help! Would you like to setup a meeting and we can show you everything we do?”
  • “Yes! That would be great. Let’s plan for Thursday at 9am at my office”
  • “Perfect. I will be there. Look forward to meeting you!”

*hangs up*

“Oh no – I forgot to ask how they heard about our business!”.

Almost every business owner – in the moment – forgets to ask that question. The question that is so important to their business. “How did you hear about us?”. That question is key because over time and by asking a lot of people, a local business starts to form a marketing strategy. If a business gets a ton of answers of “Google”, they put their money there. If a business gets a lot of people saying, “your billboards”. They will put their money there. And so on.

What’s the problem with this strategy?

The problem with this strategy is that it’s very flawed. For your business, it relies on each person who answers the phone within a business to remember to ask that question and make note of it. Even if the same person answers the phone in your business every single time, it still would need to be diligently noted & tracked. If not then you’re relying on flawed data. I call this “feelings marketing”. A lot of business owners have feelings that certain marketing IS or ISN’T working for their business – based on feelings, not actual data that they have. “Feelings marketing” can be very detrimental to your business because then your marketing dollars aren’t attributed properly to what the data is telling you.

For customers, this can be a flawed system of attribution as well. If the customer isn’t asked immediately – and it’s asked of them later on – they might not remember or give a different answer than they would have on the initial phone call. The customer may have even heard of your business on a few different mediums, but they chose 1 of those sources to actually contact your business. So you’d miss out on the source that actually closed the deal for your business. Which is the most important one.

So what’s the solution to this problem?

The solution to this decades-old problem is a simple one: track your phone calls. By using a tracking phone number, you will know how many phone calls your business gets. Because every time that phone number is dialed by a customer, the data is being tracked. This allows you to finally know the answer to the question: how many phone calls does my business get?

So how does that help me with knowing WHERE the calls come from?

The beauty of phone call tracking is that there is no limit to the amount of numbers you use. Meaning that if I want to see how many phone calls my website generates for my business, I can put a tracking number right on my website. Then I know how many calls my site gets.

Then I can take it a step further. I can put a different tracking number on my Facebook Page. I can put a different number on my Google My Business Profile. I can put a number on my LinkedIn page. And so on.

You could also keep it simple and have 1 phone number for all online situations. That means a single phone number that you use only online (website, social media, etc.) to simply track only your online efforts.

You can even track “offline” phone calls…

You could also use phone call tracking numbers to track what digital marketing people call “offline events”. Want to know how many phone calls your newspaper ad got? How many phone calls your billboard will get? How many rings you get from that radio ad? You can have tracking numbers used in all of those ad formats as well. This gives a business a full idea of where they are getting phone calls and business from.

Isn’t it confusing having a ton of different phone numbers?

What’s great for your business is that all of these phone numbers simply forward to your main business number. This way your business doesn’t have to keep track of the actual numbers. Plus for the customer, they aren’t likely typing the number into their phone. Why? because most people that are online are using their smartphone. Thus they are clicking on a phone number and calling it. In days before the smartphone, you’d type in the number. But today when you’re on a website you can simply click the phone number and it dials and calls it in a single-step for you.

Summary: It’s okay to forget to ask, “How did you hear about us?”

With Phone Call Tracking, you no longer have to kick yourself for forgetting that so important question: “How did you hear about us?” In fact, with tracking your phone calls you will never even have to ask the question. It’s all being documented for your business. This way you can start to form your marketing strategy based around more data and less from “feelings marketing”. Some of the data might surprise you. Some of it might confirm what you already thought to be true. The important part is KNOWING the effectiveness of each of your marketing strategies for the growth of your business.

Get a tracking number from Web Centre today!

Today, we’re excited to announce this as our new service! This allows our clients to now be able see how many phone calls they get from their website, how many calls they get from Google searches, and so much more! Here’s how it works…

1. We place a custom phone number on your website (the tracking number)
2. We start getting data right away on phone calls
3. We report the data back to you on your Monthly Report! This will tell you…
   1. How many phone calls you get (and which source they came from)
   2. Give you a list of all the phone numbers that have called you

If you’re interested in tracking your leads even better, this is an absolute MUST for your business. Contact us today to get more information on how you can start tracking your phone calls leads for your business!