Down, Set, Call Tracking
It’s that time of year again folks and the fact is, I can hardly contain myself. Class is in session, freshman are aimlessly wondering campus looking for said class (with a painfully low success rate), and most importantly, the football team has been on the field gearing up for weeks.
Yes, you guessed it, get ready for college football to invade the minds, televisions, and cell phones of fanatics across the nation. With this comes a warning: Compulsive cell phone checking, day dreaming, and random yelps of joy/pain/obscenities may occur at inopportune times including weddings, date night, client dinners, etc.
But before we fire up the grill and grab a cold one (or two…or three?), let’s not forget what our time and effort here at Century Interactive create: fruitful information relating to the phone calls and web site sessions their marketing campaigns create.
Interestingly enough, comparing the nature of a collegiate football team to the uses and benefits of call measurement comes quite easy to me (shocking I know).
- Preparation: With so much riding on every game, no college football team would meet their competition without much preparation and a plan of attack. Likewise, no company should enter an advertising campaign without first utilizing previous data. What has worked in the past? Did that mailer actually generate phone calls last month? Was forgetting to publish our phone number on the highway billboard a big mistake? (the answer to this question is YES by the way)
- Game day: The most beautiful time of the week. Rarely is it appropriate to arrive at an event 8 hours early simply to set up the grill, open up the cooler, and throw the football around. Trust me, I tried this at my sister’s wedding last year was scolded by more than one group of people. Game day is where the action occurs, just like the heart of an advertising campaign. The calls are rolling in, the website sessions are being tracked, and the data is being accumulated.
- Review: After the big win, teams must take a look back on their efforts to find out what went right and just as importantly, what went wrong. A company utilizing website and phone call tracking can do the same. Did our time and money bring a positive ROI? What can we learn from our advertising success and failures?
- The BCS: Actually, let’s leave this one up to Congress shall we?
Blindly approaching your advertising campaigns, failing to adjust, and not utilizing data for conclusions and growth is no way to run a marketing department. Century Interactive is here to help and with easy setup, low cost, and friendly service…Why not give it a shot?
There, I did it. I successfully compared college football and call tracking. I bet you didn’t think I could pull it off did you? With that said, keep an eye on those Fighting TCU Horned Frogs this year (not that I’m bias toward their success or anything).
Stuff My Dad Says . . . about Call Tracking
For anyone who has not yet read Justin Halpern’s New York Times Best Selling Book, Sh*t My Dad Says, this post may seem a bit off. Two pieces of advice: 1. Read it anyways. 2. Go buy the book, it is hilarious. The book is a compilation of stories and quotes from Justin’s dad. His father’s quotes are a rare blend of wisdom and ridiculousness. The following quotes are borrowed from Halpern’s Twitter page and edited to soften his father’s use of obscenities and increase his references to call tracking, both of which admittedly reduce the comedic value of each. In doing so though, I think that 
each quote could be by any dad (although the tone and structure would suggest strongly a dad who began fatherhood in the late 70’s, early 80’s, just like my dad in fact). So imagine your own father departing this wisdom on you. It is my hope is that these quotes provide a conduit to demonstrate the very real practical need for call tracking in your business. So without further ado, here is Dad . . .
On Call Tracking:
“See, you think I give a darn about call tracking. Wrong. In fact, while you talk, I’m thinking; How can I give less of darn? That’s why I look interested.”
Dad does not care about call tracking, website analytics, or any other fancy sounding technology that will invariably confuse and frustrate him. The VCR ruined Dad on technology a long time ago; Dad does not like to feel stupid. Damn you VCR, my father still doesn’t have an email address. Dad does care about fishing. If I suggested that dad use ten lures every time he went out, he would say that I was dense. Dad knows that you use the lure that catches fish. That’s why he pays attention to which one is bringing in fish. He buys more of those. The rest stay in his tackle box. Advertising without call tracking is like the guy blindly using ten lures; expensive, inefficient, and frustrating.
On Ineffective Advertising Campaigns:
“Don’t focus on the one consumer who hates you. You don’t go to the park and set your picnic down next to the only pile of dog poop.”
Dad knows that you can’t waste time chasing an idea that was dead on arrival. Everyone knows, even Dad, that pouring money into advertising campaigns that are not converting is not only stupid, but can drive even the best companies out of business. The only way to avoid it is to track which campaigns are generating conversions (not clicks, but conversions) at real time.
On Measuring the Performance of your Sales Staff:
“I didn’t say you were ugly. I said your girlfriend is better looking than you, and standing next to her, you look ugly.”
“A parent’s only as good as their dumbest kid. If one wins a Nobel Prize but the other gets robbed by a hooker, you failed.”
Dad is a realist; he knows that men are not created equal. Certainly not equal to the fairer sex and usually not equal to their siblings. Unfortunately, unlike dad, a sales manager cannot look at two of his sales staff and pronounce one pretty, one ugly, one smart, and one clueless. A sales manager knows that he cannot afford to squander legitimate sales opportunities due to poorly handled calls. In order to determine which staff are effectively converting phone leads into sales, the calls must be evaluated. Call tracking allows the sales manager to accurately assess who is consistently taking advantage of new business opportunities and who requires some sales coaching.
On Reviewing a Huge Volume of Calls:
“I lost 20 pounds…How? I drank bear piss and took up fencing. How the heck you think, son? I exercised.”
Dad does not like dumb questions, and leaves little question as to whether or not he feels that your question has merit. Everyone knows that there is no magic potion for weight loss, just like there is no magic way to review all of your calls with the sweep of a wand. But what if you only had to review 80 of the 300 calls received? Call categorization allows you to filter your calls down to only those that presented a new business opportunity. These are the calls that provide the richest amount of data for a sales manager reviewing the performance of his sales without wading through the remaining calls that are meaningless to him. The hours saved can be reallocated into coaching and training his sales staff or any of the numerous other responsibilities he has on a daily basis.
On Website Tracking:
“The whole world is fueled by bullcrap… What? The kid asked me for advice on his science fair project so I’m giving it to him.”
Dad hit the nail on the head here. This is a truth that is timeless and the sooner we realize it, the sooner we can see through it. There are lots of programs and people who will gladly take your money to show you how many clicks your campaigns are producing. While there is nothing wrong with that, unless you are a pure e-commerce seller, those clicks probably aren’t paying your mortgage. Quoting the timeless classic Tommy Boy, “I can stamp a box of crap guaranteed, but all you have is a guaranteed box of crap.” Unfortunately, that is exactly what some of the analytic reports that people are investing in are. They look great, seem impressive, and are just confusing enough to make us think that they must have value. But at the end of the day, they aren’t appreciably impacting our sales and our strategy, because they don’t get deep enough. Wouldn’t it be nice to know which of those clicks actually generated a conversion (phone call, form fill, chat session, etc . . .)? Wouldn’t it be nice to know how the customer got there, referring site, keyword term, and click path. You spend too much money getting prospects to the point that they are ready to become customers to not know how they got there. If dad knew about website tracking, he would never get on the computer again for fear that he was being monitored by the terrorists. He would do all his business in person, in cash. It is that powerful. If dad knew you were an advertiser taking phone calls and not tracking them he would probably say, “I wouldn’t worry about money…No, it has a lot to do with happiness, I just meant YOU shouldn’t worry, cause you’d just piss it away.” Stop wasting your money.
On Getting Started Tracking Calls:
“Pressure? Get married when you want. Your wedding is just one more day in my life I can’t wear sweat pants.”
What dad really meant was “Pressure to start tracking calls? Start whenever you want. Your early retirement party is just one more day in my life I can’t wear sweat pants.” Dad has a point; he is not nearly as invested as you are in your business success. He cares, but he also cares about how the Cowboys play on Sunday’s (Guess which one he cares about more). The one who is really affected by your hesitation is you. It’s simple to get started, it’s inexpensive to use, and it is absolutely vital to anyone with a marketing budget. Call us, we’ll have you tracking your calls today.