Call tracking: the full guide + how to set it up in less than half an hour

• What is Call Tracking?
• How Does Call Tracking Work?
• How much does Call Tracking cost?
• Does Call Tracking support integration with Google Analytics?
• What is the difference between Static and Dynamic Call Tracking?
• What is end-to-end analytics?
• How to set up Call Tracking in less than 30 minutes?
• Conclusion

The digital revolution has intensified the focus on online marketing and lead generation strategies. However, businesses should not underestimate the importance of offline advertising and telesales. Many marketers avoid using offline advertising and telephone sales channels because of the perceived difficulty in measuring their effectiveness. Fortunately, there is a solution to this problem: Call Tracking.

What is Call Tracking?

Call tracking is a marketing analytics tool used by marketers to analyse advertising channels, sales sources, and sales leads. It helps them differentiate successful advertising channels or campaigns from those needing improvement.

Through call tracking, marketers can accurately measure the effectiveness of various offline marketing channels, from billboards to print advertising. Additionally, it allows businesses to track and analyse telephone sales made through their website, providing insights into the effectiveness of their marketing strategies and facilitating more efficient resource allocation. Measurement is crucial for making informed decisions and effectively improving strategy to generate high quality leads.

While digital marketing provides instant feedback with metrics, measuring the impact of offline advertising on sales may appear more challenging. This can prevent businesses from investing in offline advertising, as they struggle to justify resource allocation without clear effectiveness data.

However, call tracking offers a solution by providing real metrics to measure the effectiveness of offline advertising. By using call tracking, marketers can track the leads generated by each campaign, helping them identify the most effective marketing strategies that reach the target audience.

Furthermore, call tracking provides insight into telephone sales, particularly those from online sources. Around 92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone in the USA alone. By linking sales to the original advertisement or marketing campaign, marketers can effectively optimize their strategies and resource allocation, maximizing ROI.

Moreover, marketing teams can identify which keywords generate the most calls and conversions. By focusing on their most popular products or services, businesses can make informed decisions to enhance marketing efforts.

How Does Call Tracking Work?

Call tracking works by allocating different phone numbers to separate marketing campaigns, channels, or advertisements. This method is used for both online (Dynamic Call Tracking) and offline (Static Call Tracking) advertising, such as social media, ad campaigns, email marketing, blog posts, and more.

The call tracking system routes the phone call when a client calls one of these call tracking numbers. It then records essential data points, such as:

• Caller's phone number,
• Call duration
• Call source
• Caller’s behaviour on the website before the call (Dynamic Call Tracking)
• Effectiveness (total visitors, total calls, target etc.)
• Total statistics by channels
• Distribution by country
• UTM tags (Dynamic Call Tracking) and more.

When clients choose to communicate over the phone rather than digital channels, this data helps businesses retain important information. Call tracking provides detailed statistics that marketers can use to analyse the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and understand customer behaviour.

By capturing essential call details, businesses no longer need to inquire about how paying customers found their business. They can gain insights into which landing pages effectively convert visitors into callers.

For instance, imagine a business running multiple advertising campaigns across different platforms. With static and dynamic call tracking, marketers can assign unique phone numbers to each campaign. The call tracking software records which campaign or ad generated each call as it receives them. This helps marketers accurately measure the number of calls generated by each campaign, as well as other important call tracking metrics.

Additional features, like call recordings or transcripts, can provide insights into the quality of leads generated by different marketing channels. By analysing this data, marketers can identify areas for improvement and track call outcomes, such as whether the call resulted in a sale or other desired actions.

This process allows businesses to identify successful aspects of their marketing efforts and areas for improvement, helping them adjust future marketing strategies accordingly.

How much does Call Tracking cost?

At Zadarma, our Call Tracking feature comes at no extra cost. You only pay for virtual phone numbers.

Moreover, Zadarma provides a range of other services including free website widgets (Callback and Click to Call), PBX and CRM systems, video conferencing, SMS services, eSIM coverage in 150 countries, speech recognition, and much more.

Does Call Tracking support integration with Google Analytics?

Yes, Zadarma call tracking supports integration with Google Analytics, transmitting the following data:

1. Target call
2. Answered call
3. Number is busy
4. Unanswered calls
5. Cancelled calls
6. Failed calls
7. Caller's phone number (without the last 4 digits)
8. Call duration

What is the difference between Static and Dynamic Call Tracking?

Static Call Tracking:

• Especially useful for offline advertising channels where digital tracking is not possible, such as newspaper ads, magazine ads, brochures, flyers, direct mail campaigns, TV or radio commercials, billboards, posters, etc.
• Involves assigning unique call tracking phone numbers to specific marketing channels or campaigns, which remain constant
• Each unique phone number corresponds to a particular advertisement, landing page, or marketing campaign
• When a client calls any of these static numbers, the call tracking system identifies where the call came from using the assigned phone number

Dynamic Call Tracking:

• suitable for online advertising channels (contextual advertising, web pages)
• dynamic call tracking uses at least two dynamic phone numbers. Dynamic number insertion (DNI) assigns those numbers to visitors based on their online behaviour
• these phone numbers change dynamically depending on how visitors reach the website or landing page
• each visitor sees a unique phone number that corresponds to their specific path to the website
• dynamic call tracking provides more detailed information about which online channels or campaigns are attracting calls

What is end-to-end analytics?

In the world of marketing analytics, businesses are constantly seeking ways to optimize their strategies and boost their Return on Investment (ROI). Two key tools that help with this are call tracking and end-to-end analytics. While both offer valuable information, they serve different purposes and provide different sets of data.

Call tracking analyses phone calls from different marketing channels to measure call volume, leads, and customer acquisition for each campaign. It evaluates lead quality and caller behaviour to optimize marketing strategies and resource allocation.

End-to-end analytics, on the other hand, offer a complete view of the customer journey, from initial contact to final conversion. It includes data on completed transactions and their associated revenue. This allows businesses to evaluate the financial impact of their marketing efforts and determine the ROI of each advertising channel or campaign. For example, end-to-end analytics can show not only the number of leads generated by a particular billboard or TV ad, but also the revenue produced from those leads.

Zadarma offers end-to-end analytics as part of its Teamsale CRM service. Teamsale CRM automatically specifies the call source for each lead, providing static analytics by default. For instance, if a lead originates from a phone call, the system automatically records the source. However, for leads from other sources, such as website forms or Zapier, users need to manually specify the source. After recording sales in the CRM system, marketers can access analytics to identify the sources of purchasing customers.

One of the key differences between call tracking and end-to-end analytics lies in the scope of data captured. While call tracking primarily focuses on phone call activity, end-to-end analytics includes transactional data to provide a better understanding of marketing effectiveness. By combining lead, transaction and revenue data, end-to-end analytics allows businesses to make more informed decisions and optimize their marketing strategies to achieve maximum ROI.

Analysing transaction data, businesses can determine the revenue generated from each advertising channel and identify the most effective channels in revenue generation.

In conclusion, end-to-end analytics offers businesses a powerful tool to maximize the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and optimize ROI. By providing insights into the financial impact of marketing efforts, end-to-end analytics allows businesses to make data-driven decisions and allocate resources strategically. With end-to-end analytics, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their customers' behaviour and achieve greater success in their marketing efforts.

How to set up Call Tracking in less than 30 minutes?

1. Register on the website
2. Decide whether you want to use static or dynamic call tracking
3. Select and connect virtual phone numbers. Static call tracking requires 1 phone number, while dynamic call tracking requires at least 2 phone numbers
4. Follow the step-by-step manual for Call Tracking setup instructions

Conclusion

Call tracking is an essential tool in modern marketing. It provides valuable insights into the customer journey that leads to advertising campaigns. Using call tracking technology allows businesses to discover hidden opportunities, improve marketing efforts, and strengthen connections with clients. This leads to sustainable growth, increased conversion rates, and success in today's digital world.

While digital marketing undoubtedly offers numerous advantages, businesses must not overlook the importance of offline advertising and telephone sales channels. Through the implementation of call tracking technology, marketers can overcome the challenges associated with measuring the effectiveness of offline advertising. This provides valuable insights into consumer behaviour and helps marketers optimize their marketing strategies accordingly. By combining online and offline channels, businesses can expand their reach and achieve sustainable growth in a competitive market.