Marketing campaigns live and die on leads and conversions – and while most businesses will think nothing of stocking up all sorts of website analytics packages as possible, measuring online leads is only one part of the puzzle.

So here are ten ways call tracking can benefit your small business.

1. Accurately attribute leads

Call tracking works by assigning a specific number to every marketing campaign, whether a PPC ad or a phone number on your website’s ‘Contact us’ page, and this enables businesses to accurately attribute which campaign is generating the best leads and conversions.

2. Get a view of every customer touch point

The chances are most customers will interact with your business in more ways than one – possibly following up an Adwords ad with a brand name search – and multi-channel attribution means your business will have a view of each individual touch point of every customer, even if they have visited your site over a number of days and via different leads.

3. Get a full view of lead generation data

Research from Ruler Analytics, a call tracking service provider, found that lead generation websites in the UK receive three-quarters (75 per cent) of their inbound leads over the phone, compared to just a quarter (25 per cent) through form fills.

So if you want to get the complete picture of how your above the line, below the line, SEO, PPC and non-digital marketing campaigns are performing, you’ll need to incorporate a call tracking package – it offers a great way for all businesses to analyse campaigns, listen to customers and maximise return on investment.

4. Record and improve calls

Call tracking providers usally offer a call recording service as part of the package, enabling you to gather feedback on your customers and employees, and improve systems and processes.

Listening in on calls means you can get real-time feedback from customers and evaluate the performance of your customer service or sales team, allowing you to better optimise training and marketing campaigns.

5. Work out which keywords are generating calls

Call tracking can be used alongside all PPC campaigns to give you a clear insight of which keywords are driving calls and conversions.

Call tracking solutions can assign a phone number to each individual visitor so you know exactly who is calling and how they found you. Once they have finished browsing your site this number is allocated to the next visitor, enabling you to track your PPC visitors and the keywords they have used to find your business.

6. Measure your overall return on investment (ROI)

Another finding of the Ruler Analytics call tracking research was the vast majority of businesses (92%) have online analytics software in place to monitor the performance of their website and digital marketing campaigns.

But if this software isn’t run alongside call tracking analytics software, there’s no way of properly measuring the success of your offline campaigns or leads generated from phone calls, and so you’ll never get accurate an ROI figure.

7. Get detailed and real-time call reporting

As soon as a call is made to your business and is run through your call tracking software, you’ll get information on which lead generated the call and, if the caller has been in touch before, you’ll see caller ID, detailed information on previous correspondences, and get recording of previous calls.

All of this information can then be sorted by source and keywords so you can easily analyse the data.

8. Manage call schedules

Call tracking software can be used to manage call scheduling, meaning you’ll never miss a call, even when you’re out of office, as it can be forwarded to your mobile or a colleague.

And if calls need to be automatically directed to certain teams – after all, there’s no point someone from the marketing team picking up a customer service call – this can also be done using your call tracking software.

9. Track outbound calls

Although the focus is usually on inbound call tracking, it also helps to track outbound calls to see which members of staff are quickly following up on leads and missed calls so you can assess performance and make any necessary amendments to improve your service.

10. Integrate all of your analytics programmes

Data from telephone leads should never be kept in isolation, and so call tracking software enable you to fully integrated call data with programs like Google Analytics and AdWords so you can get granular with your customer insights and easily report without having to jump from programme to programme and collate the data manually.

So if you want a 360-degree view on lead generation data, customer behaviour and staff performance, call tracking is a must for your small business.