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Think about the people you trust. What makes them trustworthy?

Chances are you answered with one or more of the following statements:

• They keep their word.
• They show up when they say they will.
• I can depend on them – I know what to expect.

Local search marketing is a lot like building trust in a person. It’s about showing up where you’re expected and creating a consistent appearance. Let’s take a look at what this means for your business and how it builds enough trust with search engines so that they display your business at the top of the local search section of the results page, which in turn generates new clicks, leads, and sales for your company.

The Importance of Local Search

Just how important is local search? Consider the following:

50% of all people who do a local search on their smartphone visit the location the same day.
If your business traffic depends on local search, you need a multi-pronged approach to search marketing. Your site must be mobile-friendly and load quickly without taking up precious data space on a smartphone. Local search marketing, along with advertising, will also help push the results to the top of the page and encourage more people to visit. And, if the stats are correct, half of those who search for a business like yours locally will visit it the same day!

60% of American adults use a smartphone or tablet for local search.
This is another great reason to make sure that your site is set up appropriately for local search. Restaurants, plumbers, handymen, contractors, lawyers, doctors, dentists, accountants, store owners and more all rely on local clients. Make sure people can find you easily and quickly online.

30% of all searches include location.
A growing number of people tag their search queries with location information to ensure results appear in their local area. It’s another motivation to beef up your local search marketing efforts.

46% of all local searches are completed using Google.
Google remains an essential player in the search engine marketing world for both local and global searches. Optimizing your website for Google searches ensures that you’re seen and ranked by this top search engine.

Local Search Citation Sources

If you’re ready to work on your local search engine listings, the first step is to update and check local search citation sources. Like learning to trust certain people in your family or circle of friends, search engines have learned to trust specific websites for business listings. These sites provide accurate and reliable information so that search engines have learned over time to trust what they provide.

If you are serious about performing well in the local search market, you need a listing on each of the following seven directories (in no particular order):

1. Yelp
2. Acxiom
3. Neustar Localeze
4. Factual
5. Facebook
6. Infogroup
7. yp.com

According to Kristen Eichmann, Dashboard Interactive’s local search marketing expert, “The key is not to just be on these directories, but to have a consistent business name, address and phone number (NAP). If more than one listing exists for your business, you should contact them and ask them to remove the listing or merge it with your main listing (with the most accurate info).”

Kristen also points out that a listing on some of the major directories and syndicates will push your business information into smaller listings, spreading the information far and wide. This is another reason to ensure both accuracy and consistency.

“These are some of the major directories that syndicate your business info to other smaller directories. If data is inconsistent across these directories, this increases the chances of Google creating a duplicate Google My Business (GMB) listing for it. Duplicate GMB listings hurt your positioning in Google local because the two (or three+) listings compete with one another. Any duplicate listings then need to be closed, which is something we can assist with.”

Get Started with Local Search Today

Dashboard Interactive specializes in working with small and mid-sized businesses. Many of our clients have found they need help with local search marketing. They need assistance consolidating their listings, updating outdated information, or forming a plan of action on their search marketing.

That’s where we can help. We have a team of experienced marketing professionals including folks like Kristen who are experts at local search marketing. We also have professional web designers, SEO experts, copywriters, and more who can tackle local search projects for you. This frees your time up so that you can work on what you do best – your business – while we handle the marketing side of things.

If you’re ready to push the bar higher on your local search marketing efforts and showcase your business on Google and other search engines, give us a call today.

Right now, just a little over 7% of people say they prefer to search using voice-activated technology. The overwhelming majority prefer good old-fashioned text. They want to type a query into a browser on their computer or phone and read the results.

Does this mean that voice-activated search will never take off? It’s already taking off, and growing!

The Future of Voice Search Looks Bright

comScore predicts that 50% of all searches will be made by voice by 2020, while Gartner estimates that 30% of searches in the future won’t even need a screen.

Just because people prefer to use old-fashioned typing for search doesn’t mean they are opposed to using voice search. Preferences shift as technology becomes more affordable and intuitive. There’s always a delay between the introduction of new technology and the widespread adoption of that technology.

Back in the early 1990s, a good friend of mine, a salesperson for a pharmaceutical company, had an enormous cellphone the size of a shoebox with an antenna as big as her head. Today, we have watches that can double as smartphones. What seemed like something out of a James Bond movie is now ubiquitous.

Cellphones have evolved from bulky, heavy, limited objects to sleek, streamlined gadgets that make our lives easier. The same may be said for voice-activated search. What began as a lark, a cool toy to have in our homes to queue up our favorite music for a party or turn off the lights in the garage from the kitchen has started to become a necessary and accepted part of our lives.

Who Uses Voice Search?

Let’s dig a little deeper into who uses voice search, all preferences aside. The demographic information is invaluable for marketers looking to gain an edge on their search marketing, especially local search.

1. 65% of 25-49-year-olds use voice search. Over 57% of 50+ use it, too.
   This is the prime demographic for many local search opportunities, including restaurants, salons, childcare needs, home repair, and entertainment. If most of your customers come from this demographic, you must pay attention to voice search as part of your search engine optimization strategy, or you may miss a significant opportunity.
2. 58% use voice search to find a local business.
   Finding a local plumber, a restaurant that’s open late at night, or a pharmacy open 24/7 are all tasks for local search. If you cater to a local market, more than half of your local customers are using voice search to find recommendations. It pays to be at the head of the line.
3. 35.6 million Americans used voice-activated devices at least once a month in 2017, two years ago. That figure, however, represents a year-over-year increase of 128.9%

If you still think that voice search is struggling for widespread adoption, think again. More people every year jump on the voice search bandwagon, purchasing unique devices such as Alexa or using voice search assistants already embedded in existing devices, such as Siri in Mac products. Each year, the number of people turning to voice search increases—whether they prefer it or not.

Tapping into the Voice Activated Search Market

To tap into the voice-activated search market, you must have a website that is voice search optimized. What does that mean? It means a site that is:

• Fast: Speed is essential to good search rankings, but it is imperative for voice-activated search. Common code errors, big images, and other issues can slow a site down. A good SEO firm can help you find those problems and fix them.
• Specific: Keyword phrases continue to be necessary for search engine optimization whether voice or text-activated. When optimizing for the local market, it’s important to think like you’re the one using a mobile or other voice activated device and incorporate appropriate request phrases. Including phrases related to your location may help push your site ahead of the other local competitors as well.
• Secure: Google and all search engines put a premium on security. If you do not have an SSL certificate and a secure infrastructure to your website, think again. You may wish to find a provider to run a security audit on your site and suggest ways to improve.

Voice search continues to grow among all demographics thanks to necessity. Cellphones grew in popularity out of necessity. Those who drove long distances liked the security of having a phone handy in case of emergency. As time went by and cellphones could do more, they became indispensable for all types of communication.

The same may be said for voice search—it is rapidly becoming indispensable. It’s time to make sure your site is voice-ready. Call today for an assessment.

Love them or hate them, social media ads are here to stay. And social media itself has grown to the point of being part of the fabric of our daily lives.

The Pew Internet Research Center reports the following from 2018:

• Three-quarters of Facebook users log into the site more than once a day.
• Six in 10 Snapchat and Instagram users log into these sites daily.
• Pinterest remains substantially more popular with women (41% of whom say they use the site) than with men (16%).
• The average person uses three out of 8 popular platforms, with Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram the most popular.

Each social media platform offers unique ways for users to consume, post, and interact with the platforms’ content. Some are better for quick, casual video and photo posts between friends, and others encourage a more polished and produced collection of visuals. Some, like Facebook, try to offer a wide variety of uses with posts that are intended to be more conversational with a mix of text, images, and video sharing options. And others are topic-based visual curation sites where users collect and save ideas and information.

All offer an opportunity to reach the audiences that use them via social media advertising. If you’re new to social media advertising, it can seem daunting to set up and manage a campaign.

Social Media Strategy First, Tactics Second

As with all marketing, the strategy comes first. Knowing your audience is key to a successful social media advertising campaign, according to Robyn Flach, Social Media Marketing team leader at Dashboard Interactive.

“Ad strategy should be well planned with tactics that measure for specific objectives, so you know from the start what each campaign’s goal will be and optimize your advertising dollars for that,” Robyn said.

Most social media platforms provide a wealth of demographic information especially from paid advertising campaigns so that advertisers know who responds to their ads, when, and how. It’s up to an organization’s internal resources or an agency with expertise in social media advertising to leverage that information for successful campaigns.

A New World of Advertising Awaits: Social Media Ads

Social media advertising offers many opportunities for targeting. To give you some idea of the many choices that face you as a marketer, consider the following lists showing just some of the options, each with unique creative requirements and each ideal for specific circumstances and objectives:

As you can see, there are a lot of choices to make when creating your social media advertising campaign. Each option should be determined by what your campaign strategy, audience knowledge, data on past social media and advertising performance, and best practices to achieve your marketing campaign goals.

A marketing agency can work with you to create a realistic social media advertising strategy that works in tandem with other marketing and social media activities and recommend a working budget, keeping the company’s overall goals in mind.

Social Media Advertising: Best Practices and Tips

If you’re ready to jump into social media advertising, our experts have some tips for you to keep in mind.

• Understanding placement options is important. Business owners may decide they don’t want their ads to appear to be associated with certain types of content. For instance, short video ads are sometimes placed as un-skippable mid-roll ads that are positioned in the middle of a longer video belonging to another company. Some business owners may not want their video ad to appear in the middle of a politically charged video, or another video around topics not aligned with their company values. (We can help you with placement issues to avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of endorsing topics that do not align with your company values).
• Leverage audience actions and results data to create new audiences and campaigns that build off of past successes.

Dashboard Interactive: Social Media Marketing Experts

Creating just the right tone, mood, and message to achieve your social media marketing campaign goals is essential. You need a partner who understands how social media fits into your big-picture marketing goals. Count on Dashboard Interactive to understand your business, develop a goal-focused marketing campaign, and deliver measurable results.

A revenue generator that’s right for many local service businesses.

Have you noticed the Google Guaranteed badge on some Google search pages? If so, have you wondered what this is or if it’s right for your business? If you own a local service business, Google Local Services Ads (LSA’s) and the Google Guarantee program may be worth considering.

With Local Services Ads, you have the ability to advertise your business on Google and receive leads directly from potential customers. These ads appear at the top of Google search engine results pages and you only pay for qualified leads.

How Local Services Ads work

Local Services Ads are shown at the top of Google Search results pages when people search for the services you offer in your area. Potential customers can click on your ad to either call you or send you a message. You’ll receive a notification from Google. It’s then up to you to nurture the lead.

Searchers will also see the green checkmark alongside the “Google Guarantee.” In addition to catching users’ attention, this enables businesses to benefit from Google’s endorsement. Every ad includes customer ratings and reviews and Local Services Ads ensure your reviews appear on the SERP. You automatically apply for the Google guarantee when you sign up for LSA’s and there is an approval process to qualify.

Additional benefits:

• Connect with potential customers who are searching for services you provide and are most likely to book.
• Additional visibility on key search pages. If you’re already generating organic, paid or Google MyBusiness visibility, your business is more likely to generate sales opportunities with the additional listing.
• Differentiate your business from competitors.
• Increase the likelihood of your business being mentioned for voice activated search. Local Service Ads are one of the few ways you can increase the likelihood that you’re found on devices powered by Google Assistant.
• Pay only for leads related to your business and the services you offer.
• Customers choose you: You only hear from customers who have specifically selected your profile out of all the rest.

Costs are based on the business type. Businesses in the following categories are currently eligible to participate in the program in Minnesota, with more categories being added:

The below additional business categories are included in other states:

In order to qualify, businesses are required to complete a screening process. This includes meeting relevant insurance and licensing requirements and criminal background checks for employees. Guidelines are needed as Google is guaranteeing the work, which is an additional incentive for potential new customers to contact service providers who are enrolled in the program. This is also a great selling point for service providers.

Once approved, it’s important to optimize your profile and your business. Google calculates your LSA rank based on a number of factors including:

• Your proximity to potential customers’ locations
• Your review score and the number of reviews you receive
• Your responsiveness to customer inquiries and requests
• Your business hours
• Whether or not we’ve received serious or repeated complaints about your business

If you’re a local service business that falls under the above-mentioned categories, Local Search Ads may be worth testing. Not only are they highly visible, they are also measurable and can be very cost effective. LSA’s are not for every business, yet can be an important part of an overall Digital Marketing strategy. For additional information on Local Search Ads or to see if Local Search Ads are right for you, please contact Dashboard Interactive at 763-242-2454 or send us a message.

Nearly 77% of adults in the United States go online at least once a day, and 26% admit they’re almost always online. When they’re online, they’re checking email, social media, and researching items to buy, things to do, and places to see.

That’s where content marketing enters the picture. Content marketing uses informative written, audio, and visual storytelling to educate customers as they move through the buying cycle. A well-executed content marketing strategy generates excellent results over time. But it takes dedication, consistency, and teamwork to yield such results.

Content Marketing: Engage, Educate, Inform

Content marketing depends upon the strategic flow of materials, called ‘content,’ to a niche market. Good content marketing utilizes many channels to educate and inform customers. Content marketing does not explicitly sell; rather it stimulates interest in a product or service.

A good example of content marketing in action is for someone we’ll call Ken. Ken sells socks and footcare products for diabetics. He runs an e-commerce site and a small storefront. Ken uses content marketing through videos, his company’s blog, and several free booklets he has produced and shares online.

In his videos, he doesn’t sell socks or footcare products. Instead, he interviews doctors about the dangers diabetes poses to the feet and how diabetics can avoid infections and other foot problems. His booklets offer great footcare tips and are approved by a podiatrist. His blog offers inspiring stories of diabetic athletes, recipes and tips to manage diabetes.

You’ll notice something missing from this content: a hard sell. Ken doesn’t pitch his socks or other products directly. Instead, he shares plenty of information to help people live a healthier life. The doctor interviewed in the videos describes the importance of good circulation to the feet, but not once are Ken’s brand of socks mentioned.

Instead, Ken is educating diabetics (his target, niche audience) on the importance of good footcare. Through this series of content pieces, Ken educates and informs his target audience so that they turn to him as their expert on diabetic footcare products… and yes, they buy the socks!

The Effectiveness of Content Marketing

Content marketing requires expert writers, graphic designers, and videographers who can tell a compelling story. It takes time to generate content and build an audience. Are the results worth it?

1. High quality content produces 7.8 times more site traffic.

   It pays to invest in the best content you can afford. According to the Content Marketing Institute, content leaders produce 7.8 times more website traffic than advertising alone. Once you get people to your website, the site’s contents can convert them into leads or buyers.

2. Content marketing costs 67% less than inbound ads and keeps people engaged for 37 seconds.

   Content marketing costs, on average, much less than running an inbound advertising campaign alone. Perhaps more importantly, it keeps people’s attention much longer. According to some experts, over 200 million people have ad-blocking software on their computers. This reduces the number of people who view your paid ads, but not your content. Consider this when developing your marketing campaign.

3. Content offers shareable materials – which increases reach and brand exposure.

   People love sharing informative infographics, videos, articles and more with their friends and colleagues. They almost never share advertisements. Blog content remains the most shared, so a blog for your website should be the cornerstone of your content marketing campaign.

4. Younger audiences love podcasting. 45% of people ages 18-34 listen to podcasts once a week or more.

   Podcasting offers a great method of content marketing for younger audiences. If you sell products or services to the 18-34 age group, podcasting may be the cornerstone of your campaign rather than blogging. Services such as Podbean, Blog Talk Radio and many others offer the ability to quickly establish a podcasting channel. Syndication through Google, Apple products and others quickly increases audience reach for many podcasters.

5. YouTube reaches 2 billion people globally. More than 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube each day.

   Do your products or services lend themselves to video storytelling? YouTube reaches one in three people worldwide. If you produce videos, consider uploading a separate version to Facebook. The Facebook platform prioritizes direct uploads over shared YouTube links, so you’ll get more views.

These are just a few statistics on content marketing. Marketers worldwide continue to embrace content marketing as an effective way to reach customers without hyping their products. Customers continue to respond well to content marketing, making the investment in quality content great for long-term value. Adding content marketing to your overall strategy may be a win-win.

Considering content marketing? Dashboard Interactive offers video storytelling, professionally written content including blog posts, expert graphic design and more to build your content marketing strategy.

1.0 Billion Voice Searches a Month and Growing

You’re probably familiar with search engine optimization (SEO), but have you heard of voice search optimization? Voice search optimization is the optimization of keywords and keyword phrases for searches using voice assistants. When you make a voice command on Siri, Alexa, etc. and receive a response with the information you requested, you’ve completed a voice search and voice search optimization may have played a role in the answer that you received.

Voice search isn’t new and if you aren’t optimizing for voice activated search, you are probably already losing ground in the battle to gain customers. When it comes to voice search, the result that is served provides the featured organization with a significant competitive advantage. It’s time to focus on voice activated search as an important marketing strategy, especially if your organization provides products or services to a local audience.

It’s important to note that by 2021, brands that redesign their websites to support visual and voice search will increase digital commerce revenue by 30%. According to Gartner, one of the world’s leading research and advisory companies, these early responders will see an increase in conversions, revenues, new customers and customer retention; and as of January, there are over 1 billion voice searches completed per month.

Consider all the potential places where people may use voice search. About 45 million home voice activated speakers were shipped out last year, and in 2018 the number of smartphone users in the US reached 257.3M. Voice search popularity continues to grow, and we are only just seeing the start of the adoption of home voice activated systems.

Why Should Local Business Owners Pay Attention to Voice Search Optimization?

You may think that voice activated search is only for large companies, but the statistics paint a different picture. Local businesses may benefit the most from voice search:

• 58% of consumers are using voice activated search to find a local business
• 46% of voice search users look for a local business a daily basis
• 27% of consumers surveyed said they would visit the website of a local business after conducting a voice search
• 88% of “Near Me” searches are done on mobile
• 63% of people ages 35 – 54 use voice searches

Key Ranking Factors for Voice Activated Search

As with non-voice search optimization, it’s important for your organization to be found and some of the key ranking factors for voice activated search mirror those for other types of search in some respect. There are also key differences. Below are a few tips.

Refresh the Basics

Start to optimize for voice search with the basics. For all the sophistication of Google, Apple, and others, if basic facts about your business such as the street address, store hours, and phone number are inconsistent on profiles across the internet, the search engine may have trouble crawling your content or skip it entirely in the voice search results.

Focus on Long-Tail Keyword Phrases Related to Local Search

Optimizing around long-tail keywords also makes sense for both search engine optimization and voice optimization. People don’t say “bakery Glen Oaks.” They give commands like, “Find a bakery in Glen Oaks that’s open until 8:00 P.M.” Use phrases naturally in the text, and don’t hide them in the image data.

Include Questions and Answers in Your Text

Most people ask a question when they use voice activated search. They want to know “where is the nearest urgent care facility?” or “which Chinese food restaurant is open now?” Use questions and answers in your web copy to help improve voice activated search results.

Use Structured Data Markup and Voice Schema

Structured data, or the coding found in the HTML of your site, helps make your site more easily searched and recognized by search engines. It also improves the accuracy with which sites are matched to queries.

Aim for Featured Snippets

Considering the fact that over 40% of voice search answers stem from a featured snippet, owning this coveted spot in search results can improve your chances of voice activated search results.

Test and Improve Site Speed

Speed to load matters, especially when it comes to voice activated search. Research indicates that 53% of people leave mobile sites if they don’t load in 3 seconds or less.

These are just a few tips that scratch the surface of optimizing for voice activated search. It’s a complicated subject that’s evolving constantly and the time for voice optimization is now. If you’d like to know more, give Dashboard a call. We’re here to help separate you from your competition.

Website maintenance and updates are just as important as computer operating system and software updates, but are often overlooked or not taken as seriously. Sometimes it is assumed that ‘someone else is taking care of it’. That’s dangerous logic for a website developer or agency who is hired to support business clients, as failing to perform maintenance updates to a client’s website on a regular basis can lead to vulnerabilities that can be easily accessed by hackers. This can cost the business time, money and potentially the company’s reputation.

You are probably familiar with notifications announcing that an update is available for the operating system on your computer. Many of these updates improve functionality, fix known problems, and patch holes in the code that can be exploited and lead to security breaches. Sometimes these can be set to happen automatically, and sometimes we need to use these notifications as prompts to manually go in and perform the updates. This also happens with the software installed on our computers.

Microsoft and Adobe, for example, regularly send out notices of new patches and performance updates. With other programs and applications, you don’t see the new update availability until you log into a program or visit an App Store and see the notification. It is crucial to regularly perform this basic computer maintenance to keep your operating system and software programs up to date and secure.

Security updates, performance updates, code updates, etc. aren’t automatic on websites. Some developers don’t understand the critical nature of regular maintenance updates, and some aren’t as detailed in their work, which can cause major problems for business owners who are unaware and assume that their website developer/agency is doing all that is needed on their behalf.

A True Story

Several years ago, a new client contracted with us to oversee the management of their website, along with other services. When we checked, it had been three years since the theme and plugins – or unique packages of code that extend the functionality of a basic WordPress site – had been updated. No one had updated the site’s security, renewed important security licenses, or even checked “under the hood” of the site for years! We began the onboarding process and discovered that the website had been hacked and that information had been exposed.

The situation could have been avoided if the initial developer had communicated the importance of regular, scheduled updates and maintenance with the client. The client then would have had the knowledge needed to make an informed decision to contract for website maintenance services once the site was launched. With the right resources and support in place, the breach could have been prevented.

Why Are Updates Important?

There are several critical updates that should be completed on a regular basis. These include security, coding, and performance updates. Every website has several systems and code languages that all work together to deliver a good website experience for your viewers. Like any well-built structure, each layer builds upon the layers below to function properly and stay secure.

This starts with your hosting company. Their systems and frameworks house your website files and databases and provide the conduits to deliver your website to your viewers’ screens. Depending on the hosting company and plan that you have, your hosting company may be responsible for keeping all aspects of the hosting server up to date, or you may be responsible for some of it. It’s important to have a reputable and quality host for your website.

Layered on your host’s server is your website, which is made up of many files of code and databases. If you use a content management system such as WordPress, they are continually improving and updating the code and releasing new updates regularly. Sometimes your hosting company will automatically install these updates for you, and sometimes you need to do the updates. It’s important to know who is responsible and ensure that updates are made soon after release, as they often include security updates.

Your WordPress installation may have a purchased or custom-built theme on top of it. It too, has potential updates available, and checks should be made to ensure that the code in the theme stays up to date and compatible with the current version of WordPress on which it is running.

Your website may also have a series of Plugins installed. These are unique packages of code that extend the functionality of a basic WordPress site. These could be things like a slideshow, forms for your viewers to fill out, a specialized calendar of events, a company directory, or items that work in the back end like one that performs security checks. All of these plugins need to have code that works with the current version of the theme and core WordPress Core versions. It’s critical to make sure that only current quality plugins from reputable authors who are actively maintaining them, are used. Abandoned plugins from authors who no longer update the code are one of the biggest entry points for breaches.

All updates, including security updates, on website frameworks, themes and plugins are vital to keep your site out of the hands of hackers and cybercriminals. With each new virus, trojan, or malware released, companies and code authors work hard to figure out a counter attack and defense. Security code updates provide you with these virtual shields to protect your site. Cybercriminals and hackers know that many people don’t login to their websites regularly, or even know what to look for in abandoned themes and plugins when they do login occasionally. These hackers are on the lookout for coding loopholes and send out their bots to find sites with outdated code – they are easy targets to infiltrate. They can place malicious code on your site, hack into it, or disable it. Then you are left with an expensive and frustrating problem to fix.

When update alerts appear, take action. It only takes seconds to perform an update but hours to fix problems caused by ignoring update notifications.

At Dashboard Interactive, we take your website’s security and maintenance seriously.

The following are some of the maintenance tasks we perform each week on the client sites we maintain:

• Review all notifications.
• Create backup according to schedule (database backup each week, monthly backup of entire file structure).
• Download and store backup off-server.
• Perform updates on any plugins whose author has sent notice of updates, and then test.
• Perform updates on theme files needed, test.
• Update any core platform versions available, test. (If the host has auto-updated the core version, perform testing.
• Look at new form entries, remove any spam.
• Review Users and permissions to ensure none were created or altered without us knowing.
• And much more.

It takes this level of detail to properly manage a website and if your development resources go to this level of detail, you’re in good hands. If not, your website could be at risk.

Everyone Is a Target – Take Action

The FBI states that computer crimes, including removing spyware, malware, and malicious code, costs businesses $67 billion. Small businesses and nonprofits tend to be criminal targets because they lack the resources to fight back when attacked.

Don’t be a statistic. Find knowledgeable website maintenance and development support. If you don’t know of qualified resources, feel free to contact Dashboard Interactive. We are happy to help. Updating and maintaining all aspects of your website is too important to be left for another day.

Are you only using contact form completions and gauging how often the phone rings to determine if your marketing efforts are working? Are you making marketing and advertising budget decisions based only on these two metrics?

If so, maybe it’s time that you closed the loop with Call Tracking. You’re missing out on valuable data that can increase your company’s revenues and profitability, while reducing waste.

What Is Call Tracking?

Call tracking enables you to track the details associated with phone calls. This is significant considering phone calls drive 10x more sales than contact forms. If you aren’t tracking your calls, you may be guessing on 90% of prospect inquiries.

It’s important for the phone to ring and for potential new customers to fill out contact forms, but at best, you may only have part of the picture and at worst, you may be wasting money by spending it in the wrong areas. It’s not uncommon for advertisers to believe that a certain campaign is a top performer when in fact most of their inquiries come from another digital marketing initiative.

Call Tracking includes telephone call tracking, real-time reporting, the application of metrics associated with your customer interactions over the phone, and the marketing efforts that led to those phone calls. You can determine if a call came in as a result of your SEO efforts, your Pay per Click advertising campaign or from Facebook or another Social Media platform. You can also determine which website pages, keywords and types of devices are driving phone calls and conversions and which ones aren’t. You can even determine who makes the call and their telephone number and location. Please see below:

In addition, many call tracking software platforms integrate with Google Analytics and with CRM systems such as Salesforce. Imagine being able to track a prospect from initial introduction to your business to close and do so for pennies on the dollar. You can also listen in on calls to evaluate key customer requirements and your inside sales efforts.

Customer sales cycles are complex. Potential new customers interact with brands and products online and off. They can come via organic or paid search, social media and email campaigns, etc. by bouncing in and out of landing pages, with phone calls, mobile apps, and any number of other channels. It’s a lot to track and can be difficult to make accurate decisions without complete data.

Yet gaining a complete and accurate picture of your marketing attribution (which channels are truly producing qualified leads and conversions) is crucial to getting the biggest return on your marketing dollars.

If you’re not using Call Tracking, you may be making less than ideal digital marketing and budgetary decisions. We occasionally find that a campaign is generating an acceptable return on investment, when in fact, additional data could lead to better decision making and increased profitability. Call tracking is a tool that can enable you to make such decisions.

For additional information on Call Tracking, please contact us. When you want to know which digital marketing initiatives are working and what isn’t working, as well as what is important, call tracking is a must.