Performance marketers are experts in the realm of online activity, lead forms, and clicks, clicks clicks. But while you’re testing, optimizing, and driving more online traffic than ever, consumer behavior has undergone a paramount shift with the mobile transformation.
Performance marketers that continue to solely push and collect data from online-only interactions are swimming upstream. Savvy marketers are taking advantage of the mobile current, and cashing in on new consumer behavior. Let’s check the facts:
- 48% of all local, mobile searches result in a phone call (Google, The Mobile Playbook)
- 70% of mobile searchers have used the click to call button to connect with a business directly from the search results page (Google, The Role of Click to Call in the Path to Purchase)
The performance marketers embracing this trend and the fact that mobile users hop between online and offline channels, have seen huge revenue gains and growth in the affiliate channel.
The Facts From a Performance Call Marketing Expert
Don’t take my word for it. I sat down with Mike Williams, Network Manager at RingPartner, an inbound call performance network, whose results prove there’s a way for brands and publishers to conquer mobile with offline, call-conversions. Here’s what Mike had to say:
Q: What are the benefits of pay-per-call models over pay-per-click?
A: When a prospect taps that click to call button they are further down the chain. In other words they are far along in the path to purchase and there’s nothing standing between the prospect and the brand. This means the brand has less variables to deal with: there’s less room for customers to drop-off, and the brands have more control over the customer experience.
The second big benefit of pay-per-call is that it frees brands to concentrate on their business, rather than trying to learn and test pay-per-click and the ever shifting marketing landscape. And because they only pay for the calls they want, there’s no risk involved.
Q: How has inbound call marketing (a.k.a pay-per-call) improved the mobile marketing performance for the brands you work with?
A: Leveraging phone calls as conversions makes more sense to mobile users, especially in brand categories that drive and receive leads from online lead forms. It’s much more convenient for a mobile user to simply tap a click to call button than to fill out a web form.
For categories with high-consideration products or services, like EDU, insurance, financial and home services, phone calls are on the rise due to mobile marketing. For home service brands for example, we’ve seen call volume jump 288% from January 2014 to February 2014, and another 150% increase from February to March. That’s a total of 438% increase over Q1. And these phone calls are valuable leads.
Using mobile marketing tactics to drive inbound phone calls means brands receive live transfer calls in real-time, from customers who are highly interested. This kind of mobile marketing puts the ads in the hands of the consumer, literally, when they are in a buyer’s mindset, resulting in impressive conversion rates.
Phone calls are also-high value points of conversion that provide a unique opportunity for brands to cross sell and upsell.
Q: What mobile channels within performance work best for pay-per-call?
A: Mobile search and display are definitely the leaders. For example, in the Home Services category, we are driving more than half of all inbound calls from mobile search and display. With click to call buttons in PPC ads and on landing pages it’s easy to drive inbound calls in a similar way as online traffic.
We’ve also seen publishers succeeding with pay-per-view traffic. Email and video are another great opportunity as well as social advertising, as had been made apparent with Twitter now testing click to call for some of their sponsored Tweets.
These types of channels help get the message in front of the consumer. The option to call helps close the deal.
Q: What are some common misconceptions or objections that brands have with pay-per-call?
A: Many performance marketers are unaware that they can utilize advanced call tracking features to get deeper insights and analytics on call-based campaigns. The truth is, with pay-per-call marketing solutions, you can capture all the online activity and user-session information that led to a call. This ensures publishers receive credit for the traffic they drive, brands can easily assess publisher performance and determine who is sending high volume AND quality traffic, while the publishers can assess their own performance and determine what campaigns, keywords and creative are working.
Brands are also worried about the call filtering and routing. They want calls automatically routed to specific branches or agents, and they want to ensure that their call centers or sales reps aren’t inundated with low quality callers that waste time and resources.
With advanced pay-per-call features, all of these issues can be taken care of
Inbound calls continue to drive immense revenue for the performance marketers brave enough to leap into offline territory. With mobile taking over, phone calls should be your new best friend.
