The Local Marketing Stack

Call Tracking

Zone 5 • Difficulty: • Sugg. D.I.Y. Monthly Budget: $30+

You might think of call tracking as “phone analytics.” The idea behind it is to help you figure out not only which marketing channels are driving the most phone calls, but what the quality of those phone calls is, and whether or not the calls turn in to actual customers.

Can backfire if used improperly
The potential for helping you fine-tune your marketing is great, but poorly implemented, call-tracking can absolutely ruin your SEO, as it’s not a good idea to present Google multiple possible phone numbers for your business.

A lightweight option that works great on mobile devices
If this is at all a concern, keep in mind that lightweight call-tracking on mobile devices doesn’t require a special number — you can make your phone numbers clickable by using the “:tel” parameter and tag phone number clicks as a special event using your web analytics package. (You might need to ask your website developer for help with this if you’re unable to edit your website.)  You can then extrapolate your overall call performance based on the percentage of mobile visitors to your website.

Not all calls are good calls
And, you should take the metrics reported by call tracking services with a grain of salt — just as every visitor to your website is not a prospective customer, neither is every phone call. Many are robots or salespeople dialing for dollars.