When tracking your marketing efforts, it is important to get the full picture of all your marketing pieces.
As a CallSource Business Advisor, it is always interesting to me when clients choose not to track calls for marketing sources for their business. The first question I always ask is “Why don’t you want to track this? Don’t you want to know if the ad source is working?”
So before I tell you about a client who was shocked to find out what tracking these ad sources could do for their business, I will start by saying:
You should track every piece of advertising that is generating calls for your business!
Now that we have that out of the way, let me tell you about a client who was able to reallocate $100,000 within their marketing budget by tracking all client-facing ads including their emails, and events.
Bob and I had been talking for a few weeks about some new ad source deadlines he had coming up. He was adamant that he did not need to track a particular campaign as this specific ad source had been around for years and had always displayed their main office number for its entire run so far. He was convinced that this local publication had branded his company, but I was finally able to persuade him to try tracking it this year.
Since they were marketing for his business all throughout his local area, this truly was a great opportunity to find out his return on investment. Were these local ads really branding his business? That was what we were looking to discover. While I was hoping it was as lucrative as he had believed it to be, I was still skeptical as the ad agency had not been able to provide him with any information on the ad performance. They had essentially created this great bundle for him that seemed too good to be true.
Bob reluctantly agreed to use tracking numbers. He used a unique tracking number for each of the four different ad mediums this company was advertising for him for the entire year. Come to find out at the end of the year; they hadn’t come close to breaking even, never mind making money, on the cost of these ads. These ads brought in fewer than ten new calls for the entire year. Bob was convinced that this local marketing was doing wonders for his company. It hadn’t even scratched the surface of what I would consider a decently performing ad source. This rings especially true— with a $100,000 price tag.
Bob effectively reallocated this money the next year and was able to successfully recoup more than double his ad cost. Bob has not published another marketing piece without a tracking number since. This even includes their office emails. You would be surprised at how many clients call off of those as well. Plus, this allows you the insight into employee performance on these types of calls as well.
If you want your business to succeed, it is vital that you make decisions based on real data, not guesswork or “intuition.” We are serious when we say real data helps businesses make better-informed business decisions. CallSource also has a great support team that looks out for our clients, just like I did with Bob. If I hadn’t convinced him to use tracking numbers, he would still be throwing hard earned money out the window.
If you’re curious to know how CallSource can help you, call (877) 225-5768 and speak to one of our representatives today.
