Know Your Leads: A Look at How Call Stats Can Help Improve Your Marketing Performance

Up till now, we’ve been mostly yapping about virtual PBX systems in general terms. But perhaps it’s time to get a bit more specific and examine individual features up close. Let’s start with something exotic, like the ability to view call stats.

Not unlike Clark Kent, this little feature might appear unimpressive on first sight (what’s with that dorky outfit and those square glasses)—but just throw it into the ring and see what happens.

That's because some things show their value only in action.

So here’s a practical scenario that will flush out any hidden superpowers.

Your Marketing Efforts

Let’s say you own a small business. Following the age-old advice, you've split your precious marketing eggs between several baskets: two local papers (the ‘Morning Sun’ and the ‘Faraway Star’), your website, and lastly, in a fit of creativity (or perhaps desperation) you decided to put up an ad on your local Craigslist Classifieds. 'What the heck’—it’s free, right?

Now comes the waiting game...

Your Dilemma

So while we sit here waiting for the phone to start going off the hook, why not ponder a philosophical question: wouldn’t it be nice to know just how many leads each of those platform generated?

I mean, if you only have one business number (and included this same phone number in all four places, how will you tell where each caller got whiff of you and your business?

Sure, you could start surveying your prospective clients. But that double-edged nuisance is going to slide right through your time and their patience—not the best way to get off to a good start...

Anything else?

You could perhaps try checking how many people ‘clicked’ on the ‘Contact us’ link on your website—but that doesn’t necessarily mean they all proceeded to call you, and it sure isn’t going to help you glean any information about the other three...

Fair to say, this is as far as your little foray into statistics is likely to get.

And here’s how Synclio can help you take it a step further:

Phone Call Number Tracking with Goolgle Analytics

First, Synclio gives you the ability to port numbers. ‘Porting’ numbers means that when a number is called the call is instantaneously redirected to a different number. Ever changed providers and had your calls follow you? That’s exactly it!

(Just don’t ask us how it’s done—we’ll call it ‘magic’)

Then, Synclio also lets you select as many local and toll-free phone numbers as you need.

Now let’s connect the dots.

Suppose you’ll assign a different phone number to each ad you've placed and port all four numbers to your one business line... You’ll still be receiving and answering calls on your phone just as you normally would, but in the background—magic will be happening!

When the day is done and you’ve signed up all those new customers, you’ll now be able to simply kick back, pull up your laptop, and watch as Synclio’s think-o-matic-extraordinaire (powered by Google Analytics) reveals just how many calls were placed to each of the numbers you have ported.

The Bottom Line

So even if you’ve been paying a hefty fee to see your ads prominently featured in the Morning Sun and the Faraway Star, you may learn from this little experiment that the bulk of callers actually followed your electronic bread-crumbs-trail via the freebie Craigslist.

Going to reshuffle your marketing eggs now? You betcha!

This is just one of the ways viewing call stats can help improve your business strategy and marketing performance.

And it teaches us never to judge a man or a feature by their outfit—at least not before they've had a chance to take it off and kick some @#$!

09/19/11 Edited to adjust spelling and update information.

Labels: business, call, call stats, cloud computing, how to improve marketing performance, leads, marketing, porting, statistics, technology, virtual PBX, virtual phone