How to harness the power of business phone calls for inbound leads

The key to good business is harnessing insight and using it to fuel your growth, but the playing field has changed. Gone are the days of scraping around for insights to inform your business…Today there are endless tools at your fingertips and streams upon streams of data. Which do you use? How do you know which is right for your business? One aspect that many businesses neglect is phone call data. Here’s why you should take your business phone calls seriously right now

Data, data everywhere.

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A phone call is a powerful tool. Today’s text-heavy communication tools like email, live chat and…cough…direct mail…all have delayed response times.

Text-based communications are also incredibly one dimensional. They lose valuable components like tone of voice, which provides deeper clues about the intended meaning of the words.

According to ContactPoint, tone of voice equates to a massive 86% of our communication with the words themselves making up a pitiful 14%. With statistics like that, phone calls should definitely be taken seriously.

Phone calls are more powerful than you think.

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86% of telephone communication is made up of tone of voice and just 14% the words we say. ”ContactPoint

Phone calls are essential for any business and it’s important that you start thinking of them as a marketing channel.

Much in the same way you’d track pay per click advertising through Google or an ad in the local paper, you need to think in terms of three core metrics: Conversions, cost per conversion and return on investment (ROI).

These days more and more marketing channels either promote website or landing page visits because this seems more trackable. This just isn’t the case anymore – Phone calls can be tracked and far more effectively than you might think.

Think like a marketer.

Conversions:

The cost of advertising divided by the number of conversions

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The leads or sales that result from that channel

Cost per conversion:

Return on investment (ROI): This is the most important metric. Your cost per conversion should be less than the value of a business order in order to be profitable.

If somebody takes the time to interact with your business, you and only you are at the front of mind in that moment. The more time that passes after that lead submission, the greater the likelihood that your prospect will be busy with something else, distracted or they may have even found another supplier.

If somebody fills out a contact form, responds to a marketing email or engages with digital advertising there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to contact them right away. Their phone line could be engaged, they might not respond to their emails and their business could end up elsewhere.

Instead of marketing a website or landing page, try pushing people directly to your phone number. When a customer calls you, you already have their attention and they chose to speak to you. If following up a lead within five minutes increases the likelihood of converting by nine times, how much does responding to a lead in that moment increase your chances? A lot.

The true value of an inbound phone call.

If you follow up a lead within 5 minutes, you’re 9 X more likely to convert them to a sale ”insidesales.com

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If you position your website or advertising to focus on inbound phone call generation, you need to be able to track effectiveness. You need to attribute any calls to the correct marketing channel so you can manage your spend and track ROI effectively.

Another important metric you might consider tracking is quality of phone call leads. Of course you can go into as much detail as you’d like, but we’ve put a few examples that we’d recommend on the left.

Alongside tracking campaign effectiveness, have you ever thought about how effective your business is at actually answering calls? Every missed call is a missed opportunity and you need complete visibility at all times.

That might sound like an easy task if you’re a business consisting of one or two people, but what happens when you have a team of 10 and you’re starting to miss those valuable opportunities for growth?

Why should you use call tracking?

Non-sales call

A caller that showed interest, but was not ready to buy.

A caller that has no interest in buying a new product.

Low quality call

High quality call A caller that bought your product there and then.

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Positioning yourself for leads.

85% of people whose calls are not answered will not call back. ”message-direct.co.uk

It’s time to get smart with your telephone calls. Follow these steps and put yourself in the best position to make the most of inbound calls.

Think about the business number itself. Is the number range right for your business and what you do? Have a read of our number range guide here if you’re not sure.

After you’ve identified the number range that best suits your business, you need to think about how memorable it is.

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02. Make it memorable

03.Once you’re all setup with the right number, it’s time to think about the technology that’s going to help you bring home the biggest ROI from your calls.

Time for technology

A number that customers can remember easily is a number that they’ll not only call more often, but will pass onto others too.

Choose the right number range

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If you’re interested in using a phone number as a source for channelling inbound business, then you need to look at live call statistics. By tracking and improving response rates to calls, you’ll quickly increase sales and out-perform your competitors.

There are a wide range of solutions available, but our product is called Vision, which of course…we recommend.

If you’d like to find out more about it, please give us a call on 0800 160 1111.

Why should you use call tracking?

What can you do with call statistics?

• View missed or engaged calls • See the number of calls that go to voicemail • Monitor how long it takes staff to answer the phone • Review call volumes and adjust staff levels accordingly • Check the number of simultaneous calls • Use a unique number on each advertisement • Measure the success of each marketing campaign and ROI • See the geographic location of callers with interactive maps • Produce bespoke reports for management meetings • Lower your costs and increase profitability

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We use Vision daily to track response to adverts. Vision helps us improve advertising campaigns and saves us

thousands by stopping ineffective advertising. ”Roy Davaney, Floren Fine Art

Making your inbound calls work for you.Now you’ve got your number sorted and the technology to do some serious tracking, you need to think about where phone calls fit in with the bigger picture.

For example, your marketing process could look like this:

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Paid advertising Website Inbound call Order

By understanding your customer’s journey, you’ll be able to ensure that anybody that answers the phone is perfectly placed to close that prospect as effectively as possible.

Remember, where the customer is in the sales funnel will influence how you deal with the call. If you push for calls early on, you’ll need to take a more informative approach. Choose to target customers further along the buying cycle and you’ll be able to get straight to talking business.

0800 160 1111

We love to talk telecoms!

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Helping businesses bolster their telecoms is just what we do. If you have any questions at all or if you’d like some advice, please get in touch.

windsor-telecom.co.uk