We’ve all heard explanations of why names like Siri, Alexa, Cortana and the phrase “Hey Google” matter in the digital marketing space. Voice search is booming. But if you’re smart, these names are old news – you’ve already adjusted digital campaigns to complement more organic, longer tail voice queries. The real question is, are you making the same adjustments for how virtual assistants impact your inbound call strategies?
Consumers continue to replace home phones with smart mobile devices, and with that, the rise of voice search has made it easier than ever for consumers to call brands directly. As personal assistants like Google Home and Amazon Echo grow more popular, it’s likely that users will be able to make calls directly from those devices, too. As a result, marketers will see a large spike in inbound call volume. A desktop user, for example, may search for “phone number for Target,” whereas a smartphone user may simply instruct Siri to “call Target near me.” Without the added effort to find and dial phone numbers, consumers will be quicker to call retailers to answer questions.
Consumers today interact with brands across multiple channels: television, social media, print ads, videos, and more. And increasingly, consumers are turning to their smartphones as their first point of contact (which is why Google is now shifting to a mobile-first index). We know that if a customer commands Siri to find a phone number for local business, she’s more likely to call – but where is she getting that number from?
Fortunately, call tracking technology allows marketers to understand where customers saw brand messages and what inspired them to convert. One way to do this is through dynamic phone number tracking.
Dynamic phone number tracking is a powerful tool that assigns different contact numbers to each visitor or web source, such as Facebook, Yelp, or Google Adwords. This allows marketers to pinpoint exactly where customers received contact information, whether from a served ad, social media page, or another source. Sophisticated dynamic number tracking ensures that each customer sees the same number even if visiting a different online source after their initial point of contact, to avoid any confusion. For example, a customer who first saw a company’s number on a Facebook page would see the same number listed on the brand’s Yelp page.
Additionally, brands can use keyword-level call tracking to identify what each visitor searched to find a business online.
Even if you can track how customers initiated mobile calls with voice search from SEO pages or social platforms, you need to go further by listening to the actual calls themselves.
Call recording software is often used to train customer service employees, but it’s incredibly useful for marketers. While this may sound like a time-consuming and expensive process, available technology allows marketers to automatically transcribe recordings and quickly pull insights from conversations.
Additionally, marketers can understand customer preferences while calling to improve their call technology, such as automated menus that can make or break the experience for impatient prospects. Instead of frustrating customers with clunky interfaces, marketers can develop streamlined automated menus unique to their businesses.
Marketers have access to an overwhelming amount of tools to reach prospects and convert new customers. With so many resources available, the challenge becomes identifying what is effective and what isn’t. You can spend time and money on wide-reaching multi-channel campaigns, but you can’t assess or learn from your efforts without the right attribution capabilities to make sense of your campaigns.
Courtesy of SearchEngineJournal
