More Offline Leads from Online Traffic - Brighton SEO 2013

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Following on from a chat I had with Kelvin he thought it would be a good idea if I could do a sort of follow-on from my last presentation. While the previous focused on helping optimize your search strategy to get more profitable traffic, this one is attacking them from a different angle to help generate more from the traffic you are already getting.I will warn you that some of this is about getting your hands dirty and back to basics looking at what lots of us often forget & then on the flip side, there are some more cutting edge tips and tricks to help boost your ROI.

To get everyone up to speed who didn’t see the last presentation, it focused on two key bits of technology, and I explained how they can be used to help drive better quality traffic to your website:Dynamic NumbersCRM IntegrationFirstly Dynamic Numbers are what most people want from call tracking – especially with regards understanding keywords that drive calls from a website.So for example if you and a colleague both to go to our website you will both see different phone numbers. This is software on our site that is tracking you at visitor level. It is tracking what your referral path was, what pages you are looking at, and if you call the number, it will record a whole host of additional data to do with your call.One of our clients described us once as ‘Google analytics for phone calls’ which is not 100% accurate, but it gives you a good idea of where I am coming from and certainly with this type of call tracking technology you can report on phone calls as you would any other goal in GA or other analytics platform you may be running. So when optimizing for conversions you can now do that with a fuller picture and what may have previously been a missing link making sure keywords you are bidding on or optimizing are or aren’t delivering the results taking into account phone calls.

Then the 2nd part of the previous presentation was don’t just stop at ‘conversions’– understand what the outcomes are and optimize for revenueFor this what I mean is that just because a keyword drives calls it might not drive sales, and in the example I gave last time ‘Mazda Garage’ you can see delivered much higher conversion, and more leads then ‘Mazda Dealer’, but the former delivered less profitable calls and was therefore the term ‘dealer’ was more actually more valuable to focus on.So you can automate this level of reporting, understanding what calls become sales in a variety of ways, but the most accurate is to process your CRM records alongside your call data so this process is done automatically.So where the last presentation finished up I'd like to continue, because once you start optimizing for revenue, the low hanging fruit and quick wins will obviously be ticked off, and with diminishing returns where else can you turn your attention to. So instead of talking about what you can look at to make sure you get more quality traffic to your site, this is about what can you do to make more of the traffic you are already getting.

Now at this point I’m not going to go into anything you would typically here in a conversion rate optimization type of presentation e.g. prominently display a phone number in the header or give clear calls to action e.t.c, no I’m going to go more basic than that….Answer the phone.This is something a lot of businesses take for granted and wouldn’t even know if on this basic KPI they are losing business. Looking at a large sample of data the figures speak for themselves with an average of 9% of calls going unanswered. This doesn’t include calls that technically get ‘answered’ when they go through to voicemail so the number of callers who aren’t getting through could be even worse than this.There are options to track % of customers who go through to voicemail and % that leave a message but for this sample of data only a few of our clients that operate like this so I haven’t put those figures down.Remember phones also aren't like an ecommerce transaction or even an email lead because with both of these the conversion has happened, with a phone technically it can do because the person called – but you might not have any trace of it.

I’m sure in most instances phone calls aren’t missed on purpose, but don’t assume just because you have a ‘failsafe’ like a voicemail that someone is going to leave you a message.To give you an example we are currently looking to get our website redeveloped, as it is out of date, old content, and well the less said the better. So I wanted to speak to a few web development companies, and one on my list didn’t answer the phone. It went to voicemail, and a bad voicemail at that. Now at this point everything else this company has done is wasted. They had a great looking site that was responsive and perfectly optimised for SEO (which they were ranking well for), had engaging content and clear calls to action. Everything they had worked on to achieve a conversion completely worked, but was then completely wasted cause my phone call wasn’t answered.Yes I could have emailed our request for proposal, but I didn’t want to, not before first having a conversation to find out things like if they represent one of our competitors.So as yet I haven’t called back, and as yet I will no doubt just be a web visit to them that didn’t convert. Don’t think it is just me either that doesn’t call back – look at the stats.This is also very important for ecommerce

Anyone recall the episode in Mad Men where the PA to Draper is told to walk into the switchboard with chocolates to butter the operators up? Receptionists, or anyone who answers the calls can be like gatekeepers and if your getting past first hurdle of getting traffic to your website, and the second hurdle of converting it, and the third of making sure it is answered, you have to make sure you are happy who handles it and how they handle it. On a really detailed level you can look at some of the research, such as UCLA did a popular study on words vs tone of voice vs body language in communication. If you are optimizing the wording, content and structure on your website to convert why not also look at optimizing the quality of your calls (please bare in mind their study wasn’t for phone conversations but you will get the point).But you don’t have to go that advanced. In my quest looking at web design companies, when I called another on my short list I was told that their new business team were all in a meeting and would it be ok for me to be called back. That I don’t have a problem with but the person who I was then speaking to said that they were pretty busy and probably wouldn't be able to take on any new projects until December. She might be right, but no qualification and that was the end of the call? Didn’t even ask the budget or contact details. Now that might be the message from the boss, and if it is why not put that on their homepage banner because all they are doing is wasting their time and others – I also think they are going to be wasting a lot of money but that is their decisionMaybe if you find something frequently being asked (tech questions e.t.c) that if you then put on FAQ on your website would increase conversions overall?And the final point I would make about quality, is that is is very easy to improve if you know where to look. While the talk of all this data is fantastic, most people want actionable insights, and certainly when I have suggested to clients before that they or someone within their company listens to some calls most people say “when am I going to have time to do that” - and I agree, but its not about necessarily looking at every call. We already talked about CRM integration at the beginning and in the previous presentation about the process you can follow by using this link to focus on keywords that are converting. In this instance I would say flip that and if you are going to listen to calls listen to the ones that aren’t converting, and start with the basics of calls that haven’t even been entered into your CRM. These are quick winsThen moving forwards if keywords are generating calls but not sales listen to some to understand why. Yes you can do your usual look at what pages they are looking at and so on, but it isn’t qualitative data

So most people I presume know about retargeting and how you can follow people across websites trying to get them back to your in an attempt to convert them later onCertainly I bet most of you have been pestered by one advert or another?Now for those of you who don’t know, the dynamic numbers I talked about earlier will track if someone comes back to your website from retargeting and so you can see how many calls it generates – so when we talk about getting more from existing traffic make sure you retargeting is also optimizedHowever why not make it easy for users and display a tracking number in the banner as well so people can engage straight off it – exactly like adwords extensions so you can then track both those that call off the advert and those that call after clicking through?

This will be especially beneficial for mobile because on Google have said that mobile users are 6-8 percent more likely to click on an ad that contains a phone number – so this is imperative for mobile advertising

I not CRO expert, and this isn’t about advice on button colour or placement, but from a telecoms side make sure you are aware of options available for your website and marketing initiativesFor example consider use of 03 numbers on your mobile site, or use CSS so responsive site on mobile device shows different number to desktop siteYou can even use multinational tracking numbers even if you are just based in UK. We are a prime example as a UK based company supplying phone number tracking in over 60 countries. Like some of our clients we ourselves are experimenting showing foreign numbers to foreign visitors based of their IP even though the calls still terminate in UK at our London Office.

As a software company we don’t restrict our data to being contained just in Calltracks, we are always looking to open up new possibilities in our software and via integrations to help others AND Ourselves get moreOne of our new ones is with a bit of software that works by telling you who has been on your website – not just the visitor numbersI won’t go into the ins and outs here but knowing who has been on our website is great. And with the ability to set up a notification if they look at a certain page or come back to the site for a 2nd time after having originally called us is also great.This has already saved us on a large pitch because we know our website falls flat, so it gave us the knowledge to know that this potential customer had come back to our site, looked at certain pages we know our out of date, and thus gave us a reason to reach back out and say we know you have been on our site and so on

Many companies have clear communication programs e.g. for newsletters, but do you have calls in that strategy. E.g. contact someone after enquiry to make sure they have been dealt with properly and happy with service so far? Similarly how do you follow up those who don’t end up purchasing? Not only does this show you care but gives you an opportunity to reopen potentially lost leadsI also prefercontacting customers that are in our lead nurturing program, because a hard lead that has been on the phone or emailed in is of greater value than a visitor who hasn’t yet converted. In my opinion, and depending on how a customer has expressed they want to be contacted and via what channel, the success of a mailer can also easily be doubled by making a follow-up callThe other important part of following up is to make sure it happens. In my previous role we had a large team across multiple locations and when you use to supply them a mailing and ask them to make these calls, we just had to hope they were done. But if you can use something like our prospecting module, then you can see how the team progresses through this.Now this isn’t to say to simply then bash someone for not making calls, but if a team is struggling you can download contacts that haven’t been followed up, or where line has been engaged etc and then send to an outsourced team or redistribute to elsewhere within your businessSimilarly by being intelligent with your segmentation, for example prioritise calls to those that open your emails, or who click through to your blog e.t.c, you will again improve results

This is all straight forward, although having notifications if you miss a call that allow you to log-in see who it is and then action is very valuableAlso as a sponsor of Brighton SEO more than happy to offer free trial of Calltracks 

Any thoughts on presentation please let me know, I would really appreciate it?

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More Offline Leads from Online Traffic - Brighton SEO 2013 - Calltracks

Ali White

More Offline Leads from Online Traffic - Brighton SEO 2013 - Calltracks