Business is about liquidity, strategy, technology, and market share. Its playing field is not as plain as it seems and rules constantly change. It can be a dog-eat-dog world out there. Your business might have but a little chance to survive if you don’t equip it with resources that allow it to stand in the midst of competition.
To be able to excel in their respective fields, businesses use tools that work to boost productivity, sales, market share, and other aspects of operation. One such tool is called call tracking. It is a powerful solution that works to help businesses keep track of phoned-in business inquiries. It also monitors your marketing strategies and identifies which are delivering revenues. Call tracking can be used in any business with amazing results. You might even be surprised to know this, but there are five unexpected businesses that actually benefit from their management’s’ decision to implement call tracking.
Private Practices
A large number of private practices offer services. And services are products that require a lot of personal interaction. Regardless of a private practice being blue collar work, such as plumbing and construction, or white collar work, such as being a lawyer or consultant, it often necessitates a lot of personal communication. The more personal interaction a service requires, the more human variables there are that affect customer choices. Trying to understand these human variables through call tracking might prove to be insightful for developing a strong competitive advantage for private practices.
Real Estate
Many people are still under the impression that real estate moves quicker through traditional ads like newspaper listings and realtor billboards. And while some successes happen that way still, many potential buyers or renters also feel very comfortable using the web for searching and inquiring about available houses. Interestingly though, very little of these potential customers end up closing the deal online. A real estate agent and a client usually needs to discuss house details multiple times before a deal can be reached. So after finding a property through a website, a phone call is usually the next order of business for serious real estate customers.
Call tracking can benefit real estate businesses since it can allow them to filter through which of their traditional or digital ads are performing. And if they have properties in multiple locations, they can also opt to set up a call tracking instruction to forward specific calls to the right local agents.
Travel and Hospitality
In the travel, leisure and hospitality business, many bookings originate from phone calls. A study published on the Cornell Quarterly in 2011 said that while majority of customers booked hotels online, 25% still preferred to search for a hotel on the web then call the number listed there to make the reservation. The study believed, but could not confirm, that the caller was hoping to get a better deal by talking to the reservations agent. Whatever the real reason, the result was particularly surprising since many have been led to believe that hotel phone reservations must be far less than 25%. The proliferation of hotel booking sites have certainly alluded to this perception but it seems that the need for phone reservations still stands.
Since this particular study saw that hotel bookings usually start with an online search, call tracking can help direct businesses to the sites where customers go to search for their number. An interesting scenario, for example, would be if customers searched for them using an online booking partner, such as Agoda, but stopped short of making the actual reservation there. The insights from call tracking could help develop a strategy to encourage customers to follow through on the online booking.
Directory Websites
Directory websites need advertisers to list. Call tracking can give details on how many of their customer’s leads actually come from the site by tracking the unique phone numbers used there. This can give directory websites the confidence to pitch their services harder since they know exactly what they can deliver.
Health and Wellness E-commerce Sites
Health and wellness products can directly affect a person’s body, positively or negatively. The potential impact of these products requires a lot of clarification and explanation that are often best delivered by an actual person. Scientific jargon can be confusing if it’s just being read.
In 2011, Bloomberg published an article describing how Nutrisystem had a $12 million annual online budget but only a 2-3% conversion rate. Under review, the company discovered that more of their customers were encouraged to buy when they spoke to a Nutrisystem phone representative. In fact, phone representatives ended up converting approximately 20% of all their calls. This finding allowed them to re-structure their resources to support phone representatives more than their online ads. Had Nutrisystem not attempted to track their call success rate, they may have ended up still wasting their annual online budget and struggling with their low conversion rate.
With call tracking, you can be precise about the sources of your leads. It can help you to decide which marketing strategies to invest on based on record of performance. To make it work for you, you should tap the assistance of a call tracking service provider and they will do the rest. Rest assured that once established it is going to take your business to a whole new level.
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