The Complete Call Tracking Guide for Plumbers

For plumbers, generating a phone call is not difficult. However, driving quality leads from the phone is another story. According to a recent Call Rail stat, 64% of marketers believe generating a quality lead is the biggest challenge facing companies. With a hyper-competitive market and advertisements everywhere, it is increasingly difficult to know where your best leads are coming from. This is where call tracking can exponentially boost your profitability. 

Why is Call Tracking Important?  

To be successful in marketing, you have to be data-driven. Companies big and small are investing in analytics to better understand what is working and what is not working. Call tracking is a tool that definitely works. According to a Marketing Evolution poll, 40% of businesses are going to increase their investment in data analytics and 64% of marketers report that understanding your data is extremely important to survive in today’s marketplace. 

One of the key insights to big data is understanding the consumer journey. This is where call tracking comes into play for plumbers. Call tracking gives you valuable insights on where the call comes from and what marketing campaigns deserve credit. From there, marketing managers can invest their budget into the campaigns that are driving real results. Furthermore, call tracking can give you insights into your sales team conversion metrics. With real-time call recording, you can test sales scripts and monitor the representatives that are closing deals. At the end of the day, if phone calls are producing value, you must leverage call tracking to become more efficient with ad dollars. 

How Does Call Tracking Work?

The actual nuts and bolts of call tracking can vary widely depending on the software in place. However, most call tracking technology starts at the phone number. You will be assigned a new business number that all phone calls are wired through. When a prospect calls the phone number, the software is triggered and tracking begins. On your dashboard, you will see the call recording, location, duration, and source. Furthermore, you can get as granular as you would like with call source. For example, call tracking software can track if the call came from a display campaign, social media post, or Google Ad. From there, you will be able to see what the prospect searches, what ad was viewed, and if they come from a remarketing audience. For marketing managers, this level of insight can change campaign performance overnight.

The Benefits of Tracking Calls

Call tracking allows you to better track your return on investment for all marketing campaigns. When you understand what is pushing the needle, you can invest with confidence. Often, marketing managers blindly spend ad dollars. This is highly problematic and can end with a loss of revenue, market share, and leads. Utilizing call tracking software gives your team the transparency needed to turn a positive ROI month over month.

With that said, plumbing owners and marketers want to know what decisions will win the ROI battle. First, call tracking allows you to determine peak call hours. From there, you can put your best agents on the phones and work leads quickly and effectively. This small data allows you to shift sales infrastructure around and away from non-productive hours towards the time of day that converts. With accurate information at your disposal daily, you can make decisions quickly and effectively. Instead of relying on outdated spreadsheets and human error, you can easily read a call tracking dashboard and take action based on insights every week. You can take that information and support your sales and marketing in new and exciting ways. 

Beyond just an analytics dashboard and reports, the actual recording brings a new layer of data for your team. Not only can you track your sales team, but you can better understand the customer journey. Specifically, listening to the call recordings can give you insights into consumer needs, trends, and marketing strategies that might have never crossed your mind. It is common for plumbers to craft new pricing and services based on the needs of the customer over the phone. This type of information goes beyond data points on a report and dives deeper into the mind of your customer.

Call Tracking, Paid Campaigns, and Website Analytics 

Your website and google ad campaigns are filled with phone number Call To Actions (CTAs): Call Here, Talk to a Plumber, Call For a Quote. Yet, threading the needle from website call to quote, and ultimately to a sale, can be extremely difficult. Additionally, most plumbers are running call-only campaigns through Google. Google Ads counts a conversion as a call longer than 60 seconds. However, it does not calculate if that 60-second call leads to a real customer. 

This is where call tracking comes into play. An effective call tracking software gives plumbers a deeper insight into what is producing income for your business. At the end of the day, cost per lead is an overrated stat to appease marketing managers. Cost per sale is the data point that plumbers should understand. However, it is impossible to calculate a true cost per sale without call tracking. Thankfully, there is some amazing call tracking software out there that can help you understand what marketing efforts are producing revenue.

Tracking Marketing Channels and Dynamic Phone Numbers 

Call tracking allows you to gain insights into every marketing channel you are using. Specifically, you can learn what print and billboard marketing channels are producing the best results. Often, plumbers use their trucks to advertise their services. However, there has never been a way to understand what trucks are producing the calls. By using call tracking numbers, you can track the truck that is producing calls. This level of insight can help you understand what neighborhoods to work in, what drivers are active, and the list goes on. Print marketing is a difficult marketing channel to track ROI, thankfully, call tracking gives you deeper insight. With this said, there are still limitations to tracking calls on billboards, trucks, and flyers. Specifically, a key feature to call tracking is dynamic phone numbers. A dynamic phone number, defined by CallRail, “is a call tracking feature that assigns a unique phone number to each online source and then displays that phone number to visitors who arrive at your website via that specific source.” This allows you to get actionable data fast, make changes quickly, and scale your digital marketing efforts. Because of the nature of dynamic phone numbers, they can never work on your print marketing campaigns. Therefore, it is imperative to understand the value of a digital-first campaign. Using trucks as a static marketing channel is a low-hanging fruit that works well with call tracking. Just ensure that the phone number used on your print forms will work for the entire duration of this campaign. 

At the end of the day, tracking phone calls is what separates the enterprise plumbers from local handymen. Invest in call tracking and better understand your marketing campaigns – it’s that simple.