Why It Is Critical for Home Contractors to Track Inbound Calls
Data Tracking Isn’t Tricky
Marketing used to be a guessing game; local businesses would spend their hard earned dollars on Yellow Pages, billboards, TV and radio spots, and newspaper ads with the goal of making that money back with new customers. It was essentially a black hole, with everyone following the same rules—copying each other until the end result was ads that merely tried to stand out from the rest. Now with call tracking that is no longer the case!
While this strategy can work for companies with large budgets, smaller businesses were unable to keep up with the constant trial and error that it took to stay competitive.
Everything has changed . . .
Within the last decade, marketing has changed drastically. The rise of the internet disrupted almost all of the old marketing models, and new technology has made more marketing data available to home contractors and other small businesses. Instead of placing an ad in the Yellow Pages, and never knowing whether the call coming in was a direct result from it or not, all you have to do now is simply log in to your Google Adwords or Analytics account and see exactly what is driving traffic to your website.
. . . but some things have stayed the same.
With better tracking, everyone has access to more data than ever. The good news is that small businesses and large businesses alike have some metrics to base their decisions off of; the bad news is that with so much data available, it is tough to see what is important and what isn’t. This fountain data is so accessible, and there is so much of it, that many home contractors are having a tough time sifting through the data to find what is important. The time it takes to look at and decipher the data results in many home contractors simply ignoring the data altogether. This means that many of you are going right back to trial and error marketing, without even realizing it!
Tracking data can transform your business.
This data overload is not something to worry about; there are only a handful of truly important metrics to monitor. The ones that matter most are conversions and revenue. While this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, many home contractors are not measuring this whatsoever. Some may not understand, or know that the information is readily available—some may just not want to do the extra work. While these oversights can be understandable, your marketing plan will continue to suffer unless this oversight is corrected. It’s not as hard as you might think!
Here is the easiest way to start call tracking today:
- Get a call tracking tool
There are a variety of tools available from different service providers and many of them have the same features—but do not base the decision on cost alone. Call tracking tools are also a great way to route calls!
- Setup a number for each marketing source
This is easy; get a number for each of your main sources that you spend time and money marketing on. This includes your website, social media, paid search, and offline marketing.
- Integrate or create a process
This is the hardest step and is required to gain a full understanding of where your marketing dollars are going. To do this correctly, you can either set up a revenue tracker for each job that comes through that number, or you can use call tracking software and keep updated notes of each job in the system. From there, you can use the data to see exactly what the total revenue from each marketing source was.
Once you get it set up, it’s very easy to determine what marketing sources are driving you real business. While it seems elementary, it is critical that you measure your success with any marketing that you do. We are here to help you set this up for your own business. If you have questions or need help, feel free to reach out to us!