The Importance of Attribution - Call Tracking Using CallRail

Connecting your sources of website traffic to the outcomes you desire is a key step to answering the question, “Is my marketing working?”  Attribution is the process of linking these outcomes to the traffic origins and with call tracking services, we are able to track more activities on your website as well as extend the tracking to activities that are not directly linked to your website.  The desired outcomes typically include actions such as submitting a contact form, clicking an email link or calling a phone number listed on your website.

Attribution can then be used to compare and rank the sources of traffic, such as organic search traffic, paid advertising traffic, social traffic, and referral traffic, by how well they produce leads (the desired outcomes).  

Filling in the Lead Gaps

Existing tracking technologies (we are a big fan of Google Analytics) do an excellent job of tracking actions on your website, but where there is not an actual electronic connection, an activity that can be classified as a click or a submission, the tracking ability is lost.  That is where Roadmap Agency fills in the gaps in tracking using CallRail call tracking.  CallRail allows us to assign special phone numbers with dedicated uses to identify the source of the calls.  These are used where the “electronic link” to Google Analytics does not exist.  By integrating with Google Analytics, we are able to incorporate this tracking and included these otherwise untrackable offline activities in our attribution and evaluate them alongside other lead sources.

An example of using call tracking with one of our customers:

For our customer Altona Farm Services, we have CallRail call tracking set up in four instances.  

1. The first is their Google my Business listing.  The call tracking number on Google My Business forwards to their store number and the event is tracked in Google Analytics.
2. The second instance is Kijiji, where they advertise their equipment listings.  A dedicated CallRail number tracks these calls to help us determine if the response rate is worth the cost of running ads.
3. The third instance is a dedicated number is used for print advertising to specifically identify the value of the print ad spend.
4. The fourth and final is a CallRail number is used on the website for when site visitors directly dial the phone number rather than clicking the phone number on their mobile phone.

After several months of tracking call sources and being able to attribute this to the sources, it has become extremely apparent that Google My Business is by far the leading source of their phone call volume.  A plan to use more of the tools available on Google My Business is already being implemented to leverage this.

CallRail Partnership

Roadmap Agency is a certified CallRail Agency Partner.  As the example shows above, we integrate the platform with Google Analytics to uncover which ads, keywords, and campaigns, lead to phone calls, a valuable source of business leads. With this data, we can make data-driven marketing decisions to improve marketing investments, online and offline. 

Because we have an integrated website tracking system in place, we are able to link phone call activity back to very specific marketing data.  With a comprehensive digital marketing plan, often consisting of SEO, Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, and Social Media posting activities, we can attribute lead sources to specific ad campaigns, ads, keywords, page views, etc. to provide both an extremely detailed analysis as well as a high-level view of what marketing investments are generating results.  The use of CallRail provides us with a more complete picture ensuring offline and other unconnected activities are included, making for better decisions.

A few additional benefits of call tracking:

1. Identify the “last-touch” marketing materials that lead to phone calls to your business.
2. Monitor and improve campaign performance by investing in activities that produce results.
3. Provide easy to measure performance metrics of offline advertising that may allow you to negotiate ad pricing.

Want to continue the conversation about call tracking? We'd be happy to discuss how it could improve your busniess!