The phone rings for all sorts of reasons. But just imagine if you could always tell when incoming calls represent a sales lead.
With a traditional phone system, you will be able to tell if a call leads to a sale but not necessarily know what captured that customer’s attention in the first place. You will not be able to easily monitor the full impact of your marketing – even though marketing campaigns ought to have measurable return on investment (ROI) so as to prevent wasted cost and effort.
A cloud-based business phone system, however, can entirely remove the guesswork from your marketing efforts. Cloud telephony enables dedicated phone numbers to be set up quickly and easily. With a specific number for a specific marketing campaign, you will be able to monitor precisely what impact your lead generation has had. In other words, you will actually be able to track the number of calls, record the conversion rate to actual sales and even develop metrics to measure the ROI of each of your campaigns.
Here’s a how-to guide on measuring your marketing impact via a cloud phone system such as RingCentral Office.
1) Define your campaign structure.
If your campaign is based in one location for one product, one dedicated phone number should be sufficient. If your campaign focuses on multiple locations or a range of products, it may be advantageous to track the individual response rates through separate numbers.
2) Obtain the required additional numbers.
Because numbers are assigned in the cloud, you are able to continually add new ones as often as required, at minimal cost. For example, you might want to run localised campaigns in different cities, each with their own dedicated local number.
3) Launch your campaign.
One useful tactic is to split-test your marketing campaigns. By employing different approaches with different numbers, you will gain insight on what works best when it comes to reviewing the campaign’s impact.
4) Track your success.
You will be able to see the number of calls received in relation to each campaign through your online call records. It will therefore be possible to measure the conversion rate by determining the number of actual sales made per the number of calls received.
5) Calculate the ROI.
ROI can be calculated by assessing the sales revenue gained per campaign in relation to the outlay made on the specific campaign.
6) Fine-tune your campaign strategy.
Once you have a measure of your marketing success, you will be able to see what locations, products and messages made the greatest impact. Your marketing strategy can then be adapted and improved.
For any business that’s reliant on a phone system for generating sales, tracking marketing efforts via the cloud can make a lot of business sense!
Originally published Jan 07, 2014, updated Aug 07, 2020
