If you’re not using digital marketing to promote your business, it is safe to say that you’re making a big mistake. There are a variety of ways to build brand awareness and let your customers find your business online. Pay per call marketing is one of them. Discover how you can create a strong pay per call strategy and increase sales.
What is Pay Per Call Marketing?
Pay per call marketing is similar to pay per click (PPC) advertising. With PPC, your ads get placed in search results and you pay only for the ads that visitors click on. In the case of pay per call, ads are placed with the option to call a company. And so, when a customer clicks on the ad, they place a call for the service or product. This way, companies pay for calls made through call ads. The goal of such marketing is to connect with customers quickly over the phone.
With this strategy, businesses can increase their inbound call volume across different channels. This also increases brand visibility and awareness. To make your pay per call advertising successful, you need to consider:
Does your company work on a high incoming call volume?
Will talking to someone make your target customer feel comfortable to make a purchase?
Will your target customer be searching for your business on their smartphone or mobile?
Based on these, you can start to design and develop a strong pay per click strategy to boost sales. Here are more details to focus on.
1) Choose a Platform
The first step to designing a good pay per call strategy is to decide where you want to post ads. Most PPC ads are placed on Google Ads, Facebook, Yahoo, and Bing. And so, the platform you choose is significant to the success of your strategy.
2) Fix a Budget
Be reasonable when budgeting for your marketing needs. You don’t want to overestimate or underestimate your costs. Start with a small budget and then increase it as needed.
3) Bid Well and High
Basically, with pay per call, you bid an amount that you will pay for each call that comes in. The higher the bid the higher your ad appears in search engine results. It is recommended that for every new strategy, you start by bidding high. This will immediately put you on the top. Then once you get a better sense of the market and responses to your ads, you can adjust the bid.
4) Create a Compelling Call-Only Ad
This is extremely crucial as it is your ad copy that will encourage your target clients to click the call button. Call-only ads shown on the search results are not like other items on the search result page. Usually, a search result item has a hyperlinked headline, a brief description of the webpage, and a URL. However, call ads have no headline and no landing page. The headline is your phone number, followed by a brief ad copy. You have a limited space to draw attention, so it needs to get the message across clearly. Something to the effect of: “Need to fix your bathroom tiles today? Call a local home repair shop now.” This copy works best when highly targeted and concise.
5) Find the Right Keywords
Keyword targeting is important across the board. Whether you are working with search engine optimization (SEO) or PPC marketing, keywords are important. Conduct market and keyword research to identify the right ones for your services and ensure that your ads target them.
6) Schedule Ads Smartly
This is important so that someone is always available to answer incoming calls. Schedule your ads during office hours. Or, if you utilize after-hours call center services, then have your ads run around that time. This leads to fewer voicemails and better customer service. Identify peak call times so you can benefit from consumer behavior and preferences. When are consumers looking for services like yours? And so on. Good customer interaction is essential to the successful running of any company.
7) Target Locally
Location targeting is key for local businesses. Get a local phone number from United World Telecom for different areas that you want to target. You can do so by purchasing a virtual number with local area codes. And since virtual numbers route calls over the internet, you or your consumers won’t pay long-distance charges. Additionally, they are more likely to call or answer a local number they are familiar with. And so a local number can boost your incoming call rates. You can then note which geographical areas are responding better to your ads and increase bids for those areas.
8) Calculate Call-Through Rates
So, pay per call works as: a customer searches for a service similar to yours and finds your ad with a phone number in the search results. They then click on the ad and this counts as a click to be charged. However, after clicking on the ad, they are taken to their phone’s dial pad where they have to click on “Call” to make the call. And so, if they change their minds here, the call does not go through. It is, therefore, important to find out how many clicks actually convert to calls. Rethink your strategies if you find a large gap between clicks and converted calls.
9) Retarget Unconverted Calls
Utilize the information found regarding the disparity between clicks and calls and retarget clicks that go abandoned. You do not want a high call abandon rate. Keep track of unconverted calls and encourage them with a retargeting ad offering a discount or other incentive.
10) Track Call Quality
Use call tracking software to keep a record of clicks, calls, and calls that convert to customers. With this information, you can understand consumer behavior patterns and preferences which will help you better target ideal customers. Then, optimize your bids for areas with good responses.
11) Improve Caller Experience
Any business with a high inbound call rate knows that caller experience is a significant factor in gaining clients. Do callers have to go through a series of menus to get their questions answered or resolved? Are calls directed to different locations? A personalized and non-complicated experience is highly preferred and will increase the chances of gaining new customers.
12) Maintain Your Marketing Strategies
Don’t stop or give up on your marketing strategies. Some strategies take longer than others to bear fruit. However, maintaining them and keeping them up to date is required to ensure they lead to success.
Improve Your Incoming Call Rate With Pay Per Call Marketing
Pay per call can effectively put your business on the map and bring it closer to target customers. And so, if you think your company can benefit from this kind of promotion, it may be time to experiment with call ads. With pay per call advertising, you can increase your call rate and convert calls to sales with excellent results!