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Digital Management

How We Set Up a Data Warehouse and Built a Business Intelligence Strategy for Marketing Insights

May 30, 2019 by Kevin Dieny

Business intelligence is a comprehensive analytics solution for all of your data that helps your team better understand the levers that impact the customer journey.

Most smart companies want to work off of reliable data to make decisions for their business – and we here at CallSource are no different. But, for CallSource to work off of better data, insights, and measurable decisions, we had to build a complete information system from the ground up. Having a business intelligence strategy enables our marketing team to be connected to the activities that drive performance.

Accountability in marketing is often an ironic statement, as it is one of the hardest departments to prove dollar-for-dollar attribution for. Yet, at the end of the day, if you want your marketing department to be a profit center, you need to be equipped to answer some tough attribution related questions.

Question: Why bother with business intelligence?

Setting up a data warehouse (a soft CDP) involved a lot of work in a territory that I personally was unfamiliar with. Nobody said, “Go get us a data warehouse and BI solution,” because we are a two decades old company and we’ve got reports that everyone is used to seeing. Still, I felt that our reports could be more robust; the current ones didn’t tell enough of the context.

Numbers without the extra context do not explain the ‘why.’ Sure, you want to know what happened – that’s great, and there are plenty of anecdotal reasons for why something happened. But can anything as big as monthly or yearly results be explained in a few sentences? No, sorry. That’s like saying (spoilers) Frodo got the ring and then he destroyed the ring, and that is the story of Lord of the Rings. How many people would pay to see that version of the movie?

Data decision making flows along a maturity curve as businesses start to demand answers to more complex questions. CallSource, like any business, was on the maturity curve and had been using data for decades – but it was missing a lot of that valuable context. The trouble is, you don’t know how valuable that context could be, and until the past few years, the costs were outrageous to find out.

Question: How to create a business intelligence information system?

CallSource is lucky to have a robust analytics department with data science-equipped colleagues that saw the marketing department’s project for what it was – awesome. I chuckle at that, but they also gave us ‘the talk’ where they explained the level of detail and sophistication that might be required.

You’ve basically got three choices:

  • DIY (Heavily relies on having engineers and developers)
  • Multi-specialized tools (Relies on finding the right tools and making sure they play nice)
  • Black-box (A single tool that does it all)

DIY

DIY essentially means setting up your own servers and running your own ingestions and building your reports yourself. You would be gathering the data yourself and organizing it into pretty tables that you can use for reporting. You need expertise in APIs for ingestion, SQL (or similar) for transformations, and someone who knows a thing or two about ETL’s and ELT’s for warm and cold data storage solutions.

Multi-specialized tools

Multi-specialized tools are when you ‘outsource’ those specific jobs to a tool that is designed for it. You are replacing your API developers with ingestion tools, some or all of your SQL and Transformation expertise into GUI interfaces (as needed), and relying on a warehouse managing tool to make sure you have the storage and quick access you require.

Black-box

A black-box tool is one that does everything for you but does require a strong partnership and collaboration to ensure that the data they are reporting on is both the truth and what you needed.

Question: Where to get started with a business intelligence strategy?

Our marketing team leaned heavily on the analytics team to help us plan our steps to getting a business intelligence environment set up. The steps evolved over time as we ran into roadblock after roadblock, but they were still valuable for any company looking to step up its data maturity:

Step 1: Modeling your data for free (not really free)

The first step is writing down all of the important metrics (KPIs) that you need so you can understand what systems you need to pull data from. You DO NOT want to pull everything from everything. In many cases, you will feel like you don’t know what you don’t know until you pull data, but you will still need an idea of what you are looking for. Ask yourself, “What do we use this tool for?” and then write it down. There is a lot of data you and your boss can look at, but it will have no value – we call them ‘vanity metrics.’ A great exercise for after you’ve got your exhausted list is to ask yourself, “If I had to pick 10 of these, which are the most important 10?”

Next, how do you need to see that data? This is the fun part – you’ve got your KPI’s, and now you need to “Jeopardy” those metrics. Basically, you need to turn all of your metrics into questions that you need answers for. An example is starting with the KPI = Phone Calls, and then asking yourself, “What do you need to know about phone calls?” To which, you might respond, “How many phone calls are my team handling every day?” That is a great question! With a question like that you can know exactly what kind of chart you need and how you need to visualize that data. See the example parsed below:

How many phone calls are my team handling every day?
(Red) ‘How Many’ – this tells you that they are looking for a volume (like a sum).
(Blue) ‘Phone Calls’ – this tells you what metric they need the volume of (a metric).
(Orange) ‘My Team’ – this tells you that this data will be scoped for their team (a dimension).
(Green) ‘Handling’ – this tells you more about the metric, it needs to be handled calls.
(Underlined) ‘every day’ – this tells you the time frame (many charts have a time basis).

You can get all of this and model it for free using Google Data Studio. That is where we started for months as we built our dashboards, reports, and more. You can export your data and either upload it to Google Data Studio or you can put it into Google Sheets and import from there. The learning curve on Google Data Studio is moderate – you should definitely watch the plethora of videos and guides on how to get started.

Step 2: Proving your data is worth getting a BI strategy for.

You’ve got to measure the performance of your business over time. You also need to understand the components that feed into your business and affect your ability to take actionable steps after. A metric is worthless unless you are willing and capable of doing something actionable from it. Otherwise, what is the point of making it important enough for a report? If they help me understand the context so that I can make a better decision…then we are onto something.

Here is just an example of how some of the reports can look in Google Data Studio with some line charts, bar charts, filters, single/data, and pivot tables:

We had our data modeled (months later), and our team was getting used to seeing the reports similar to the example above. Week after week, the KPI’s became more and more refined, and everyone started asking for the report. The team and other leaders wanted to see it. Soon everyone started asking questions they had never asked before… questions that required context. For an analyst, this was the ‘superhero’ moment when you see your call sign beamed into the clouds.

While there was data and everyone was curious to see it, now it came time for the value. We had to prove that there was value in data and in seeing this information for our team. The data had to be at least, if not more, valuable than the cost of the tools and efforts it takes to put this together. Remember, marketing is and wants to be a profit center, not a cost center, so everything has to be profit-justified. So how does having better reporting translate into better decisions and insights that recuperate the costs? That was the tricky part.

The answer is to experiment: you learn from the data and then test a project with a new theory to see if it had an impact. With data, we could now measure our impact and influence better than ever before. A lot of things happened over the course of the year it took for this stage to resolve including:

  • Running tests and then realizing that things we didn’t foresee made those tests worthless
  • Learning of new processes we had to add because of the data we had
  • Running tests and then being misled by the data because we didn’t understand our data that well
  • Not running tests and then realizing we should have

The up and downs are part of the ‘maturing’ of having data you never thought possible and then being able to do things with it. I speak of this as the joy that marketers enjoy when they have clean and clear data about the things we are in charge of.

Step 3: Finding the right tools, DIY, and black-box solution for your business.

This section is going to be short and sweet because there isn’t a one-size-fits-all for every business. Every business has complex needs, and we have shifted our direction dozens of time before arriving at our current solutions. I’m not even sure any solution is the be-all end-all solution because this space is shifting and becoming more specialized. In full transparency, I can say that we love our providers and decided to go with a multi-specialized tool solution because it fits where we are as a business. Those tools include Xplenty, Panoply, and MODE analytics.

Question: We are a call tracking company – why does business intelligence matter enough to write about?

Great question, it’s because our company has obstacles like any other business. We are all trying to sell more, be more efficient, and come up with the latest and greatest solution for our future customers. The marketing department went through a pain-staking but valuable experience in finding a business intelligence solution that fits our organization. There isn’t a whole lot of information out there for the laymen’s (where we started), and so this is a post encouraging you and your company to do it. You can do it!

It’s who we are!

Like our clients who see their phone call data for the first time, we know how important it is to have accurate and insightful data. We also can’t begin to tout our vision that we are all about being recognized as the gold standard for actionable analytics unless that culture exists internally as well as externally. We believe that data can transform a business and can lead to consistent and reliable results.

Curious about this? Find me on LinkedIn or shoot us a message and I will be happy to connect with you.

Filed Under: Digital Management Tagged With: Call Management, Digital Management

The Ultimate Guide to Digital Management

May 29, 2019 by Kevin Dieny

When research shows that roughly nine-in-ten Americans use the internet1, a business that doesn’t exist on any digital format today almost doesn’t exist to consumers. More consumers than ever start their research online, with 81% of them conducting online research before buying and 60% starting their research on a search engine.2

Digital management should be a priority for companies looking to increase brand awareness, acquire additional customers, and improve their reputation online.

Determining how to be noticed on digital mediums, and successfully market to and track the consumers who find you online, is vital to your business’ success. CallSource always advocates the importance of making data-based decisions; this is true for your online marketing attribution as well as your offline attribution.

Having a solid digital management system in place helps businesses ensure they are viewing the whole marketing journey, delivering content to their consumers in any possible way that they want it.

Digital Marketing and Web Analytics

To implement an effective digital strategy, you need to track your digital marketing and web analytics.

Web Analytics

Web analytics involves the process of the collection, measurement, and analysis of user activity on a website to understand and help achieve the intended objective of the website.

The objective is usually one or a combination of:

  • Increased revenue
  • Lower cost
  • Improved customer service/experience

Web analytics works alongside digital marketing. Web analytics can make certain that website content and the overall website user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are tailored to the behavior and interests of the target audience.

You can monitor your website users and optimize your business’ website to appeal to the navigational tendencies of customers, formulating, and updating your digital marketing plan of action depending on their interactions.

Digital Marketing

A lot of web analytics depend on digital marketing. Digital marketing is a term given to any form of marketing products and services through online channels. Channels are high-level categories indicating how people found a site. Put simply: where did they come from?

There are a few different channels that consumers use to find you in the digital world:

  • Organic
    • Traffic from users who land on your page from clicking a listed link on a search engine results page that was listed naturally – someone did not pay to get the result in high ranking.
  • Paid
    • Traffic from search engine results that is the result of paid advertising via Google Adwords or another paid search platform.
  • Direct
    • Traffic that has come to your site by either typing in your URL in their address bar or clicking on a bookmark. In general, this indicates visits where users navigate directly to the URL or the source of the visit is unknown.
  • Referral
    • Traffic that has come from another site to your site, not relating to traffic coming from a search engine.
    • Examples might include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any site/domain not owned by you.

SEM vs. SEO

A lot of digital marketing and web analytics depend on search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO).

An easy way to remember these two differences is SEM is paid while SEO is not.

SEM is a form of internet marketing that increases a site’s visibility through paid search engine results and advertising; it includes things such as paid ads and 3rd party websites.

SEM results are short-lived, quick results. Usually, you will pay per each result:

  • Cost per click (CPC)
  • Cost per lead (CPL)
  • Cost per acquisition (CPA)

SEO is an organic way of increasing the number of website visitors by getting your site to appear high in search ranking results.

SEO results are long-lasting; you must be vigilant with SEO to stay ahead of the trends. A few examples of ways to optimize your page for SEO are:

  • Publish relevant content
  • Improve page loading speed
  • Optimize images
  • Remove broken links
  • And much more

SEM and SEO are much more in-depth topics, but they both have a high impact on digital marketing and website optimization plans.

Advertising on Digital

In addition to your static advertising campaigns, it is important to have digital advertising for your business, no matter what industry you are in. In fact, research shows that digital channels will overtake traditional mediums by 2021.3

Hopefully, you are already advertising on digital platforms, but whether or not you are, you may need some assistance in deciding exactly where to advertise. While it is vital that you do some research on what mediums your “ideal customers” spend time on, there are still many places to choose from, since there is a slew of options on the internet.

Although this isn’t a full, comprehensive list, below are some of the most popular places for businesses to place digital advertisements to get you started.

PPC

Pay-per-click advertising, also known as PPC, is a form of digital advertising that prompts advertisers to bid to have their ads displayed on popular websites to generate traffic.

Every time that an ad is clicked, the advertiser must pay a fee. PPC basically allows you to “buy” traffic for your website, web pages, or wherever you direct users to when they click on your ad. One of the most popular forms of PPC advertising is paid search advertising, also known as search engine advertising. This kind of digital advertising allows advertisers to bid for top ad placement on a search results page.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords reign so supreme in the world of PPC advertising platforms that Google Ads are now almost known as being synonymous with PPC.

With Google Ads, instead of bidding to have your ads displayed on popular websites, you must bid on certain keywords to have your ads displayed at the top of Google’s search results – a hard spot to earn organically by getting to the top of page one search results.

Bing

Second to Google is Bing, another popular search engine that has a 34% share of the U.S. search market.4

Bing is a cheaper alternative to Google advertising since it is not as dominant in the market, yet still relevant. Bing partners with Yahoo for their ad network, which means your reach is expanded when advertising with Bing.

Bing lets you control campaigns at a more granular level than Yahoo and has more targeting options as well.

It is also relevant to note that voice-search is becoming increasingly popular, and power-house Amazon’s Alexa product gains all of its search results from Bing. Keep this in mind, as it may mean that Bing will become more prominent in the coming years.

Display Ads

Display advertising allows the advertiser to have ads placed on relevant third-party sites in the form of a banner, image, or text ad. They can be placed anywhere on the page – but must be optimized to target audiences, and should direct to a specific landing page as well.

Email Marketing

Most lead generation strategies are focused around collecting a form of contact – usually an email address – from a potential lead. Email marketing is said to be one of the most effective forms of digital advertising, with an ROI upwards of 40%, according to reports.5

Email marketing allows brands to talk to their prospects more personally on a consistent, ongoing basis. If a consumer is committing to receive your emails, then they have a higher probability of engaging with your brand.

With the potential for higher conversions than most other forms of digital advertising, email marketing is a must for any smart digital marketer.

Social Media

Advertising on social media keeps increasing since social media usage stays on the rise.

There are many social media platforms to advertise on. Make sure you discover where your “ideal customers” spend their time and target those social media channels to test out your advertising. Below are a few of the most popular platforms.

Facebook
Not surprisingly, Facebook dominates the social media world. As of 2018, almost 70% of U.S. adults are Facebook users, according to Pew Internet Research.6

YouTube
YouTube is also a top contender in social media channels, with roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults and 94% of 18-24-year-olds using the video-sharing site.6

Others
Below are some of the other most popular social media platforms that you should pay attention to, and research more to see if it is worth the effort for your business to advertise on. Keep in mind there are more than this list contains – make sure you know which social media platforms are most relevant to your business, your consumers, and your industry.

Twitter Instagram Snapchat
LinkedIn Pinterest WhatsApp

Video

Research shows that 25% of US digital ad spend went to video in 2018.5 The most common video advertising can be found on video channels such as YouTube, but keep in mind that social-media leader Facebook also captured almost one-quarter of all video ad spend in 2018.

Video isn’t only becoming more popular for digital ads – but a more popular way of consuming content overall, so you want to make sure that you are present in more types of ads than just static text or photo content.

Where to advertise

No matter where you choose to advertise, make sure your decisions are based on research and tested to see what your most viable digital advertising platforms really are. You will need to correctly attribute each platform – which you can find more details on later in this article. If you are a local business looking for digital marketing strategies check out our podcast episode on this topic here.

Tracking Attribution with Cookies vs. Non-Cookies

Cookies are not altogether dead as many would have suggested back in 2014. The demand for accurate attribution continues to rise.

As users continue to utilize multiple devices from various locations throughout the day, the largest data analytics tracking, companies are continuing to develop viable non-cookie options. The bottom line is—if you want precision tracking users online, you will need a non-cookie based method. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter don’t provide them.

What are tracking cookies?

At the most basic level, cookies are labels. Cookies label both the web pages when they load and the user who visited, with their demographic information. The labels describe useful information about the user and the web pages they visit. Every cookie should be unique to every user and contain an ID that the platform uses to keep track.

Unlike a typical ID, the cookie does not contain directly identifiable information about the user. Privacy conspirators rejoice because cookies are inherently incomplete at identifying people behind the user. Though tracking with cookies is still a widely used practice, there are several flaws of cookie tracking.

The flaws in cookie-based user tracking

As mentioned above, cookies use the label of user to define someone visiting a web page. But what exactly is a user, and why are they flawed?

  • Users do not represent actual people; they are only a count of unique ID’s.
  • Users are not shared by different browsers, devices, or locations.
  • Users are easily deleted and often deleted by the actual people that they supposedly represent.
  • Users are only unique to a specific time period. After that, they are reset.
  • Users counts are not perfectly precise and are often adjusted from the actual numbers by an unknown amount.
  • Having sampled users only gives a distant snapshot, not precise data, when working with “Custom Segments” or adding second dimensions to the data.

How do these flaws affect your analytics data?

Marketing is made more effective in every circumstance when the information communicated is personalized to the end user. Cookies help to facilitate this personalization by storing information that will help to reduce spam and redundancy, and increase relevance.

The experience of users is greatly affected by cookies. Cookie data helps websites to remember a user’s preferences on websites, ensure that websites are handling data securely, and switch information in advertisements to make them more relevant to the user.

However, the flaws in cookies have a direct impact on your marketing. Whenever you calculate any metrics that rely upon your website counts, cookies will deliver data filled with artifacts and errors. Although they cause a lot of controversy in privacy, it is the business marketer who wants to make sure that they get what they pay for out of their web traffic, such as:

  • Exactly how much traffic you are getting from channels you pay for.
  • The quality of the traffic you are getting from channels you pay for.
  • Confidence that the traffic you are receiving is filled with real people.

These three demands do not seem that hard to answer, but with cookie-based tracking, you are taking an educated guess at the precision of your data. Statistics tell us that the only way to increase our confidence with the precision of our data is to increase the size of the sampled group so that it more closely matches the population it represents. Look at the following graph for an example:

confidence margin of error

In this graph, the columns represent counts of data, and the lines represent the standard deviation for these averages based on a 99% confidence level.

As you can see, the data is accurate to a degree of error that falls within the lines; the errors are very large for this small data set. This oversimplified example shows how data is skewed in small numbers and how large the chance is for error.

What is a large enough sample for accurate data?

The only way to diminish the flaws of user traffic is to significantly increase the data size. If you have web traffic in the hundreds of thousands a day, is that enough to minimize the flaws and have more precise results?

Just like their confectionary counterpart, with cookies, your data is as good as what you put in. If you want 90% precision in your data, then you should expect to rely on results that are 90% accurate. Be as demanding as your organization needs. This is a decision that has to be made at the beginning.

If you want chocolate chip, you need to put chocolate chips into the dough. If you want peanut butter, you need to put that into the dough. The same goes for measuring web traffic, leads, phone calls, bounces, visitors, sessions, and ultimately – attribution.

The cookie-less world of tracking

Companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and LinkedIn (to only name a few tracking platforms) are slowly shifting away from cookies. They are completely aware of the flaws outlined and yet have not leaped into the cookie-less world.

Why stick with cookie tracking?
Cookies are not easily replaced. Technology has come a long way in the decades since the inception of the internet, and there is still a lot of valuable information that can make use of cookies. Locally shared and flash-based versions of cookies help applications to load, servers log information into cookies, and developers use cookies to second-hand ensure that everything is working.

The transition means changing to a new system and having to force marketers to adopt. Privacy laws are still barely catching up, and entrepreneurs have to cope with those privacy entry barriers. The services paving the way are making use of cookie-less tracking by showing off all the innovative techniques for personalizing marketing.

The future is a cookie-less world
As long as organizations are creating cookie-less tracking systems that allow for protecting privacy, they will be steps ahead of even the largest platforms in the world. The innovations that are available to marketers who are released from the flaws of cookie tracking are numerous.

Multi-Channel Digital Attribution Models

Understanding the complete customer journey means accurately attributing the correct marketing channels (advertising paid and non-paid sources) responsible for turning a consumer into a customer. Measuring true ROI and the impact of your marketing efforts depends on the attribution model that you use.

But what are some of the most common digital attribution models, and how can you determine which fits your business’ needs? Below are five of the most commonly used multi-channel digital attribution models.

Last Click/Final Click Attribution

Last Click attribution attributes – you guessed it – the final channel’s click-through to the source of lead generation. Assuming several channels had touches to the consumer along their complete journey, Last Click will attribute the channel that they touched last to receive the credit in converting that lead.

Example #1 – A consumer sees an advertisement on television, and then sees that advertisement again later on YouTube. Later, they get an email promoting the advertisement, and finally, they decide to Google the company before buying. In this example, organic search gets the credit and the attribution for converting that person into a lead. Google is the last action the consumer took.

last click attribution model, example #1

PROS CONS
Most reliable for cookie-based tracking. Negates contribution of prior channels.
Simplest to use; usually the default model. Doesn’t usually reflect marketing efforts.

First Click Attribution

First Click attribution is the reverse of Last Click. The first channel that brought someone into all of the other channels is given the credit in lead generation. Assuming that there were several channels that had touches to the consumer along their complete journey, First Click gives attribution value to the very first channel that you have tracking information on for.

Because of the unreliability in tracking attribution, most models prefer Last Click, since First Click attribution is the most susceptible to unreliable tracking. For example, if someone deletes their cookies from a cookie-based tracking system, then you get unreliable first clicks since their first channel will be reassigned after their cookies were purged.

Example #2 – Imagine again that a consumer sees an advertisement first on television, then watches the advertisement on YouTube. They then receive an email promotion for that advertisement, and finally they search and convert to a lead from organic search before buying. In this example, the very first click or channel, namely television, will get the credit for the attribution.

first click attribution model, example #2

PROS CONS
Emphasizes awareness strategies. Most unreliable cookie-based tracking model.
Used in brand awareness and political campaigns. Entry channels are over-weighted.

Linear Attribution

Linear Attribution modeling was statisticians’ go-to before exploring years of extended data. In statistics, it is a rule of thumb to first assign all weights a consistent value before attempting to individualize the weighting of every element.

The purpose of assigning equal value along the chain is that it may be too complex, and you may not actually know enough to weigh any specific channel greater value than another. This model excels at awareness and recognition strategies but does not help you do much else. Linear Attribution also has the flaw that if something did have a greater impact on the whole marketing spectrum, you would not be able to identify it correctly.

Example #3 – Assuming the same story as the examples prior, each click along the complete customer journey is assigned equal value as long as the consumer eventually converts.

linear attribution model, example #3

PROS CONS
Simplest (think statistician). Nothing is given uneven weights.
Does not emphasize any particular strategy. Cookie-cutter marketing strategies.

Time Decay Attribution

Time Decay attribution can be a confusing model, as you need to know at which point the greater credit is assigned to a channel. In Time Decay modeling, the channels at the end of the consumer journey receive the most credit, and the channels at the beginning receive the least. The channel at 50% of the consumer journey would, therefore, receive 50% of the weight.

Time Decay is helpful if you see a lot of your channel traffic from season and clustered events. You can weigh conversions nearest to the channels that led to a conversion more and give less credit to channels that contributed in a time period that may not have contributed to the consumer’s final decision to convert.

Example #4 – Assuming the same story as the examples prior, each click along the complete customer journey is assigned increasing value as long as the consumer eventually converts. Another way to describe it is that each click’s value decays over time as more channels and clicks are added.

time decay model, example #4

PROS CONS
Gives credit to clusters of clicks. Assumes that prior clicks are worthless.
Helpful if you have most of the market share already. Favors a bottom of funnel-centric strategy.

U-Shaped/Position Based Attribution

Position Based attribution modeling is one of the models that actually favors a certain type of marketing strategy. Position Based attribution favors straight lead generation as it gives credit to the beginning channel that brought someone in and the final channel that converted. This is why it has a U shape, as seen in the example.

Position Based tracking does suffer from cookie-based tracking, as does any model that relies at all upon reliability. However, this model does have strengths in giving credit to marketing efforts at the ends, where the big impact actions happen. Giving credit to the end and beginning rewards the acquisition channels of marketing; which is why it lends itself to lead generation strategies.

Example #5 – Assuming the same story as the examples prior, each click along the complete customer journey is assigned a value, but when the conversion happens, the first click and the last click are given much more credit.

position based attribution model, example #5

PROS CONS
Focuses on two important clicks. Doesn’t help you build complex strategies.
Leans towards lead generation strategies. Ignores values of relationship building.

Which attribution model to use?

In the end, you will need to decide what model best reflects how your business does marketing and match the model to the type of improvements you want to focus on.

Keep in mind that there are marketers that swear by each and every model, so do your research to determine which model best suits your business.

Marrying Online and Offline Attribution: Dynamic Number Insertion

One of the ways to combine some of your offline and online marketing (O2O) is with dynamic number insertion (DNI), which measures the impact that calls have on your digital marketing.

DNI enables businesses to attribute phone calls generated from PPC ads, SEO campaigns, retargeted ads, and more to measure success for each digital marketing channel.

How does DNI work?

When a lead comes to your website, DNI will display a unique phone number to that user based on a unique user or source.

DNI uses a pool of local or toll-free numbers in the background based on your website to ensure that each user (or source) is assigned its own specific phone number to track through from digital to offline conversion.

DNI Set Up & Use

  1. Determine your highest daily number of concurrent users on your website. This will be used to determine your dynamic phone number pool.
  2. Install a one-line snippet of JavaScript on your website.
  3. Assign the source code(s) for where your DNI numbers will be placed on your website.
  4. When a user visits your website, DNI’s JavaScript will detect the user and/or source they came from and swap out the phone number automatically for that unique user or source.
  5. When the user calls the dynamic phone number, you can tie back online actions made before the call to users.

How does CallSource’s DNI solution differ?

CallSource’s DNI gets more granular and is more robust than most solutions. This is because our DNI does not use cookies, allowing the data delivered to be highly accurate and person-specific instead of “user” specific.

Once the page loads with the script, users will be tracked in two ways:

  • ID (Unique Identifier) as a unique person without using cookies
  • Sessions. These include:
    • Time/Dimensions
    • Activities
    • Properties (moving from different owned domains)

Information is stored about this unique user that allows not only cross-domain tracking but actual cross-device tracking as well. Instead of relying on cookies for a user, CallSource’s DNI tracks a specific person no matter the device they are using at that moment: desktop, phone, tablet, etc. No other DNI solution can do this.

Rather than tracking groups of users coming to your site, CallSource’s DNI allows you to accurately track real people – so you aren’t missing any of your marketing data.

For online to offline attribution, many actions are tracked:

  • Chats
  • Emails
  • Calls
  • Form Fills
  • Texts

Additionally, CallSource has dynamic number pool size adjustment included in our DNI – meaning that you don’t have to rely on the specific number of dynamic numbers that you first allotted with your DNI solution. Why is this important?

If you end up having more concurrent visitors on your site than originally allotted for, CallSource’s DNI will automatically add more numbers as needed, where a regular DNI solution would end up having to assign the same number to multiple users – not an ideal situation.

possible dni number pool scenario without dynamic adjustment

How to get started with DNI

After determining how specific your DNI needs are, do some research on which DNI solutions are best suited to your business. DNI is a must for any marketer that relies on the internet, as well as the phone, to acquire leads and make sales.

Choosing the Right Vendor for Your Digital Needs

First, what are you trying to accomplish, or what do you need assistance with regarding your digital management? Some digital management vendors may have too little or too much available for you to utilize. It is important that you know your goals and needs before choosing the right company.

Once you determine the right digital management solution for your company, be sure to read the following before implementation.

Define specific goals for your digital management system

Create specific SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant & Time-bound) Goals you want to achieve with your digital management system.

Make a timeline for yourself for achieving your goals.

If you don’t know where to start—answer why you want to purchase and implement digital management and work backward. Discuss your goals with the vendors you are deciding between and validate your timeline with them. If they don’t take an interest in your goals or your business before they make the sale, it is indicative of the support you will receive later in the relationship. If your vendor isn’t helping you in making the right decisions, they’re probably not right for you.

Team buy-in and excitement

Remove ambiguity from your team. Explain to your colleagues and manager(s) how and why you are implementing digital management.

Create clear expectations of responsibilities and accountability with regards to the reports and data each person will use and how to create a system for a feedback loop to find out what is working and what is not. Remember, negative feedback isn’t bad as long as it is constructive.

Look at online reviews

Before purchasing your new digital management system, look at their online reviews and testimonials. Some great review platforms to read reviews for digital management solutions are G2 Crowd, Google, and Capterra.

Consult industry groups and talk to peers who may use digital management platforms and find out first-hand what they do or don’t like about who they use. (Tip: Grab our ultimate guide to reputation management here).

CallSource’s Digital Management Platform

Although this guide is to help you learn about digital management and how to utilize it for your organization, CallSource would be remiss without mentioning our own digital attribution solution, EveryLead, powered by AutoID.

EveryLead is a cookie-less marketing attribution platform which tracks and reports on all offline and digital advertisements, plus gives analysis of prospect and conversion-to-appointment ratios. It is the only platform of its kind that shows calls, texts, chats, and web leads in a single, real-time dashboard.

EveryLead enhances Google Analytics to refine the consumer’s online interactions, give more specific reporting, add a level of precision to lead acquisition, and update Google Analytics goals.

Together with Google Analytics data, they provide tremendous value:

  • Proprietary Tracking
  • Website Compatible
  • Central Unbiased Database
  • Custom Goal Tracking
  • PPI Privacy Compliant
  • Proprietary Audiences
  • Near Real-Time Data
  • Consolidated Reporting
  • Competitive Insights
  • Utilizes UTM Tracking
  • Shareable Reports
  • Exports into Excel

Conclusion

Choosing a company to help with your digital management needs will take some research. Evaluate all your options; make sure the company you are going to choose can support your business goals and provide the level of support that you want.

We hope that this guide has answered your questions about digital management and how digital management will help your business’ marketing and lead generation needs.

If you have further questions regarding digital management or just are interested in learning more, subscribe to our blog or schedule a demo with one of our specialists for more insights and solutions.

We are the experts in call tracking, call management, performance management, review management, and digital management. Contact us today to learn how we can help with your digital management needs.

References

  1. http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/
  2. https://www.madebytribe.com/the-online-buyers-journey-infographic/
  3. https://www.emarketer.com/content/global-ad-spending
  4. https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us
  5. https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2016/01/70-email-marketing-stats-you-need-to-know/
  6. http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/
  7. https://www.emarketer.com/content/video-swells-to-25-of-us-digital-ad-spending

Filed Under: Digital Management Tagged With: Digital Management

Which Advertisement Networks are Right for My Business?

April 15, 2019 by Kevin Dieny

Hundreds (maybe thousands) of advertising networks exist for businesses to create campaigns and generate potential customers. Businesses are vying for the attention of their marketable audiences online and offline making the decision to find the right networks a burden for marketers.

What are advertisement networks and what are they composed of?

Advertisement is any promotional activity used to generate interest, awareness, value, and potential customers. Advertisement networks are common tools or relationships where the media buyer purchases ads and the publishers sell the placements.

The relationship within advertisement networks is based on there being a media buyer (usually the marketing team in a business who wants to create ads) and the publishers (usually the advertisement network that operates a supply of available placements for the ads). In this environment businesses can run advertisements in networks to target their audiences.

Relationships: Media Buyers and Publishers

Media Buyers – the marketing functions of purchasing advertisement space, running campaigns, and creating demand through promotions.

Publishers – the operational functions of selling advertisement space, managing the exchange, and supplying the placements where specific audiences reside.

Online vs. Offline Channels within advertising networks

Advertisement networks consist of exchanges for advertising that allows for promoting through online or offline channels. Not all networks have supply in both and it’s very common for advertising networks to specialize based on the types of niche audiences they curate.

The reason the channels are broken down into separate groups is every channel has a different and unique way to measure the impact and results of that channels effectiveness. Some channels have results that are so different from each other that they are rarely used together in the same campaigns.

Online Channels vs. Offline Channels

Online Channels – The categorical types of promotional marketing and formats of advertisements that can exist on websites, in mobile applications, or in the digital medium of the internet.

Offline Channels – The categorical types of promotional marketing and formats of advertisements that cannot exist solely on websites and must exist in different mediums.

Common Online Channels:

  • Organic Search
  • Social Media/Reviews
  • Video/Image/Display
  • Application/Mobile
  • Native (In-Site)
  • Email
  • Affiliations/Referrals
  • Digital Listings

Common Offline Channels:

  • Radio
  • Television
  • Billboards
  • Direct Mail
  • Magazines/Newspapers
  • Printed Media
  • Sponsorships
  • Calls/SMS
  • Product Placements (on-vehicles)
  • Offline Listings

Here are some of the results found in the various types of channels (both online/offline):

  • Conversions (loosely defined)
  • Watches, Listens, Impressions, Views, Loads, Opens, Delivers
  • Clicks, Likes, Shares, Comments, Answers, Emails, Replies, Interactions
  • Visitors, People, Businesses, Votes, Suggestions, Responses
  • Plays, Starts, Downloads, Calls, Messages, Complaints

Step 1: What results am I trying to get? This will suggest the network(s) to use.

Results are the goals that your business is trying to obtain and can obtain by using advertisement networks to reach the audiences required by a specific time. The channels are important only when you cannot use the internal resources or capabilities of your business to reach those results in the desired time frame.

If I had more leads per day

First Example: If I had ____ more leads per day I could do _____ more business.

The above first example highlights the results (X # of additional leads), includes the time frame (per day) and also includes a simplified impact of that result (X $/# more business) for them. This template the best way to begin figuring out which advertisement networks are right for your business. Also start with the desired results and then work back to how you can effectively generate, track, and measure those goals.

If I had more appointments

Second Example: If I had ____ more appointments from patients needing braces per month I could hire an additional _____ for my practice.

The above second example highlights the results (X # of additional appointments), is more specific about the type of results (from patients needing braces), includes the time frame (per month), and is very specific about the impact of those results (X additional hires). The more specific you are with the result template the easier it will be for you to narrow down to the best advertisement networks for your business.

Results vary by advertisement network – but so do the quantity and quality of the audiences.

Quantity vs. Quality of the audiences

Quantity Audiences – describes the volume of people that are marketable within an advertisement network and available to the media buyer based on the criteria of the target and scope of who they want to promote to.

Quality Audiences – describes the amount of possible segmentations that exist within a publisher’s audiences which allows a media buyer to filter to a more specific audience.

In all cases if you increase the quantity of audiences you want to target (adding more people) you will incur added costs. Likewise, if you increase the quality of the audiences through segmenting a more niche audience you will derive a smaller but more specific audience and will incur a higher cost per audience member.

While being more specific with tons of filtering criteria allows you to speak to a more homogenous group for higher potential relevance… you are also diminishing your returns by limiting that message to smaller audiences overall. This balancing of talking to specific audiences with a specific message and managing costs per audience member is one of the most exciting and exhilarating aspects of managing marketing campaigns.

Step 2: Who am I trying to influence with advertising? Based on the result.

Primary functions: awareness and conversion

First and foremost, advertising itself has two primary functions:
1. Awareness – of your brand, message, position, services, offerings, and ideals.
2. Conversion – to a desired end result or state.

Therefore, your advertisement network needs to be able to serve you placements that allow you to do both; increase awareness and generate your desired conversions or results. In order to perform these functions every advertisement network measures the awareness and the conversion components and typically will charge you based on one or both of these.

The costs associated with either awareness-based charges or conversion-based charges could be the difference between a profitable and unprofitable advertisement network for your business. Not every advertising network is for every business – even if there are wonderful promises that they will.

Start with your target audience of who you want to generate awareness and conversions for.

    Here is a simple and formidable process for building target audiences:

  1. Ask the right questions first:
      1. a. Who are my best customers?
      b. Who will benefit most from my business?
  2. Segment your target audiences into homogenous groups (the more distinct the better).
  3. Describe your groups like a range of those homogenous traits:
    1. Demographic (basics)
        1. i. Age Ranges
        1. ii. Geographic Areas
        iii. Household Sizes
    2. Behavioral (best)
        1. i. In-Market for ___
        1. ii. Searching for ___
        iii. Trying to do ___
    3. Firmographic (b2b)
    4. Psychographic (as relevant)
        1. i. Lifestyle
        ii. Personality
  4. Based on the traits above write down the pain that each group is having that your specific offering can solve (help) or alleviate.

Segmenting Audiences

With this framework, you should have a handful of target audiences that you want to target. Based on the traits you have a pretty good idea of the kind of individuals and groups that make up your audience. Finally, using the pain of each group, you know what to focus your marketing around.

    Ask yourself, “What is the best way to communicate our offering to solve the pain for this target audience?” Here are some initial thoughts before you crunch the numbers for ROI for hypothetical groups:

  • This target audience group is older and reads the newspaper emphatically so buying media in the local newspaper where my business serves could be beneficial.
  • This target audience group is mostly women in their 40’s who have kids and would like to be able to buy a car as a family but not be overwhelmed in the process so maybe we position our advertisement as a video to show how amazing our experience is for families (possibly even center the protagonist of the video to be a woman in her 40s).

The possibilities are endless and there is no single right answer. The artistic side of marketing can seem daunting to some because you want to get it right and find success your very first time. Heads up on that expectation you will (almost never) find success your very first time and you might not even find it until your hundredth time. Advertising requires being able to fail fast and learn just as quickly.

Here are some example formats that you can think about when considering how to market to your target audiences:

Images Videos Gifs/Animations Texts/Statements
Experiences Tangibles/Swag Presentations Gifts
Native/Camouflage Mobile/Desktop In-Person …and much more

 

Step 3 – What are the trends? Where can I find the best advertisement networks?

Trends for the best advertisement networks vary wildly because some networks have better quantity, better quality, or better integrations. Integrations are important because some conversion results occur outside the ability of the network to track. Advertising networks often rely upon their proprietary platforms or for 3rd parties to build connections to their networks to allow for conversion and result tracking.

We absolutely understand this struggle because we are one of the 3rd parties that works with businesses to help bridge the gap for offline conversions such as phone calls, appointments, and their attribution. CallSource understands the hardships of tracking phone calls well.

Can’t I just ignore the difficult conversions to track and stick with the fundamental ones?

Long term performance not only in advertising but in the marketplace will require that businesses adapt and accurately track all of their channels in what is referred to as, “multi-channel” or “omni-channel” conversions. This is when advertisements, promotions, and messages target an audience that will be impacted by multiple channels before they ultimately complete the desired results.

    Example: Before a customer can book an appointment to fix their air conditioner they must:

  1. Be satisfied with an air conditioning repair company enough to book the appointment.
  2. Talk to an air conditioning repair company that can book that appointment.
  3. Find an air conditioning repair company.
  4. Realize they have an air conditioning problem.

In the example above the customer goes through the steps from (#4) up to the point of booking that appointment. In that customer journey it is possible (and likely) that multiple channels will have an impact on them.

    Following the example above here are the channels that might influence each numbered step:

  1. [In relation to #1 above] Reviews, testimonials, etc.
  2. [In relation to #2 above] Phone calls, chats, emails, etc.
  3. [In relation to #3 above] Organic search, advertisements, local business listings.
  4. [In relation to #4 above] YouTube educational videos, searches online with problem keywords.

You should not begin with an advertising network without a plan for tracking and measuring the impact of that promotion.

You should not begin without a plan

As far as the most popular advertising networks here are some of the most common:

Google/YouTube Ads Facebook/Instagram Ads Bing Ads
LinkedIn Ads Twitter Ads Yelp Ads
Craigslist Ads Reddit Ads DoubleClick (Google)
Wordstream Marin Sizmek
Dataxu Amazon Ads Adsterra
Outbrain Taboola ONE by Aol
Inmobi Airpush Leadbolt
Sitescout RhythmOne Media.net
TribalFusion Conversant GumGum
i-mobile NetSeer Undertone
Yieldmo Advertising.com Sovrn
LiveIntent ExoClick Dotomi
Chitika Admixer Adwar

…and many more.

The list above is not exhaustive as there are plenty of advertising networks that are not the most common but could be better for your business. Just because it is popular for businesses around the globe does not mean it will be the best for you.

How to evaluate the advertising networks for success for your business?

You might not be able to properly evaluate a network before trying it. In those cases, check what your competitors are using and depending on the costs you could test a network over a few months to see firsthand. Often marketing agencies that specialize in your market might have the answers you need and could be worth a consultation.

Here are some criteria to keep in mind when evaluating an advertising network for success:

  1. Advertisement success takes time so plan on a long term strategy for using a network that will allow you to scale over time and without being cost inhibitive.
  2. Networks that have (as mentioned before) higher quantity, higher quality and better integrations for your marketing stack are the basics.
  3. How reliable the tracking is for both the Awareness function of the advertisements and the Conversion functions of the results. Take this with a grain of salt because some channels are inherently difficult (almost impossible in some cases) to track but can still have an impact. Determine this criterion by weighing the reliability as a risk against the cost and benefits of advertising in this network.
  4. The agility and speed of optimizing, testing, and changing promotions within that advertising networks. Some businesses run ads and then need to pull them because of errors but not all networks allow for this as quickly as they’d like.
  5. The availability of guides, education, and insights into the advertising networks which can allow you to easily learn and figure out how to maximize that platform.
  6. The amount of setup time and effort that is required to begin. Some advertisement networks require you to build extensive marketing campaigns, elaborate messaging, and complex tracking to even start. Unless you are ready for scaling or for this kind of marketing, consider this as an early risk.
  7. Last but not least… the privacy and regulatory conditions you operate in. Due to GDPR, local/federal/country laws some advertising networks just do not make sense. Relationships with companies can often limit the networks you can advertise in simply because of a binding agreement in a contract. Make sure you follow all laws and rules.

Let’s Conclude

  • First, you need understand what an advertising network is and how it can be composed of both offline and online channels.
  • Every channel can be comprised of multiple types of formats and mediums which allow the advertisers (media buyers) to purchase advertising placements from the suppliers (publishers).
  • Always start your advertising strategy with the results in mind based on who your target audience is (make sure you know who these homogenous groups are). Once you have your target audience and the desired results ask yourself, “How can I communicate to this target group best?”
  • Be strict and evaluate the advertising networks from a position of making sure that your business interests are taken care of and that you are capable of tracking and measuring every component of your customer journey (both online and offline as needed). If you are a local business looking for digital marketing strategies take a listen to our podcast episode on this very topic here.
  • You can have advertising networks compete against each other but it is strongly discouraged to pit different channels against each other due to the trouble of holding the correct variables constant in a true comparison (just don’t do it).
  • Test, test, test over time using the evaluation criteria listed above. Talk to marketing agencies and industry experts to learn the trends and networks that are performing well.

Filed Under: Digital Management Tagged With: Digital Management

13 Notable Inbound Phone Call Automotive Stats for Dealers

April 10, 2019 by Cassie Ciopryna Leave a Comment

Even in 2019, the phone is not dead.

While smartphones have become smarter and smarter, they are still being used to make actual phone calls – and consumers are calling auto dealerships as a part of the buying process.

In the brand new Automotive Inbound Call Data Report, CallSource analyzed over 106 million phone calls to auto dealers over a 4 year span. The report illustrates how vital inbound phone calls are to the automotive industry, and delivers key takeaways for dealers to keep in mind when prioritizing phone calls.

Take a look below for 13 of the most important stats from this study, or view the whole report in its entirety here.

The phone is paramount to auto dealers

    1. Over half (54%) of all inbound calls to automotive dealerships are revenue-winning opportunities.
    2. One in four leads calling a dealership are for sales – 75% of prospects calling in are for Fixed Ops.

Make all calls to the Sales department count

    1. Only about half (51%) of your sales calls in 2018 were viable leads.
    2. 80% of inbound sales opportunities are being missed.
    3. Less than a quarter of all sales opportunities (20%) are actual confirmed appointments.

Fixed Ops generate the majority of inbound call leads

    1. About ¾ of all inbound prospect calls to dealerships are for Fixed Ops.
    2. An average of 40% of calls to Fixed Ops have resulted in an appointment since 2015.
    3. 60% of Fixed Ops calls are missed opportunities – no appointment set.
    4. Appointment conversion rates to Fixed Ops have increased from 35% in 2015 to 52% in 2018.
    5. Almost 90% of parts calls don’t result in an appointment.

Service calls and appointments are increasing year-over-year

  1. Over half (58%) of calls to the Service department in 2018 resulted in an appointment set.
  2. Dealers are able to convert more calls to the Service department into appointments than they can in Sales and Parts combined.
  3. Service appointments have been increasing since 2015, but 40% of prospective service appointments are still booking with the competition.

Improve your inbound phone performance

Numbers don’t lie – the phone is vital to automotive dealers. It is imperative for dealerships to track phone calls and implement changes for performance increases.

Check out the full automotive report here to view the above stats and for advice to help your dealership improve.

Filed Under: CallTrack, LeadMetrix + DealSaver, Call Coaching, Telephone Performance Analysis Tagged With: Call Management, Performance Management, Digital Management, Announcements & Events

Digital Marketing & Web Analytics: Where to Advertise?

March 19, 2019 by Cassie Ciopryna

When research shows that roughly nine-in-ten Americans use the internet1, a business that doesn’t exist on any digital format today almost doesn’t exist to consumers. More consumers than ever start their research online, with 81% of them conducting online research before buying and 60% starting their research on a search engine.2

Digital management should be a priority for companies looking to increase brand awareness, acquire additional customers, and improve their reputation online.

Determining how to be noticed on digital mediums, and how to successfully market to and track the consumers who find you online, is vital to your business’ success. Making data-based decisions is always an important factor; this is true for your online marketing attribution as well as your offline attribution.

Having a solid digital management system in place helps ensure you are viewing the whole marketing journey, delivering content to your consumers in any possible way that they want it.

Digital Marketing and Web Analytics

To implement an effective digital strategy, you need to track your digital marketing and web analytics.

Web Analytics

Web analytics involves the process of the collection, measurement, and analysis of user activity on a website to understand and help achieve the intended objective of the website.

The objective is usually one or a combination of:

  • Increased revenue
  • Lower cost
  • Improved customer service/experience

Web analytics works alongside digital marketing. Web analytics can make certain that website content and the overall website user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are tailored to the behavior and interests of the target audience.

You can monitor your website users and optimize your business’ website to appeal to the navigational tendencies of customers, formulating and updating your digital marketing plan of action depending on their interactions.

Digital Marketing

A lot of web analytics depend on digital marketing. Digital marketing is a term given to any form of marketing products and services through online channels. Channels are high-level categories indicating how people found a site. Put simply: where did they come from?

There are a few different channels that consumers use to find you in the digital world:

  • Organic
    • Traffic from users who land on your page from clicking a listed link on a search engine results page that was listed naturally – someone did not pay to get the result in high ranking.
  • Paid
    • Traffic from search engine results that is the result of paid advertising via Google Adwords or another paid search platform.
  • Direct
    • Traffic that has come to your site by either typing in your URL in their address bar or clicking on a bookmark. In general, this indicates visits where users navigate directly to the URL or the source of the visit is unknown.
  • Referral
    • Traffic that has come from another site to your site, not relating to traffic coming from a search engine.
      • Examples might include: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any site/domain not owned by you.

SEM vs. SEO

A lot of digital marketing and web analytics depend on search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO).

An easy way to remember these two differences is SEM is paid while SEO is not.

SEM is a form of internet marketing that increases a site’s visibility through paid search engine results and advertising; it includes things such as paid ads and 3rd party websites.

SEM results are short-lived, quick results. Usually you will pay per each result:

  • Cost per click (CPC)
  • Cost per lead (CPL)
  • Cost per acquisition (CPA)

SEO is an organic way of increasing the number of website visitors by getting your site to appear high in search ranking results.

SEO results are long-lasting; you must be vigilant with SEO to stay ahead of the trends. A few examples of ways to optimize your page for SEO are:

  • Publish relevant content
  • Improve page loading speed
  • Optimize images
  • Remove broken links
  • And much more

SEM and SEO are much more in-depth topics, but they both have a high impact on digital marketing and website optimization plans.

Find out how SEO and call tracking can work together
to help your brand.

Advertising on Digital

In addition to your static advertising campaigns, it is important to have digital advertising for your business, no matter what industry you are in. In fact, research shows that digital channels will overtake traditional mediums by 2021.3

Tracking offline to online (O2O) through dynamic number insertion
will help your marketing attribution efforts.

Hopefully, you are already advertising in digital, but whether or not you are, you may need some assistance in deciding exactly where to advertise. While it is vital that you do some research on what mediums your “ideal customers” spend time on, there are still many places to choose from, since there is a slew of options on the internet.

Although this isn’t a full, comprehensive list, below are some of the most popular places for businesses to place digital advertisements to get you started.

PPC

Pay-per-click advertising, also known as PPC, is a form of digital advertising that prompts advertisers to bid to have their ads displayed on popular websites to generate traffic.

Every time that an ad is clicked, the advertiser must pay a fee. PPC basically allows you to “buy” traffic for your website, web pages, or wherever you direct users to when they click on your ad. One of the most popular forms of PPC advertising is paid search advertising, also known as search engine advertising. This kind of digital advertising allows advertisers to bid for top ad placement on a search results page.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords reign so supreme in the world of PPC advertising platforms that Google Ads are now almost known as being synonymous with PPC.
With Google Ads, instead of bidding to have your ads displayed on popular websites, you must bid on certain keywords to have your ads displayed at the top of Google’s search results – a hard spot to earn organically by getting to the top of page one search results.

Bing

Second to Google is Bing, another popular search engine that has 34% share of the U.S. search market.4

Bing is a cheaper alternative to Google advertising since it is not as dominant in the market, yet still relevant. Bing partners with Yahoo for their ad network, which means your reach is expanded when advertising with Bing.

Bing lets you control campaigns at a more granular level than Yahoo and has more targeting options as well.

It is also relevant to note that voice-search is becoming increasingly popular, and power-house Amazon’s Alexa product gains all of its search results from Bing. Keep this in mind, as it may mean that Bing will become more prominent in the coming years.

Display Ads

Display advertising allows the advertiser to have ads placed on relevant third-party sites in the form of a banner, image, or text ad. They can be placed anywhere on the page – but must be optimized to target audiences, and should direct to a specific landing page as well.

Email Marketing

Most lead generation strategies are focused around collecting a form of contact – usually an email address – from a potential lead. Email marketing is said to be one of the most effective forms of digital advertising, with an ROI upwards of 40%, according to reports.5

Email marketing allows brands to talk to their prospects more personally on a consistent, ongoing basis. If a consumer is committing to receive your emails, then they have a higher probability of engaging with your brand.

With the potential for higher conversions than most other forms of digital advertising, email marketing is a must for any smart digital marketer.

Social Media

Advertising on social media keeps increasing since social media usage stays on the rise.

There are many social media platforms to advertise on. Make sure you discover where your “ideal customers” spend their time and target those social media channels to test out your advertising. Below are a few of the most popular platforms.

Facebook

Not surprisingly, Facebook dominates the social media world. As of 2018, almost 70% of U.S. adults are Facebook users, according to Pew Internet Research.6

YouTube

YouTube is also a top contender in social media channels, with roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults and 94% of 18-24-year-olds using the video-sharing site.6

Others

Below are some of the other most popular social media platforms that you should pay attention to, and research more to see if it is worth the effort for your business to advertise on. Keep in mind there are more than this list contains – make sure you know which social media platforms are most relevant to your business, your consumers, and your industry.

Twitter Instagram Snapchat
LinkedIn Pinterest WhatsApp

Video

Research shows that 25% of US digital ad spend went to video in 2018.5 The most common video advertising can be found on video channels such as YouTube, but keep in mind that social-media leader Facebook also captured almost one-quarter of all video ad spend in 2018.

Video isn’t only becoming more popular for digital ads – but a more popular way of consuming content overall, so you want to make sure that you are present in more types of ads than just static text or photo content.

Where to advertise

No matter where you choose to advertise, make sure your decisions are based on research and tested to see what your most viable digital advertising platforms really are. You will need to correctly attribute each platform with the attribution model that you choose that works best for your business’s needs, and whether cookie-based or a tracking component without cookies works for your tracking attribution purposes.

Correctly attribute online to offline marketing attribution

Once you start advertising on digital and paying attention to your paid and organic mediums online, you want to make sure you are attributing your ads correctly and efficiently.

To learn more about how DNI can help you achieve this, request a representative to reach out to you, or call us today at 888.788.0123.

Learn the complete consumer journey
for more reliable marketing ROI.

Get Dynamic Number insertion.

I want to learn more about dynamic number insertion.

References

  1. http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/
  2. https://www.madebytribe.com/the-online-buyers-journey-infographic/
  3. https://www.emarketer.com/content/global-ad-spending
  4. https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us
  5. https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2016/01/70-email-marketing-stats-you-need-to-know/
  6. http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/
  7. https://www.emarketer.com/content/video-swells-to-25-of-us-digital-ad-spending

Filed Under: CallTrack, Digital Management Tagged With: Call Management, Digital Management

What Do Call Tracking and Digital Attribution Mean to My Practice?

March 11, 2019 by Cassie Ciopryna

As someone who’s main focus in their career is to change peoples’ lives by helping them to hear, terms like “digital attribution” and “call tracking” may not be in the forefront of your mind as an audiologist or other hearing professional at work. Yet, as a business owner or manager, these are important things to know for your practice’s success.

You spend marketing dollars to acquire patients, so it is vital to know and understand how to use those dollars most effectively to benefit your practice and ensure you aren’t just throwing away money that could be used to help additional patients.

How do you make sure that you are marketing most effectively? Well, you need to make data-driven decisions. And how do you obtain data to do this?

That’s right – digital attribution and call tracking.

Here is a link to our podcast that explains what Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) and online call tracking is.

Online vs. Offline Marketing

There are two main places where all of your marketing takes place – either online, or offline.
Think of some of the places where you are currently advertising, and you will see that they must fall into one of these categories:

Online Offline
Website Direct Mail
Facebook Newspaper
Third-Party Web pages Phonebook
Pay-Per-Click Billboard
Banner Ads TV/Radio

Just like these ads differ in their medium, so must the way that you can most successfully and accurately track and measure their success.

How do you most accurately track the success of both types of marketing campaigns? Again, this is where our key terms come in.

Online Offline
Digital Attribution & Call Tracking Call Tracking

 

Online Marketing

To see your consumers’ complete patient journey, you will need both digital attribution and call tracking in place on your online advertisements. Let’s look at an example.

  1. Potential patient googles “hearing aids in Los Angeles”
  2. They see a few practices come up in their google search and click on your website
  3. They browse your website for a bit and then continue to look at some of your competitors
  4. Potential patient comes back to your website and clicks around on a few web pages
  5. They click on the phone number on your page and call into your office to schedule an appointment

Here, the consumer started their journey online – that’s where the digital attribution will come into place. You should be able to see how they came upon your website, and what happened once on your website. Then, when they call into your office (through a tracking number on the website), you can allocate which number they called and that it came from your website, too.

By using dynamic number insertion (DNI), you can seamlessly tie in the consumer’s online interactions to their call for complete end-to-end , online to offline (O2O) attribution.

Offline Marketing

Tracking your offline marketing cannot get quite as fine-tune as you can get with online marketing since it is only possible to truly and accurately know what ad it was that drove them to call in finally.

For example, a patient can call in the office and tell you that they think they got your phone number from the newspaper – but with call tracking numbers in place, you can accurately assess which number they called you from (which may be a direct mail piece). Call tracking ensures that the final marketing attribution receives credit for driving the consumer to call your office to set an appointment.

If you were to only go off of what the caller tells your front office staff, you can run into errors of the person remembering incorrectly, or even risk not knowing at all if your phone handler forgets to ask the caller how they heard about you.

Not ready to start utilizing call tracking? Find out a DIY approach for marketing attribution!

You may have noticed that call tracking can and should be used in both online I offline marketing advertisements. Why is that? How may the type of phone numbers used differ in the two mediums? That brings us to our next topic.

Call Tracking Numbers vs. Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI)

You have probably heard of call tracking and are familiar with how it works – and perhaps you’ve heard of DNI with no clue what it means. Let’s explain the two.

Call tracking numbers are local or toll-free numbers used in place of regular telephone numbers to track and record inbound calls. Call tracking requires that you use separate tracking numbers on all of your different marketing pieces to attribute where your calls are coming from. The caller dials the tracking number, and then reaches the designated target number which is its destination (most likely your main office telephone number). Tracking numbers can be used in both online and offline advertisements.

Dynamic Number Insertion, most commonly referred to as simply DNI, uses a code placed on a website which allows the phone number on the page to change based on the keywords and actions taken in the web search. A URL is created for each specific number/keyword and sent to the web developer for implementation. DNI can use either local or toll-free numbers without issue. With DNI, you can more effectively track web traffic by breaking down searches to the referral site and keyword level. This is so online interactions to be tied to offline attribution.

It is evident that call tracking can be used in both online and offline advertisements, though DNI is prohibited to strictly online ads.

When to use should you use static call tracking numbers online, and when should you use DNI?

As noted above, DNI requires a code to be placed on the website you will be swapping out numbers with. Since this is necessary, it is difficult to use DNI in some online advertisements or places where you may market, since you do not have control of inserting this code. For example, a DNI number would not be something you could place on your Facebook page. In those cases, using regular call tracking numbers will suffice.

Discover how to place call tracking numbers on 7 of the most popular listing services here.

How Does This Improve My Practice?

There is no way to improve and fine-tune your marketing efforts without receiving the correct data to do so. Without tracking your marketing, you will not receive data.

This is why CallSource offers solutions using tracking numbers, DNI, or a combination – so you can correctly attribute all of your marketing sources both online and offline and make better-informed decisions on where and how to advertise in the future.

If you’re ready to talk to someone about improving your practice, we can have someone reach out to you, or you can contact a representative today at 888.788.0123 to learn more.

Start making more informed marketing decisions.

Take charge of your call and digital management.

I want to talk to someone about utilizing call tracking and DNI at my practice.

Filed Under: CallTrack, Digital Management Tagged With: Call Management, Digital Management

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