Imagine you created an email campaign aimed at bringing your best prospects over the finish line. It has a great offer, guaranteed to have those leads banging down your door.

Now imagine the link to your terrific offer is never tested, or worse, the sign-up form is broken. All that time spent crafting the perfect campaign goes out the window, and you lose your best leads.

My guess is you’d never let that happen, and that you have processes in place to ensure emails and landing pages are meticulously tested.

But are you taking those same precautions with your inbound phone calls?

Ring ring – opportunity is calling

When it comes to a PPC strategy, most of the emphasis is placed on web leads. Studies have shown, however, that inbound phone calls are 10-15 times more likely to convert than inbound website leads. In fact, 61% of businesses rate inbound phone calls as a top source of leads—higher than any other inbound lead source.

With numbers like these, there’s a ton of value in driving people to a phone number from your PPC ads. But first, it’s crucial to evaluate your inbound call experience to determine if people will get the same great experience when they call as they would online.

Harnessing the power of call recording

As the saying goes, “What gets measured gets managed.” Without analytics or some sort of tracking for your marketing and sales efforts, it’s difficult to know what to improve or how to do it.

That’s where call tracking and recording come in. Whether you’re using regular PPC ads, AdWords call-only ads, or any other form of marketing, call recording is a useful tool for any business looking to monitor performance and find areas for improvement.

In our experience, most clients don’t even know they have a problem with customer calls, which is why we recommend call recording for the majority of our PPC campaigns. It may seem like phone calls are outside the scope of PPC, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Insights gleaned from call tracking directly help with refining your PPC strategy by generating keyword ideas, providing data to help tweak landing pages, and pinpointing where you’re losing conversions.

Plus, recording calls is invaluable for another crucial part of marketing and sales: quality assurance of customer service. Think of it as your auditory secret shopper. The system allows you to see:

• If the caller was routed to the right place
• How long it took to get there
• How the representative handled the call
• Whether the caller found the information they needed
• How many calls were closed
• And more

This type of qualitative data is hugely helpful for identifying possible improvements in your customer support and sales conversations. It can also be converted into quantitative reports to easily track activity and performance. For example, one of our clients found success in color-coding calls to quickly see the outcome of each conversation.

Solving problems with call recording

When we’re building and optimizing PPC campaigns at ParaCore, we use call recording to help us pinpoint areas where the sales funnel is breaking down, then brainstorm solutions to bridge those gaps. Here are some of the common problems we see, along with ways we recommend solving them.

Problem #1: Where’s Waldo?

The most common issue we find after reviewing recordings is that calls aren’t being answered, likely because the call is either being routed to the owner or another individual who is often unavailable.

Solution:
Make sure your published phone number is going to someone besides the owner, and that the person is available during peak call hours (which can also be determined through call recording). It’s also a smart idea to invest in a quality after-hours service that can take care of callers and deliver a great experience even when your business is closed.

Problem #2: Stuck in limbo

Companies often try to solve the “Where’s Waldo?” problem by implementing a phone tree (dial “1” for customer support, dial “2” for sales, etc.). The trouble with a phone tree is potential customers often get lost or confused by the options, or they don’t want to use it in the first place. In fact, a study from American Express reported that 67% of customers reported hanging up in frustration because they could not reach a real person.

Solution:
Test all the options on your phone tree to make sure they’re being directed to the right person. Even if your tree was set up correctly in the first place, bugs and errors sometimes cause issues that could go unnoticed for months without testing.

Additionally, invest time in creating a phone tree that has clear instructions on how to use the directory and where the caller can go if they’re confused or can’t find what they need (e.g., “For all other questions or to speak to a representative, press 0.”)

Problem #3: Someone will get back to you

Take a step back and ask yourself, “Is the person who answers the phone the best one to do it?” We know many calls are about easy questions that anyone can answer, like hours and location information. However, many people who help answer calls, such as administrative assistants or interns, often aren’t equipped to handle sales calls.

In that case, they take the customer’s name and number to pass along to the owner or sales rep. This may help with internal efficiency, but it’s letting good leads get away. By the time someone calls them back to answer their questions, it may be too late.

Solution:
If this sounds similar to your process, listen to call recordings to determine whether the person answering your sales calls is capable of qualifying a lead and overcoming objections. If so, great! If not, it’s time to determine whether calls need to be routed elsewhere, if additional training could solve the problem, or if something like text message marketing would be a good addition to your sales process.

We also recognize that assistants are helpful when the main sales rep isn’t available or needs help screening calls. In that case, consider creating a simple set of screening questions any employee can ask so your sales team can have an informed follow-up conversation when they call back.

More PPC secrets are one call away

If you’re still thinking to yourself, “But I just need help with my PPC campaigns, not fixing my phone system,” remember that it’s all intertwined. Your PPC campaigns drive traffic to your site and calls to your business, but those clicks and calls won’t convert if they can’t get the information they need, at the moment they need it.

Are you paying just as much attention to optimizing the offline sales experience as you are to your online experience? If not, get in touch with our team for details on call recording and other secrets to improving your PPC campaigns.