NB: This is a guest article by Ross Fobian, director and co-founder of ResponseTap.
There is a tremendous amount of online data available to help the travel industry carefully measure their search marketing, SEO or PPC campaigns.
As an industry we now have the ability to track pretty much everything online. Data which ultimately tells us the path to conversion.
But, what happens if some of your customers decide they want to talk to you before booking their flight or holiday:
- How do you track them?
- How do you know where they have come from?
- What path they’ve taken?
- What keywords they’ve used to get there?
So often, the missing link of all data tracking is when one of your prospects chooses to pick up the phone to complete the buying process.
However, this data is out there. Data which tells you which users called you, which keywords they used, which ad they responded to and the traffic sources they used to get to your site.
Tracking this data does not need to stop when a person picks up the phone. Call tracking technology enables you to see exactly which keywords led to conversions, the value of those sales and how users interacted with your website before, during and after a phone call.
How does call tracking work?
By adding a small amount of code to your website a unique telephone number is dynamically generated for each visitor. The telephone number provides important data such as the keywords used to get to the site, the page the user was on at the time of call, date and time as well as the value of the call.
The quantity of numbers that you will need for your site will vary depending on the volume of traffic that your site receives. You can set up Call tracking with different types of numbers, including freephone and local.
In order to identify between phone calls that are leads and those that are not you can set parameters that enable you to accurately measure the value of the call based on its duration.
So, for example, a call that lasts longer than one minute has probably passed the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) and will be a quality call. The call can also be recorded so you can hear the outcome of that enquiry.
Call tracking can integrate with Google Analytics, AdWords, your CRM or other analytics tools or reporting suites you may be running. By tracking offline phone call conversions within your analytics system you will be able to tell which ads are working and which ones aren’t.
Picturing the results
When a phone call is made the code executes a virtual pageview in Google Analytics and attributes it to the user's data so that the entry source and activity on site can be combined with the phone call.
You can see how many users from each source pick up the phone, as well as where they have been on site, where they are based and which channels are resulting in calls.
By combining phone call data from all marketing channels you can understand your return from each channel much more easily.
The nature of a travel company’s products can result in prolonged purchase decisions as customers often require assurances that the holiday is tailored for their needs.
This thirst for further information can drive customers to ask questions directly to their experienced travel consultants by phone. Some also have a number of non-transactional websites that require customers to call the phone number displayed on the website in order to book their holiday.
Combining phone call data from all marketing channels enables you to understand your return from each channel much more easily.
NB: This is a guest article by Ross Fobian, director and co-founder of ResponseTap.
NB2:Phone image via Shutterstock.