Amber Tiffany of Skai partner, Invoca, joins us today for a guest post. Amber brings her experience in B2C and B2B digital marketing and her passion for content to her role as Content Marketing Manager at Invoca, a leading inbound call marketing solution that empowers advertisers, agencies and performance networks to track, measure and optimize inbound calls. Skai joins Invoca for a webinar on April 17th to discuss how to leverage inbound call intelligence and manage budgets and data across multi-location and omni-channel campaigns.
The search marketing blogs have been blowing up with news about Google’s latest updates to search query data. After a lot of hoopla, most have come to the consensus that the change won’t have much of an impact, aside from the need for some marketers to update their best practices.
It’s understandable that any change in Google AdWords grabs our attention. But the news got me thinking about what’s really important in the sphere of search engine marketing. What really deserves our attention, and what are we being overly sensitive to?
Focusing on What Matters
Search marketers tend to be hyper-focused on every tiny aspect of paid search. After all, when a single new keyword can create thousands of new impressions (which can translate to thousands of dollars in revenue) these “small” things can, in fact, be a big deal.
But if you would step back from your micro-optimizations and PPC dashboard for a moment, you may realize there are other factors to consider. The near-spontaneous evolution from desktop to mobile search has created a paramount shift in consumer behavior.
But oddly enough, there hasn’t been an equal shift in paid search strategies and analytics. While today’s marketers arm themselves with analytics and big data, CRM and marketing automation solutions, bid management platforms and BI tools, they’re missing a key component of success – offline analytics.
Surprising Stats on Calls
Mobile search is yielding more and more inbound phone calls every year. From 2011 to 2013, U.S. businesses have experienced a 133% increase in daily online-derived phone calls. Search Engine Land also reported statistics from a recent study that suggest more conversions from local, mobile search occur over the phone than online. Let that sink in: mobile search is driving more phone calls than it is online transactions.
These figures are astounding, especially when compared to the disproportionate amount of time and resources spent tracking and analyzing online consumer behavior. A lack of visibility into offline activity could be skewing your data, leaving you unaware of an entire segment of customers that purchase, or prefer to purchase, over the phone.
The good news is you don’t have to ignore the offline transactions just because it seems impossible to track. There are analytics tools that integrate inbound call data into your current digital analytics so you can see the online transactions AND inbound calls your campaigns are driving. Your paid search campaigns will always need maintenance, but it’s important to explore tools with the power to elevate how you track and engage customers in a mobile, multi-channel world.
Resources to Learn More
Don’t leave yourself vulnerable to the mobile marketing elements. Register for the BrightTalk webinar, Unnecessarily Naked: The Digital Marketer’s New Clothes on Thursday April 17th. This live webinar will feature experts Eric Holmen, CMO of Invoca, and Paul Wicker, Director of Product Management Local at Skai. They will discuss:
- How to leverage inbound call intelligence to get an accurate picture of your digital campaigns that convert offline
- How to overcome the challenges that come with connecting the data and budgets spread across multi-location and local campaigns
- How to accurately calculate the true ROI and budget of omni-channel campaigns
Hope you’ll be able to join us!
