Thursday, December 31, 2009

Promotion & Link Building: Solve Your Call Tracking Problems Now!

Tracking calls has long been seen as a Holy Grail of tracking promotions. The good news? That Holy Grail is available and possible for marketers of every size.
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SEW Expert - Sage Lewis Solve Your Call Tracking Problems Now!
More SEW EXPERTS: PROMOTION & LINK BUILDING SEW EXPERTS: PROMOTION & LINK BUILDING

By Sage Lewis, SEW, Dec 31, 2009
Columns  |  Contact Sage  |  Biography

So often, the missing link of all tracking is when one of your prospects decides they no longer want to continue their happy buying process online.

Invariably, sitting right next to their 1945 invention is that 1876 invention still hanging around, begging to be used.

Personally, if phones were outlawed and all we had left was text messaging, e-mail, and Twitter, I doubt I'd shed many tears. But I'm probably in the minority on that.

That's when it happens. All of your buttoned-up, rock-solid tracking you so carefully crafted for your super-sweet promotion gets flushed right down the drain with the touch of 10 little buttons.

Gone are the conversion reports that track to your online form's thank you page. Gone are the key-phrase conversion analysis numbers in your paid search accounts. It's all gone, daddy gone. The love is gone.

But hark! The herald angels do sing. All isn't lost.

Some industrious people have been doing some great work to help fix all your call tracking problems.

This certainly won't be the complete and final word on call tracking. There are already many options, and it seems that the options continue to grow.

I've investigated two options: ClickPath and TeleCapture. These services are nice to compare because ClickPath is for bigger, more robust campaigns, while TeleCapture is a nice solution for those looking to start small.

ClickPath

ClickPath is incredibly robust. You can track down to the keyword level with an unlimited amount of phone numbers.

You buy a block of minutes of phone time that you think you'll use in a month. Pricing is tiered on volume and terms. So, the more minutes for a longer agreed contract, the less you'll pay per minute.

While the per-minute price depends on how much you're going to use the system, and for how long you agree to use it, the monthly blocks of usage start at several hundred dollars.

They offer "dynamic number insertion," which will display the phone number for the campaign and phrase the visitor came from.

ClickPath reports allow you to track all sorts activity: live chat, contact forms, calls, sales, and many more.

After the customer hangs up, there's a prompt to enter a call representative code and then an outcome code. This way you can find out exactly what happened on a call directly from each representative in the ClickPath reports.

ClickPath is all-inclusive. You get caller ID, unlimited numbers, recorded calls, great reports. It goes on and on. It's a really nice, comprehensive system.

TeleCapture

If you aren't quite the size of a Chilean sea bass yet and your business more resembles the size of a stout (but proud) small-mouth bass, I'd like to draw your attention to TeleCapture.

TeleCapture charges you by the total number of phone numbers you want, the services you want on each phone number, and then per-minute fees. You can start for $5.99 a month for one phone number, and pay $0.065 a minute for people who use that number.

They have a handy feature called "Call Announce" that plays a brief, pre-recorded message to the operator describing where the call came from. They have many announcement recordings, including Internet, television, Google, eBay, and door hanger. This way, the person who answers the call can jot down where the call came from.

TeleCapture has some nice reports that show calls by hour, day, and month. It also shows calls-per-caller and minutes-per-call. You can also e-mail call information to other people, and have your reports e-mailed to you on a pre-determined basis.

Conclusion

If you're looking to track down to the keyword level, ClickPath might be your solution. But if you're looking to just do some high-level tracking, you might look into TeleCapture.

Either way, tracking calls has been a Holy Grail of tracking promotions. The good news: that Holy Grail is available and possible for marketers of every size.

Sage Lewis is off this week. Today's column ran earlier on Search Engine Watch.

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Biography
Sage Lewis started his online marketing company, SageRock.com, in 1999 during a time when most Internet companies were failing. SageRock, however, has thrived under Lewis’ direction -- growing an average of 30% every year, while also being recognized as one of the top ten search engine optimization firms in the U.S. by a third-party resource in the industry, Marketing Sherpa.

Regarded as a web marketing expert, Lewis speaks regularly to business organizations like NEOSA and COSE, serves as a resource for press about industry trends, and teaches a recurring class on search engine optimization at Cleveland State University.

Lewis has created a unique company culture that values the individual employee and client, and he has built SageRock around one principle, “The concern, respect and empathy for the individual people we come in contact with at SageRock is our single core value.”

Lewis lives in Akron with his wife, Rocky, and son, Indiana.

Article Archives by Sage Lewis:
Solve Your Call Tracking Problems Now! - December 31, 2009
Link Building Basics: 3 Great Tips - December 17, 2009
Tickets and Pies - December 3, 2009
The Promotion Recipe - November 19, 2009
Do Follow - November 5, 2009
All Links Are Not Created Equal - October 22, 2009
» More Articles by Sage Lewis


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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

SearchDay: Facebook Tops Google for Most Visited Site on Christmas

Today's Columns: » Facebook Tops Google for Most Visited Site on Christmas  » Using Alibaba.com for B2B Leads  » Choose the Right SEO Project Goals 
Search Engine Watch
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SearchDay December 30, 2009
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SES New York 2010, March 22-26

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SEO Specialist/SEO Senior Manager
SparkNET Corporation De Pere, United States

Director of Digital Media
University of Louisville Louisville, United States

Product Manager
Marin Software San Francisco, United States

Senior Account Executive
Confidential (B2B) New York, United States

Professional Services On-boarding Specialist
Marin Software San Francisco, United States

Today's Top Story:

Facebook Tops Google for Most Visited Site on Christmas
Posted by Nathania Johnson  Dec 30, 2009

If you uploaded pictures of your family on Christmas Day to Facebook - or updated your status to dish on all your new goodies - you weren't alone. For the first time ever, Facebook ousted Google for most visited site in a day. Or at least, so tweeted Hitwise. It makes ...
» Continue reading


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Atkins-Krüger


Using Alibaba.com for B2B Leads
More SEW EXPERTS: INTERNATIONAL SEM SEW EXPERTS: INTERNATIONAL SEM
While Alibaba is described as an "Asian eBay" and credited with causing eBay to shut down its Chinese operation in 2006, it's much more than that. And its global domination plan is being rolled out at astonishing speed.
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SEW Expert - Eric Enge Eric
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Choose the Right SEO Project Goals
More SEW EXPERTS: ORGANIC SEO SEW EXPERTS: ORGANIC SEO
Picking the right goals is key to the success of any SEO effort. A surprising number of companies focus on what they think are the right goals, but end up being dead wrong. Success comes when you can tie your SEO goals to the broader goals of your business.
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StumbleUpon Unveils Most Stumbled Sites for 2009
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StumbleUpon has had quite a year. They bought themselves back from eBay and launched a URL shortening service, among other things. Now, they're revealing the most stumbled sites for their historic year that was 2009. Here they are, broken down by category: Arts Jim Jarmusch Quote - 278K Stumbles Aled Lewis Illustrations - 253K ...
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Search Engine Watch Forum Discussions

Google site links  Dec 30, 2009
I am aware that if google favours your site it puts site sections in your search results but it seems to go further with some sites by adding a site search. How can I facilitate both of these 'enhancements'?
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My google AdSense is ban :(  Dec 29, 2009
hello to all, My Google AdSense is ban, What should i do? can i try to make new one or do you know any other way for that. can i use my old web page for new signeup? thank you waiting for reply...
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Link Building Definition  Dec 10, 2009
Link building can be the aspect that makes or brakes a website. You can spend top dollar for industry leading developers and have your on-site search engine optimisation spot on, but without links pointing to your website you will not gain the trust necessary to rank in search engines. SEO Company ...
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Difference Between SEO & SEM  Dec 10, 2009
Difference Between SEO & SEM Please Define..:cool::cool::cool:
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