Every local business starts with a dream of becoming bigger and better with time. They want more local presence, more customers and more business. On the road to this dream, challenges, be it changing trends or changing demands, are inevitable.
Winners are those who foresee challenges and turn them into opportunities.
Local businesses promote their companies via traditional marketing channels like personalized direct mail or correspondence to local customers, hosting events, sponsoring promotions, purchasing ad space in print, outdoor, or local television, etc.
But today market is digitized, and to be a competitive small businesses–even a VERY SMALL business–marketers must have an online presence. If you’re not online, you are “out of sight, out of mind”.
The Local Search Boom
According to BIA/Kelsey, in 2012, 30 percent of all online searches were local searches. That search traffic was valued at $5.7 billion. The value of local search traffic is expected to grow by a CAGR of 12 percent to $10.2 billion and represent 35 percent of all online searches in 2016.
Billions of new dollars flow into digital media from traditional and online advertisers in order to reach local consumers online.
With the explosive growth in smartphone users, mobile marketing is also on the rise. Data indicates that 61% of smartphone users conduct local searches and 70% of mobile searchers act on those search results within an hour.
More than $68 billion was spent by local businesses to drive phone calls last year. Local marketers say phone calls are BY FAR their most valuable lead source they have. The average conversion rate for a phone call is 45%, significantly higher than the average conversion rate for a visit via a PPC, 2% or lower.
70% of all engagements between new customers and businesses occurs over the telephone and customer phone calls convert at a rate of up to 5x greater than online search-based leads.
So here’s the question: Do clicks even matter anymore?
How important is it to be on top as a search result? Is it going to drive more calls and business? The difference between a first and second place listing can be huge. Depending on the industry and search term, roughly 85% of consumers click on the first listing.
But in the local space, clicks only matter insofar as they generate a call.
Clicks help a business to bring more calls. That means more valuable leads.
As data proved that phone is the emerging market and mobile searches are producing calls twice as much as clicks but are you able to track the performance of these leads? Don’t you want to track how effective is your marketing strategies and what is the conversion rate.
How Do You Measure Calls?
This is where call tracking enters the picture.
Call tracking is key to all this. Analyzing data, reducing operational cost, increasing ROI, recording calls, understanding what which marketing efforts are generating calls, is critical.
If calls matters to your business you should opt for call tracking. It is easy to use and could bring significant changes to your business at a reasonable cost.
