Clicks don’t matter. Traffic doesn’t matter. CTR doesn’t matter. If you’re in the local marketing world–as an agency or a local business–the ‘traditional’ metrics you’ve gotten used to for success no longer matter.
At all.
Why?
Because calls are the only things that local marketers should care about.
The Research
BIA/Kelsey researches local maketing. That’s what they do. They are paid to research local marketing.
Here’s what they found:
1) Local businesses and local marketers say that phone calls are their best leads. Period. 64% of local marketers say phone calls are better than any other lead source. They’re better than clicks, traffic, form fill-outs, social media leads and even foot-traffic.
Phone calls are the best.
2) Local businesses spent $68B last year (2012) to generate calls. That number is increasing.
3) Phone calls turn into customers 10x to 12x more often than web leads do. Research from Marketing Sherpa and Hubspot indicates that form fill-out leads only convert to customers about 2% of the time. Our data shows, clearly, that 25% – 40% of inbound phone calls to local businesses turn into customers.
That means, literally, that calls turn into customers 10x to 12x more frequently than web leads do.
The Reality
Research is important, but reality matters. We work with thousands of local businesses. Ultimately their feedback confirms the findings of the BIA/Kelsey research: phone calls matter more than anything else.
Clicks only matter insofar as they help to generate calls. Calls produce customers more often than clicks.
The Data
If you own a local business or you do marketing for a local business, the only data that is critically important is call data.
Call tracking software should be the tool you use to make marketing decisions.
Clicks just don’t matter anymore.
