6 Call Monetization Platforms for SMBs

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phonePhone leads may not be glamorous or trendy, but they’re the backbone of local marketing strategy for millions of small businesses in the professional services, travel, auto, and insurance industries. Sixty-one percent of businesses say a phone call from a prospective customer is the most important lead, and $68 billion is spent annually on localized ads to generate these calls.

Hyperlocal vendors are stepping into this market and providing both local and national businesses with analytics that they can use to measure ROI and gather insights about incoming calls from prospective leads. Using multiple tracking numbers and advanced call analysis tools, businesses are able to see which marketing campaigns are driving the most traffic and what their associates could be doing to turn more leads into sales.

Here are six call monetization vendors that businesses can work with.

1. Telmetrics: Measure caller sentiment and track demographics.
Telmetrics offers an advanced call tracking solution for national marketers looking to maximize their local campaigns. Pre-call metrics offer insight into which search engines or keywords drove a particular lead, while real-time call tracking tools show the name and address of each incoming caller, along with the date, time, and length of each call. Telmetrics provides businesses with call trends by region. After a call is through, businesses can reference Telmetrics’ post-call results to analyze caller sentiment and find out what else their associates could be doing to increase ROI. Businesses can contact Telmetrics directly for specific pricing information.

2. Marchex: Learn which calls are converting to sales.
Marchex helps businesses collect insights on incoming calls. Using the company’s Local Leads platform, small businesses and national brands can create local marketing campaigns with landing pages designed to drive calls from potential customers. Marchex’s Local Leads platform goes hand-in-hand with the company’s call analytics tools and Call DNA technology, which allows businesses to visualize and playback telephone conversations that resulted from digital advertising campaigns. National chains can also use Marchex to measure the impact of their mobile campaigns at local stores. Businesses can contact Marchex for specific pricing information.

3. Invoca: Tie calls to specific marketing campaigns.
Invoca takes a more-is-more approach to call monetization, providing businesses with all the features necessary for inbound call marketing automation. Businesses can drive telephone leads, tie those calls to specific campaigns or partners, follow leads through online, offline, and mobile channels, and ultimately gain insight about their customers through the process. In addition to call tracking and analytics, businesses get access to custom call treatment. This involves qualifying, filtering, and routing calls based on criteria like location or date. Businesses can also use Invoca to create campaigns with multiple tracking numbers to improve analytics. Pricing for Invoca Complete starts at $1,000 per month.

4. LogMyCalls: Analyze conversations with real customers.
When they use LogMyCalls, business owners can listen to the telephone conversations their employees have with leads, without taking the time to actually listen to any of those calls whatsoever. Instead, LogMyCalls uses conversation analytics to help businesses automatically understand what happened on specific calls and separate good leads from bad leads. Connecting LogMyCalls to Google Analytics allows businesses to see offline and online conversions side-by-side. The platform also offers advanced call routing and call tracking with all three DNI types. Pricing for LogMyCalls starts at $69 per month.

5. ResponseTap: Track leads before, after, and during telephone calls.
ResponseTap provides businesses with call tracking and web analytics tools that it claims can improve marketing ROI by up to 80%. ResponseTap’s call tracking features handle call routing, recording, benchmarking, and sales tracking. SMBs can opt to receive emails whenever they miss a call. They can also elect to have a short phrase read to the call handler before or after each call. For example, ResponseTap might tell the call handler how the caller found the company’s website or the keyword he used to get there. This provides businesses with a way to understand which keywords are driving call, and potentially influences the way a sales associate interacts with specific leads. ResponseTap offers custom pricing for businesses.

6. CallFire: See which of your ad campaigns are driving the most calls.
Businesses that are interested in learning which advertising campaigns are driving the most calls can use CallFire’s call tracking service to find an answer. CallFire encourages businesses to purchase multiple local and toll free phone numbers, which they can use for both online and offline campaigns. While all of these numbers forward to the same place, CallFire is silently tracking and analyzing how many calls are coming through each ad channel. The resulting reports can then be linked to Google Analytics. Businesses can use CallFire to record calls, as well. CallFire’s pricing plans range from $99 to $599 per month. The company also offers a pay-as-you-go plan with no start-up costs.

Stephanie Miles is a senior editor at Street Fight.

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Stephanie Miles is a journalist who covers personal finance, technology, and real estate. As Street Fight’s senior editor, she is particularly interested in how local merchants and national brands are utilizing hyperlocal technology to reach consumers. She has written for FHM, the Daily News, Working World, Gawker, Cityfile, and Recessionwire.