From advancements in voice commerce to unique use cases of artificial intelligence (AI), many new tech innovations have popped up in the industry in the first few months of 2018 alone.
As Juniper Research notes, these emerging solutions are poised to disrupt how businesses operate and interact with consumers in a major way.
However, whether because tech retailers are more familiar with new marketing technologies or feel extra pressure to keep up with the Joneses, they too can easily fall into the trap of picking what’s most popular, when in reality many would benefit greatly and more immediately from a technology they’re inclined to skip over: call-tracking solutions.
With most technologies so easily accessible, tech retailers may think they have it all figured out. However, just because you’re turning a profit doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities to improve your marketing strategies and customer experiences. Consider these three scenarios where a sophisticated call-tracking solution could drive more valuable interactions with your customers:
Data-driven advertisements: As a technology retailer, you know you can rely on a steady influx of customers. However, it’s still important to understand where your advertising dollars are going across all channels, and if they’re performing well. Call tracking makes sense of this multi-touch sales environment.
Consider, for instance, that while people may still visit stores to buy big-ticket tech items like TVs, they’re likely doing ample digital research beforehand. This journey includes multiple devices (phone, desktop, tablet) and channels (brand websites, social media, Google searches).
Top call-tracking solutions allow users to assign unique phone numbers to different ads; this helps you pinpoint the outreach efforts that best engage shoppers, which over time enables data-driven budget decisions. If people are calling most from a social ad, you can confidently increase spend there.
Customer support: Call tracking improves the customer service process by surfacing feedback trends and equipping support teams with the information they need to assist callers.
For example, call-tracking software could spot recurring customer complaints about a malfunctioning product part — perhaps device batteries aren’t holding a charge. This insight would likely go missed if it were up to your customer support staff to spot this pattern and independently elevate it to a decision-maker’s attention.
To take this one step further, call-tracking software can even clue in support teams about individual customer needs in real time. Again, top solutions allow users to pair specific service issues with their own unique phone numbers and ad copy. This gives support staff powerful contextual information about a customer’s motivation to call, meaning he or she can preemptively find resources and answers to solve the issue.
Digital assistants and voice commerce: Without a strategy in place to handle voice search, you risk losing current footholds on the SEO (search engine optimization) search terms most important to your company. But call tracking software can help.
With a strong call-tracking system in place, you can learn how your customers search via voice and then design your strategies accordingly. This might include developing new SEO content that prioritizes natural speech, such as the use of “w” questions (who, what, when, where and why), or long-tail keyword creation, as popular voice-powered assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant empower users to ask longer questions with greater detail.
If you’re a decision-maker at a technology retailer you may be more immediately inclined to funnel resources to flashier market solutions, but that certainly isn’t the best option by default. If fact, without a business problem to justify the spend, investing in what’s popular is quite irresponsible.
But there’s very little risk in investing in call-tracking software. People will always connect with brands via the phone; the question is, will you be ready when they do?
Nancy Lim is marketing director of CallRail, a provider of call tracking and analytics to more than 80,000 companies and marketing agencies in North America.
