There’s something ironic about a company who seeks to unify the world under its digital ecosphere embracing offline activity, but Facebook is doing it, and they’re quite wise to. The question is, will you follow their lead (if you aren’t doing so already)?
We’re all wrestling with the idea of proper channel attribution these days. But all too often the discussion stops with “should I credit my paid ad, organic listing, display ad, mobile site, or social interaction for my sale,” and doesn’t carry off the screen and onto the phone. Many brands that I’ve worked with over the years see significantly more offline conversions than online.
If you’re not tying offline activity to online activity, you’re making a big mistake – one that could severely skew your budget allocation practices. After all, those folks calling your local or toll free line had to hear about you somewhere. For many companies, simply correctly attributing a few more sales to a paid search program per week could paint a much stronger ROI picture. The same goes for other mediums as well. There’s a wealth of great data to be extracted by tying offline to online. What are some things you can do to make that connection?
- Call Tracking Lines: This is the most obvious solution, and one of the most effective. Call tracking options vary in levels of sophistication of implementation. On the higher end, you can configure your site’s landing pages so that call tracking lines are dynamically inserted, and then through your internal call center tracking, tie the call to future revenue produced. Or you may opt for a lower tech implementation with call tracking lines placed on static landing pages or simply in ads.
- Click-to-Call: Google has introduced click to call technology for AdWords, featured not only on mobile but on PC-targeted ads as well. These are managed through a bidding/relevancy process just as any other AdWords ad, and the great benefit here is that in addition to simply seeing how many total calls came from your paid search ads, you can tie a call back to a specific keyword, and then make future optimizations based on the most successful terms.
- Offer Codes: Another old standby, offer codes can range from low-tech implementations such as having channel-specific codes that customers can recite to the call center or mention in person, to more sophisticated offerings like Google Offers for local businesses. The mobile arena is one that’s especially fertile for this sort of activity, and an area where measurement is especially important.
These are just a few of the more popular and accurate ways to improve attribution of online activity. Are you testing out other methods as well and finding success? Just think of how many calls your call center receives every day, and then ask yourself what you are doing to maximize the information that lies in all that activity. Take it from Facebook, sometimes to truly understand the value of online efforts, you need to go offline.