The Marchex Blog

Marketing Attribution for Phone Calls – Part 1 of a 3-part series

One of the main reasons that marketers seek call tracking is for attribution: They want data that measures marketing tactics that drive phone calls. There are many reasons for wanting attribution:

  • Validation that budget spend is driving required leads
  • Performance measures of different channels and tactics
  • Proof that efforts are deriving value

There are several strategies a business can use when deploying call tracking and which one a business chooses has to do with what they are trying to learn.

This 4-part series on marketing attribution will cover four strategies that offer insights to marketers with differing goals. In this post, we cover campaign attribution at the highest level. This is when marketers use a single call tracking number (CTN) to understand campaign performance.

Call tracking originated to help marketers overcome a blind spot—knowing if their advertising was driving people to call. By using a unique phone number on their direct mail assets, billboards and print ads, marketers could learn how well their marketing tactics were working. While the number of channels a prospect can reach a business has proliferated, this strategy is essentially the same today as it was a decade ago.

By putting the same CTN on all campaign assets, whether they be digital ads, landing pages, TV spots or mailers, marketers can learn how many phone calls were driven by their marketing efforts. This can be a good starting point for a business that is currently not tracking their inbound calls. While this information can uncover the number of calls a marketing campaign is generating, it doesn’t help a marketer know what to do to improve performance.

For more advanced strategies, keep an eye on our blog for the next installment of our marketing attribution series.

For more information on this and other marketing attribution strategies, download our eBook: 4 ways to use call tracking in your marketing campaigns.