Your Guide to Pay-Per-Call Marketing

Pay-Per-Call Marketing Checklist 

Maximizing the inflow of quality leads is one of the most challenging tasks businesses must handle. Adopting your performance marketing strategies is the only way to rise to this challenge. 

Pay-per-call marketing is one of the strategies offering the approaches your company needs to bring in high-intent leads you can quickly convert into sales while improving revenue.

In a nutshell, pay-per-call affiliate marketing helps to generate and successfully convert incoming calls using call information and other relevant data you can collect. This article offers a comprehensive guide to this marketing and the essential software futures your business must consider. 

What Is Pay-Per-Call as a Marketing Model? 

Pay-per-call marketing is a performance-based model in which business owners pay for qualified phone calls. Pay-per-call numbers are among the best ways to connect a caller with a buying potential to the right salesperson. This marketing model allows brands to get an inflow of prospective customers without a hefty investment in brand awareness campaigns. 

One of the most significant advantages it can bring is the dynamic nature of your campaigns. For instance, an advertiser pays a fixed price for a specific volume, quality, and location of leads. 

They know how much to pay for the number of calls the campaign will attract. If advertising fails to meet the expected goal, the price will change accordingly. In other words, under no circumstances will business owners overspend.

How To Start Pay-Per-Call Advertising 

A pay-per-call marketing campaign starts with setting up a number. The number is called a Direct Inward Dialing (DID) number, routing calls to extension numbers. 

Next, the advertiser specifies the campaign parameters that depend on business preferences, including cost-per-call, hours of operation, lead volume, and more.

Most pay-per-call campaigns contact networks to facilitate their marketing efforts. The network can provide a trackable phone number for each marketing campaign that companies can promote to drive traffic. Then, qualified incoming calls reach a sales team, where the lead will be taken down the sales funnel straight to a purchase. 

Source: Prestige Marketing

The trick of pay-per-call marketing is generating leads that meet specific criteria, so an advertiser’s sales team deals with filtered, payable leads. Business owners can adopt more advanced tracking solutions like call recording and other pay-per-call operations. 

Pros of Pay-Per-Call Lead Generation 

Harnessing the power of pay-per-call has numerous advantages for businesses in different operation spheres. We assembled the list of those that can directly influence your business profitability. Let’s dive in. 

You Attract High-Intent Leads

Incoming calls reaching a campaign calling center generate high-intent prospects. The fact that a lead called a trackable phone number proves their inherent interest in the product at the given moment. A well-handled inbound call is a selling opportunity you can capitalize on. 

Here’s an example of how call lead can be processed using the right martech stack:

Source: Phonexa

By contrast, buying or building email lists can’t be as effective as pay-per-call advertising. They demonstrate lower conversion rates with fewer sales opportunities. So, strategies excel in the overall marketing efficiency.

You Expand Market Reach

Lead quality is only one part of pay-per-call marketing efficiency. Another significant factor to consider is expanded market reach. A cooperation with publishers allows advertisers to broaden their market segments. In addition, a network may house numerous publishers, which enables advertisers to extend their marketing efforts even further.  

You Optimize Cost-Effectiveness and Improve ROI

The dynamic performance-based structure allows advertisers to pay only for qualifying calls that meet the set criteria. As a result, advertisers can better calculate their marketing budgets and measure each campaign’s ROI. It leads to improved cost-effectiveness through data-based marketing decisions. 

Pay-Per-Call Technology Advancement

As part of a swiftly progressing digital world, pay-per-call marketing has undergone a rapid evolution in technology. Technological advancements allow advertisers and networks to boost efficiency levels.

Here are some of the newest technologies adopted by PPC in recent years:

1. Routing calls Using Algorithms: Such algorithms enable controllers to monitor the portion of traffic each advertiser receives. This allocation implements the revenue per call as a defining factor of call routing. As a result, networks can optimize their performance and ensure proper lead quality. 
2. Ping Post Solutions: The technology transforms an incoming call into a real-time auction, considering bids and buyer-side availability. When you receive a call, microdata is “pinged” to several lead buyers, and the publisher accepts the highest bid to route the call to the buyer. 
3. Real-time Bidding: The technology uses a real-time auction when a customer joins a funnel. Once the call starts, the customer’s profile obtains the first and third-party data. It enables advertisers to adapt their bid for that call accordingly. 

Industries That Benefit From Pay-Per-Call

Though many businesses can benefit from pay-per-call answering services, some industries use them to the fullest. These industries rely heavily on incoming calls as part of their sales funnel, and their consumers find phone calls the most convenient way to reach a service provider. 

Here are some of the spheres suitable for marketing: 

• Home Services
• Insurance
• Legal
• Personal Finance

Suppose your company offers financial services. Consumers interested in obtaining credit cards or loans will most likely call your company to discuss the details of a deal with a human representative. Engaging and converting such leads is only possible through well-thought-out campaigns. 

How To Launch a Pay-Per-Call Campaign 

Now that you know about pay-per-call marketing advantages and the technology at its core, let’s discuss how to arrange a successful campaign. Despite some variations in each campaign, there are vital steps to follow. 

Source: Phonexa

1. Finding a Pay-Per-Call Platform

The initial stage of any pay-per-call campaign implies connecting with a platform/network or publishers who will launch the campaign. Some advertisers collaborate with publishers directly, while others prefer third-party networks. The latter provides a more practical approach.

2. Defining the Product

Once the advertiser has established a partnership with a pay-per-call network/publisher, they start working on a precise description of a product being sold and promoted. The precision and clarity of such a description ensure the success of a future marketing campaign.

3. Determining Campaign Parameters 

Having worked on a clear product description, the advertiser can start defining pay-per-call campaign parameters. They typically include call volume, targeting parameters, and payment criteria. Another common practice is to set up a conversion rate, cost-per-acquisition, and return on ad spend. 

4. Configuring Pay-Per-Call Technology

At this stage, the campaign execution takes place. It consists of choosing and configuring trackable pay-per-call numbers, call routing, and other advanced technologies. Modern technologies an advertiser can incorporate are ping posts or real-time bidding. 

5. Running Tests

Once you finish configuring the technical aspects of the pay-per-call campaign, it is time to test it to ensure its proper functioning. One of the ways to do it is by recruiting test traffic. It will allow you to assess the campaign and traffic sources in real-life conditions.

6. Optimizing the Campaign 

After a successful launch of a pay-per-call campaign, the traffic you receive should be analyzed to determine whether it brings qualifying calls. Then, the advertising campaigns can undergo certain modifications to meet the KPIs you define. If you use real-time bidding, you can adjust bids by analyzing the data you retrieve on each call.

Necessary Pay-Per-Call Marketing Software Features

Now, let’s discuss the best software features available on the market. We will discuss critical features each pay-per-call software tool offers, which will help you decide whether to adopt these platforms for your marketing needs. 

Here are the major features available for software on the market: 

• Call Attribution – all referrals are unmistakably connected to their referrers.
• Call Distribution – technologies like ACD and IVR qualify callers while making it possible to connect the caller to the optimal sales or customer support operator.
• Call Insights – once the call is finished, you know where it came from, how the caller engaged before and during the call, how the operator handled the call, and more.
• Real-Time and Post-Call Analytics – call agents get real-time insights on the caller before the call starts and post-call analytics, including the record of the call.
• Unlimited Customization – you can create custom call routing schemes, trigger call recording by keywords or phrases, simulate call campaigns, and much more.

Succeeding in Pay-Per-Call Marketing 

Pay-per-call marketing is an effective way to generate convertible quality leads for a business. The technology can be beneficial for businesses that use incoming calls as a tool to inform their potential customers about specific services. 

The advancement in technologies allows advertisers to ensure the maximum ROI levels, making a marketing model more and more advertisers are eager to try. 

However, the success of a campaign depends on several factors, including a proper launch and the automation solutions a business adopts. Luckily, nowadays, advertisers have a variety of software platforms to choose from. Consider your business needs, available budget, and features offered to make an optimal decision regarding a software tool to adopt. 

Frequently Asked Questions