The next digital battleground: inbound call marketing

The explosion of mobile devices has created an unintended problem: it’s become too easy, in some cases, for consumers to inbound dial a company from their ubiquitous mobile devices, regardless of whether they have any intention of buying a company’s products or services. This wastes time and money for the company, and contributes to consumer frustration over what they perceive as irrelevant ads.

Welcome to the next digital battleground: inbound call marketing. Savvy marketers need to understand how they can tap into the growing inbound direct response call marketing space to acquire new leads and customers, while doing so in a smart, deliberate manner that helps cut down on customer acquisition and media buying costs.

Not every lead is created equal

When your inbound marketing campaign is bringing in leads hand over fist, and your boss is giving you high-fives, it’s easy to forget that all of those leads still need to be converted into sales. As it becomes easier for consumers to dial your call centre, it also becomes more expensive to service those leads. Before launching an inbound call marketing campaign, carefully consider your key performance metrics, and also your combined media and lead servicing costs. Often, it may be more cost effective, and yield better performance, if you’re more judicious upfront with which leads you will accept, rather than allowing every lead to come over the transom and flood your call centre. It’s a cliché, but lead quality definitely trumps lead quantity when it comes to inbound call marketing campaigns.

Build lead flows that create user engagement

It may sound counterintuitive, but in mobile direct response marketing, it’s better to have consumers linger on and engage with your site than to immediately dial your call centre. The reason is rather simple: people will learn more about your products and services, which improves the quality of calls into your sales team which, in turn, improves lead conversion. Resist the urge to flash a big ‘Call Now!’ button on your mobile landing page. Instead, direct the user’s eye to the key elements of your product or service. If you’re feeling particularly confident in your mobile lead-gen campaign, have the user fill out a lead form before showing them the call centre phone number. You will be surprised at how much the simple act of filling out their name and contact information improves the quality of your inbound leads.

Avoid the click-to-call functionality trap

Click-to-call buttons have their time and place, but are often overused and/or poorly implemented. Unless you want every random errant click to bog down your sale team’s time and energy, keep the click-to-call button off of your mobile landing page. Instead, make the user fill out a short, one-screen contact form and then provide the ability to click-to-call your business, but only after they have given you some basic information. That way, your sales team can quickly look up their profile when the call comes in and will immediately know whether it’s a qualified lead or not.

As the world becomes more mobile there are an increasing number of ways that companies can profitably engage, acquire and retain new and existing customers. Inbound call marketing presents a smart, cost-effective way for companies to achieve their digital marketing goals, so long as you avoid some common pitfalls. It’s up to the savvy marketer to understand how to best utilise this option for optimal mobile campaign performance while minising expenses and wasted time.

Daryl Colwell is a senior vice president at Matomy Media Group. He tweets @dhcolwell.