Inbound Marketers: Increase Lead Generation with a Professional Answering Service

Posted June 5, 2014 in professional answering service by TechArk Support

As an “inbound” marketer, you put a lot of analysis increase lead generation with a professional answering service and thought into the user experience on your web presence. You build campaigns based on your visitors’ needs, desires, and wants and you try to deliver the ideal content to their searches. Your calls-to-action are attention grabbing, and your landing pages are optimized for awesome conversion rates, but what about those web visitors who don’t fill out your forms – but instead pick up their phones and call? It might be hard to see how your current marketing efforts and hiring a professional answering service are alike, and the truth is that while they don’t have much in common, they can and should work together to help you convert your website visitors into customers.

ALL Phone Leads Count Too!

There is a lot of focus on driving visitors to your website and getting them to convert on your landing pages. While, of course, this is vital to building, creating, and nurturing your site-based leads, have you considered that the percentage of your non-converting visitors become a lead in a different way? Not everyone who fails to fill out a form or click a CTA is uninterested in your services – they could simply not be interested in filling out forms online.

Lead generation is huge for marketers. You must be able to show value from your efforts and if you don’t have an effective way to count non-form leads, you could be missing a good portion of leads you are trying to measure.

Capturing Phone Leads

Anyone who first visits your site and then reaches out for contact should be considering a web-based lead – but how can you track that? With online marketing automation software, you’re able to capture lead intelligence based on the information you provide and create reports to analyze the success of your lead generation.

Using tracking numbers on your site gives you the ability to use a roster of different phone numbers that will auto-generate on your website based on where a visitor originated from. If you utilize PPC as part of your marketing efforts, you can track the number of calls you receive every month from those ads. Some phone tracking companies even allow you to see what keyword was used during the organic search that lead to your site and ultimately to the inbound call.

Even if full-service phone number tracking is more than you need at the moment, consider designating a single phone number to display in your online marketing efforts – including the website itself. By being able to determine the calls that were made to that number, you can have a better understanding of the leads your online marketing generated.

“Hello” is the Most Important Word

As an inbound marketer, you understand the value in capturing lead information based on the phone calls originating from your website – but it’s vital you see that your efforts shouldn’t stop there. Think back to all the time, frustration, effort, brainpower, research, data analysis, and maybe the few tears you put into creating a website that was built to attract and convert your visitors into leads. Every social media post, PPC ad, call-to-action, and landing page you create has a purpose and a goal.

Imagine the experience a web visitor has after seeing a social media post of yours, then visiting your site and finding exactly what he or she wanted. Now, let’s say this person is in a hurry and doesn’t take time to fill out the form, but instead calls your phone number. What happens now? Ideally, your new web lead is greeted immediately by a friendly voice and they are given options that they can take right now to help them. Your web presence is 24/7, but your human resources are not. As your business grows, staff members are busy and often cannot get to the phone. You’ve got exactly what you want – an interested prospect that has his or her full attention focused on your offering – and they get… a voice-mail prompt?? Talk about a major disconnect in what was almost a great user experience!

Don’t slow down your lead’s momentum because you or your staff are unable to answer the phone, engage a professional answering service company who can always be there to make sure you lead hears, “Hello, thank you for calling!” Answering services go far beyond just a voice on the phone and can easily become a vital part of your team, assisting you in delivering a cohesive customer service experience from the first web search to the very first, “Hello!” your new lead will hear!

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