The Overlooked Value Of Pay Per Call Advertising [Infographic]

Martin Schneck

The star of today’s digital marketing arena is pay per click advertising. When someone wants to advertise on the internet, they run straight to Google, Bing, or another ad center to buy PPC ads.

But that doesn’t mean PPC is your best option.

Pay per call advertising is an often overlooked, but increasingly popular option for many digital advertisers. The rise of mobile browsing has heralded a new cash cow for advertisers: the phone call. By leveraging human interaction and reviving the one-on-one sales pitch, calls can drive major ROI on your campaign.

But, of course, you’re not going to take my word for it. Take a look at this infographic, and you’ll see why calls are so popular, and what they can provide to your digital advertising campaign.

People Prefer To Call

Contrary to what you may think, people actually prefer to call businesses instead of filling out forms. These calls are particularly popular over mobile phones, since someone can simply tap an ad to make a call.

Think I’m lying? The data doesn’t lie.

• 75% of consumers say a phone call is the quickest way to get a response.
  
• 45% of consumers believe that calling a company is the best way to resolve a problem (while 19% answered email, and 13% answered social media).
  
• 89% of local mobile conversions occur offline.
  
• 40% of marketers believe consumers are uncomfortable filling out forms on their smartphones.
  
• 70% of people have called a business directly from a mobile search ad.

See Immediate Returns

While calls are often more expensive than clicks on a per-unit basis, they generally have much higher conversion rates. Invoca found them to be as high as 30-50% in their own research, compared to an average 2% conversion rate for clicks.

Depending on your specific conversion rate and click/call costs, you may find that your calls cost less per conversion than clicks.

• With a cost of $ 1 per click, and a conversion rate of 2%, you’re paying $ 50 per conversion.
  
• With a cost of $ 10 per call, and a conversion rate of 40%, you’re paying $ 25 per conversion.

Take a look at your click and call advertising metrics. You might find that pay per call can get you a greater ROI.

Pay Per Call Is Rapidly Growing

Currently, $ 64.6 billion is spent annually to generate calls to businesses. But this number is expected to rise with the growing market.

By 2016, affiliate marketing spend alone is expected to reach $ 4.5 billion. Mobile search users will also reach 225 million people, and mobile ad spend will account for 51% of total digital ad spend at $ 101.3 billion.

By 2019, global mobile ad spend is expected to hit $ 195.5 billion. And 162 billion calls are expected to be made to business from smartphones per year.

Make The Transition

This is not a trend that’s going away. There’s so much value in pay per call advertising, and it’s going to drive the industry forward. But don’t wait too long, here are more reasons why you should consider pay per call advertising today.

• Identify and Convert Potential Leads. Calls make it easy to reach out to potential leads at the end of their buyer’s journey, making it that much simpler to make a sale.
  
• Close Current Leads. Engage with your bottom-funnel customers. Calls allow you to really drive those leads into sales.
  
• Strategize. Use targeting tools like dayparting or geotargeting to capture the right leads at the right time (boosting your conversions).
  
• Consider All Solutions for Optimal Reach. There are many vehicles for pay per call: TV commercials, radio, click to call, warm transfers, abandoned phone calls. You can easily find a call solution that will be perfect for your campaign.

So if you were skeptical before, you shouldn’t be anymore. Consider adding pay per call to your advertising strategy, and watch the conversions roll in.

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