Pay-Per-Call Performance Marketing Tips Spanish

Pay-Per-Call Spanish Performance Marketing By Evgeni Prussakov

Pay-per-call advertising has been growing rapidly over the last year or so, allowing advertisers and publishers to generate hot leads from potential customers who prefer to use the phone. Some industry insiders are already estimating that it will become a multi-billion dollar market, with companies like RingRevenue, KeyMetric, CallButton, ValueLeads and others extending the pay-per-call payment model into affiliate marketing.

Pay-per-call bridges the gap between online and offline by making it possible for affiliates to drive phone leads too. For merchants, the beauty of the performance-based pay-per-call marketing is, of course, the low financial risk involved. The action that will trigger an affiliate payment is predefined (e.g.: calls over 3 minutes), and tracking is handled by the service provider.

Tips from Jason Spievak, CEO of RingRevenue who is one of the leaders in the space, to discuss why pay-per-call is growing so fast and what merchant and affiliates need to know.

Geno: Let’s start with an overview of how pay-per-call works. What is the concept behind it?

Jason: Pay-per-call lets advertisers track calls like clicks. It utilizes unique toll-free and local phone numbers in both online and offline advertising to track the source and effectiveness of an ad campaign. For example, let’s say you see a billboard on the side of the highway advertising a product you want to learn more about. You call that number, and the advertiser is able to know exactly which billboard prompted your call. He may be running ads on billboards and other media all over the country, but now he can track where your call came from. That data can then be combined with information from the other media outlets to measure effectiveness and which ones his customers are finding to be the most relevant. When used within an affiliate marketing model, advertisers first sign up with a network partner and then create their pay-per-call campaigns, setting criteria to define what a “quality” lead means to them. Publishers apply to the campaigns, select one or more unique phone numbers and then run the promotions either online and/or offline. When a consumer sees the phone number and calls, the network tracks the call and if it meets the advertiser’s criteria the call is connected and the publisher earns a commission.

Geno: Does a pay-per-call program compete in any way with an online affiliate program?

Jason: Actually it’s quite the opposite. It’s not a matter of calls or clicks, it’s about calls and clicks. We’ve seen click-through rates increase by 5%-30% as a result of the credibility implied by displaying a phone number in an ad. When consumers see that a company can be reached by phone if necessary, it makes them more comfortable and willing to engage with the ad and complete a purchase. That applies whether they complete the transaction by phone or online. Pay-per-call is becoming an important complement to online affiliate programs, improving overall ad effectiveness while expanding affiliate opportunities to include big-ticket purchases more likely to close over the phone, and openingup exciting new channels like mobile and offline. Adding pay-per-call to a merchant’s online affiliate program is also proving to be a great way to recruit new publishers. It’s pretty common in the first 30 days of a new pay-per-call program launching that the merchant will pick up hundreds of new publisher applications.

Geno: Can you give me any examples of how pay-per-call has opened up new opportunities for either merchants or affiliates?

Jason: Sure. ServiceMagic is an online marketplace that connects homeowners with service professionals. Until recently, they offered no offline opportunities for their affiliates, but in the last few months they have been using the LinkShare pay-per-call service. As the interest of their pay-per-call affiliates in these opportunities has increased, they began to expand the variety of offline marketing channels they were offering. As a result, ServiceMagic affiliates can now drive traffic via flyers, radio and print ads, for example, using unique phone numbers that enable the company to track and then compensate affiliates accordingly. Mobile is also proving to be strong channel for many merchants. The challenge with many mobile campaigns is that many mobile publishers are able to drive a lot of calls, but they aren’t always well qualified. Historically this has presented a problem for the merchant because they don’t want their call center agents spending time answering calls from unqualified callers. Pay-per-call platforms can allow the merchant to screen, survey and filter these calls before they reach the call center. By doing this, the technology creates a win-win where mobile publishers can run broad based promotions and merchants only accept and pay for the quality calls. To take my company as an example, just over 50% of calls generated across our partner platforms in the past month have come from offline publishers, including mobile.

Geno: An issue that I have been campaigning about is the danger of “phone leakage”, where if a merchant has their own phone number displayed on their website it may take sales credit away from a referring affiliate. It’s critically important that affiliates are credited with the sales they are entitled to. Can concerns about phone leakage be addressed with your technology?

Jason: Yes, our solution allows the affiliate’s trackable phone number to be injected into the merchant’s website in place of the merchant’s default number. When a potential customer clicks on the affiliate’s ad, the click URL passes a unique identifier that the merchant can use to switch out their main phone number with the publisher’s phone number so that anytime the site visitor is on the merchant’s site, they will see the phone number that was assigned to that specific publisher.

Geno: What are the main benefits to merchants that result from pay-per-call programs?

Jason: I think there are three main benefits.

• Pay-per-call makes all advertising more effective. Customers have an increased sense of security doing business with a company that is also reachable by phone if they have questions. For merchants who offer the option to either call or click, we see both methods of contact increase.
• Pay-per-call increases sales. Studies show that calls convert to sales at a rate of 30%-50% and that the average order value of sales closed over the phone is 1.5 to 2 times better than those sales that convert online. What’s more, since consumers are more likely to buy big-ticket items when they can speak to someone live, pay-per-call allows merchants to offer higher value products through the affiliate channel. The bottom line is that consumers want human interaction. If you aren’t giving it to them, you’re losing them.
• Pay-per-call provides a gateway to a multitude of marketing channels where most dollars are spent but where tracking and compensation have proven difficult. Online advertising spend represents approximately only one-tenth of spend on offline advertising. Pay-per-call brings the performance-based model and online tracking and targeting technology to the offline world, creating an unprecedented opportunity for advertisers.

Geno: I’ve personally have seen a new pay-per-call program yielding up to 25% conversions.

Jason: Exactly. It’s also worth noting that, despite all the benefits associated with running pay-per-call campaigns, there’s really no up-front financial risk. Performance-based pricing and customizable lead criteria mean advertisers pay only for high-quality results and merchants can scale call volume at a rate they are comfortable with. As you say, it’s a great opportunity.

Jason Spievak is the co-founder and CEO of RingRevenue, a leading provider of telephony solutions to the performance marketing industry.