Social Media

More accurately measure social media campaign success by including call data

Social media has provided a fantastic vehicle to engage prospects through targeted campaigns. Cleverly designed ads on Facebook and Linkedin have the propensity to capture a prospect’s imagination because they can relate directly to the service or product on offer.

In general there are two call-to-action possibilities from a social media ad. You might encourage the prospect to click through to your website, who would then be urged to fill out an online submission form or to telephone your call centre for more information. The other option is to invite the lead to phone your team directly from the social media.

Under either option, the call as a conversion is important aspect of using social media platforms as an advertising source. Impressions and click-through-rates are an important measurement, but if you’re not also including the volume of calls inspired by SM campaigns then you’re missing an essential metric of campaign measurement.

With a call tracking solution, such as the option offered by Delacon, you will be able to accurately measure both calls made direct from a social media advertisement and calls made from your website after the prospect clicked on the facebook ad.

So how do you track calls inspired by a social media campaign?

To track calls direct from a social media ad, Delacon would provision a call tracking number for the specific purpose of measuring the volume of calls. This call tracking number will only be used for that individual ad.  By using this number, you’ll be able to accurately identify the campaign source of the callers. You can also use Delacon’s sophisticated call routing functionality to route these callers to a dedicated team trained in handling the requirements of the ad.

To track calls from your website after the prospect was directed there from the social media ad, you’ll need to add Delacon’s standard call tracking code to your website and have in place an appropriate amount of dynamic numbers.

Additionally, to identify the source, you need to add a utm code to the referral URL, the link that you’re including in the social media ad that you want prospects to click on. At the end of the URL you need to add ?utm_plasource=socialmediaad. The “socialmediaad,” can be any wording you like so that you can identify the source in the reports. This additional code could be ?utm_plasource=socialmediafacebookad or even ?utm_plasource=socialmediachristmasfacebookcampaign.

With the inclusion of both call and click conversions inspired by social media campaigns, you’ll then be able to more accurately determine the true return on investment for the platforms and you’ll be able to divert resources to the best performing advertising platforms for your business.

And when measured against your cost-per-lead benchmark, you’ll be able to determine which campaign source is truly delivering the best bang for your advertising dollar.

Lyndon Barnett

Lyndon has always been fascinated by technology.