Making the Right Cuts In A Tough Economy Requires Insight

As the Great Recession plods on, with occasional signs of recovery, many businesses have had to make difficult cuts in their expenses to survive and even mildly prosper.  The challenge is that for many advertisers, even in the age of so-called Internet accountability, they may be scratching their head as they echo the oft-quoted comment of John Wanamaker, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”  That’s why marketers need the right tools to help them discern what advertising is actually working, so that they’re cutting waste out, instead of the right arm that provides new leads and sales off.

One of the keys to understanding how to optimize advertising is to profile what the consumer who is buying looks like and one of the easiest ways to do this is with accurate call tracking, call recording and caller demographics.  With state of the art call tracking, a marketer can drill down and determine how many unique inbound calls they are receiving and then separate buyers from inquiries that lasted long enough to be genuine prospects.  Then, with the right software, a marketer can literally listen to each and every call — from buyers as well as non-buyers — to figure out vital information which includes the most common objections that non-buyers have for not buying.  Is there something about the product that is not clearly understood that could perhaps be easily addressed by fixing the creative messaging?  Is there a disconnect between price and value?  Is the consumer looking to buy the product at bricks and mortar retail?  Unlike focus group research, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars, such call recording can provide powerful qualitative and quantitative insight for a fraction of the cost.  Lastly, the right call tracking software can even do a reverse append against the caller’s phone number and basic household demographic information such as household make-up, income, home ownership and the like can be obtained to give a marketer a sense of who their primary buyer is.  This data can be vital for media planning purposes so that future advertising is targeted toward similar groups of prospects.

Leveraging such marketing optimization tools can help marketers save money on less effective advertising, and increase leads and sales.  But gaining such insight requires not only the right tools, but a commitment to utilizing them.  Fortunately, the best software available today is intuitive and only requires the briefest of learning curve.  The rewards to be reaped by the right call tracking and call recording tools are another matter; however, for they can provide benefits that are ever-lasting.