Although we now have apps and the internet to do just about anything—from ordering food and goods to be delivered to our homes or make appointments—savvy business owners know that the phone call is still the top way to actually convert a new customer.

Calls have 30 to 50 percent conversion rates while clicks top out at 1 to 2 percent.

We had a chance to do a write up for the CallTrackingMetrics blog, on how we’re using their product to amplify our lead generation projects.

We called the company Claim Your Space for a reason—because position matters. Like my post picture up above here. An airplane in the sky, above the water line—totally normal. The same airplane below the water—not so good. The threshold is meaningful. The SEO guys have preached it for years. It’s no less important in paid search.

Big budget projects are great. They give us tons of room to try a wide breadth of tactics. And they produce the requisite data to gather statistically relevant conclusions. But small businesses can benefit from high-quality, targeted search traffic from Google Ads too. CYS is having success working with small advertisers and small budgets. It's all about setting up a solid foundation, being patient, and limiting management expenses. 

Digital marketing optimization is hard. Set up is easy(ier). Results usually come quick with Adwords. But what do you do next? How much is possible? What's the best keyword? Bidding strategy? Time of day? Set up is easy. Set it up, make sure you have conversion tracking dialed in, let it run. Making it better (or fixing it when something goes sideways) is much, much harder. 

Cost-per-lead measurement leaves something to be desired, doesn’t it? Getting beyond CPL is hard work that requires commitment from agency and client alike. Here’s how we did it. This project represents (as of now) six months worth of work, through numerous iterations of ‘most current, best truth’. The value is clear: Know and optimize for the cost to generate an appointment.

As usual, we're experimenting! This time with different remarketing tactics on Facebook to see if we can identify any patterns. This test ran over 20 days, spent about $1k in ad budget and was set up make comparisons between two primary variables, 1.) remarketing list size length, comparing 7 days vs 90 day and 2.) campaign objectives, comparing Link Clicks vs Brand Awareness vs Engagement. Here's the total results from all campaigns: