Pulling Levers Blog
Archive for October, 2007
Making the Call – Attributing phone sales to paid search
Posted by Jamie Watanabe on October 1, 2007 within Search Engine Marketing. | No Comments
One of the more difficult measurements for online marketers is the contribution of online campaigns to phone sales. Often times retailers promote considered purchases, with consumers needing the security of talking to a “live” person before purchasing. In the case of service organizations or B2B companies, the phone is the easiest and often the only/best way to complete a sale. Yet, with the performance-based nature of search marketing, paid search return is often only calculated on transactions that can be directly derived from that transaction occurring on the site (i.e. customer conducts and completes a sale online). What is often ignored is how search plays into driving inbound sales calls. Even though the transaction is ultimately closed offline, it may have started with a click on a search ad. These sales (or at least a portion of) should be attributed paid search.