Some economic experts say we’re in a recession, others say we’re not in one quite yet but it’s on the horizon, and others insist we’ve narrowly avoided one. While not everyone agrees on the status of the current economic climate — nearly everyone agrees it’s down.
Business owners and managers across the country are glued to the news and watching for key indicators to better understand the economy and what their next move should be. Nearly all businesses are looking at ways to reduce expenses, and you don’t want slashing the marketing budget – or your agency – to be on the list.
But if your agency isn’t overperforming, you may find yourself on the chopping block. In a World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) survey of 43 multinational companies, nearly 30% of major advertisers say they’re cutting their ad budgets into next year. The same research showed 74% said the economic downturn is influencing their 2023 budget decisions. A full 75% of respondents said their budgets are under “heavy scrutiny,” even if they’re not currently planning a reduction. Clearly, 2023 is the year to ensure your digital marketing efforts are hitting the mark.
With this in mind, let’s take a deeper look at the top three signs your client’s account is underperforming — and what you can do to fix it. If you recognize any of these red flags, it’s time to take action before your client declines to renew their contract.
Sign 1: You’re consistently missing benchmarks
Marketing benchmarking is the measurement of how well your paid search or SEO efforts are performing. Today’s clients don’t want hopes and guesses, they want data to back up how much money they’re spending with you. In digital marketing, setting a benchmark for how many leads you will bring to your client is a best practice. If your campaigns are regularly failing to hit the mark — you have a serious problem. After all, leads are necessary to proving ROI.
Setting, meeting, and even exceeding benchmarks is much easier for agents who take advantage of the integration between CallRail and TrackRight. TrackRight is a web application designed to help website owners and SEO agencies track the performance of their marketing campaigns.
On The Map Marketing, a digital marketing agency based in Miami, FL, has achieved great success leveraging CallRail with the TrackRight integration to formulate their benchmarks. Through the CallRail platform, On the Map Account Managers create a lead benchmark for each client and review them once a week.
Checking these leads every week ensures that if an account is under its benchmark, a notification goes out. This lets teams set critical benchmarks for their clients, and keeps them informed as to whether an account is underperforming. Team members are then able to drill down further to understand what may be hindering an account’s success.
Sign 2: Your phone calls are short
If your agency is consistently not meeting the lead benchmarks for a certain client – take time to understand why. You’re putting a lot of effort into the client’s SEM and SEO, so why aren’t leads coming in? Start by taking a look at the actual calls between your client and prospects.
According to Valeria Nunez, Client Strategy Director at On The Map Marketing, her team knows there is a problem if a significant number of phone calls are under two minutes. If the call duration average for the entire week is low, this is a sign of an unhealthy account. That means the client is not engaging much, not being contacted by the right prospects, or both. With the help of CallRail’s call recordings, Nunez’s team can go back, listen, and gauge what the problem may be.
Sign 3: You only see direct traffic
When you’re using CallRail and running a PPC or SEO campaign, you are able to see the source of all calls. What happens if you see your new leads coming in as direct traffic — meaning, they head straight to your homepage even though you’ve been working for months on digital marketing campaigns? This is another red flag to watch out for.
A major benefit of using CallRail is that you can see the source of all calls. This means that even if you’re getting leads coming in as phone calls, your marketing efforts aren’t working because they’re not the source of these new leads. Let’s say all of your client’s incoming calls from the last two weeks came from the client’s Contact Us page. No problem, right? They’re still getting leads! Wrong. This means your PPC campaign is underperforming, and you can’t back up why you’re spending the client’s money on clicks.
Rather than have this uncomfortable conversation with your client in a few months, it’s best to know the digital marketing efforts the calls are coming from and adjust your strategy accordingly. Arm yourself with the information provided by CallRail and change your keyword strategy and/or adjust your bids.
How CallRail and TrackRight align to drive results for your clients
For SEO and SEM efforts, CallRail and TrackRight work together to help you prove the success of your efforts. CallRail tracks all calls from a website, meaning you’re able to pinpoint which source leads originate from. This helps your team understand which pages led to the call — and answers these critical questions:
- Which pages convert best?
- Is a specific blog bringing in more leads than others?
- Are your paid ads driving to the best landing page for conversion?
- Which leads were closed and who needs a call back?
- Which leads are qualified but not closed?
- How much money was generated from a specific call?
CallRail gives you and your team the data to answer these questions, then TrackRight qualifies the lead. You can even set TrackRight up to deliver automated daily, weekly, and/or monthly reports highlighting the metrics that are most important to you.
As Nunez explains, “We can now optimize our SEM and SEO efforts based on conversion rate. By leveraging CallRail and TrackRight together, I can see which pages people are converting on. We are then able to optimize a campaign based on the pages that drive the most conversions for the client. We can do a lot more for our clients because we can qualify each lead. It’s easier for my team, and more effective for my clients. Everyone is happy!”
Learn More About TrackRight
TrackRight is an all-in-one ranking platform that shows keyword ranking alongside lead tracking. The integration with CallRail makes it possible to qualify leads and make the best use of performance-based tracking for all of your online marketing campaigns — all from one place.
TrackRight's easy-to-use interface helps you understand which pages convert at the highest rate and which pages need attention. Learn more about TrackRight here.
