Google Ads (formerly AdWords) helps you reach new and existing customers each time they browse the web. It’s one of the top advertising tools used by marketers and provides a huge amount of value by helping you better track your ad spend and ROI. CallRail’s Google Ads integration adds more power to your campaigns by…

How many times have you sat down with a client and given them details of their marketing campaign performance, only to be met with difficult-to-answer questions about where or how you got this data? Reporting on lead generation and marketing attribution is one of the biggest parts of your job. And when you’re face-to-face with…

When it comes to focusing on lead-generation campaigns, quality and quantity matter –– but it’s by no means an easy balance. When you have a higher CPL, it’s important to factor in LTV (lifetime value) to make sure that your acquisition cost is profitable. In this post, we’ll review several simple ways you can make…

One of the biggest challenges any marketing agency will face is client retention. While it can be (relatively) easy to get leads on the hook, and even to convert those leads into paying clients for a month or two, it’s far harder to keep them on board for months or years at a time. For…

Pinpointing when, how, and why conversions are happening is an ongoing challenge for marketers. Determining which metrics to track in order to gain a deeper understanding of conversions is even more difficult. Fortunately, there’s a solution: Attribution modeling. Attribution modeling provides insights that can help you better gauge how leads are interacting with campaigns and…

User research is the process of discovering your customers’ needs, desires, frustrations, and behaviors, and then using that information to improve your product, service, or marketing. It’s the cornerstone of UX and user-centered design, but it can be difficult to gather reliable user research on a regular basis. (Not to mention knowing what to do…

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the latest edition of News You Can Use. Join us for some marketing and technology news analysis, where we review the latest headlines and happenings, and break down what it all means for your business. Because being an informed reader of the news isn’t just good civics — it’s…

Whether you’re trying to espouse your political beliefs on Facebook, showcase your night on the town on Snapchat, or accumulate clout on the Gram, social media has become a central part of our lives. The same is doubly true for advertisers and marketers, which is why measuring social media KPIs has become a critical part…

Google Sheets is a spreadsheet app that can be used to create, edit, and share spreadsheet documents — all you need is an internet connection. Why use the CallRail + Google Sheets Zap? Digital marketing is becoming an increasingly data-driven (and data-centric) line of work. Google Sheets is a way for marketers to easily organize…

A virtual phone number is a number that isn’t associated with any specific phone line, and is used to route calls to the proper receiver. These calls can then be rerouted to a phone line, app, site, or voicemail inbox. A virtual phone number works in the same way as a mall directory or guest…

CPC bidding: This once-powerful tool for search marketers has slowly been relegated to the sidelines in favor of hyper-intelligent machine learning algorithms and the power of the almighty “G”. This may sound like bit of an exaggeration, but soon enough, manually altering our bids to improve performance will be a thing of the past. You…

In 2018, businesses are accustomed to validating decisions with data –– especially budgetary decisions. This makes reporting for cost per lead (CPL) and return on ad spend (ROAS) critical for today’s marketers. Mining and surfacing this data is the name of the game. Of course, that’s easier said than done. There are high-funnel proxy marketing…

We’ve all heard the buzzwords “data-driven marketing” in just about every industry article and every presentation at a marketing event. As tools for marketing attribution data and analytics have become more sophisticated and reliable, companies have come to depend on these numbers to perfect their campaigns, determine what is and isn’t driving leads, and figure…

You know the expression, “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” There’s an equivalent when it comes to data presentation: “If you put compelling data into a mediocre presentation, will your clients be convinced to keep you on retainer?” When digging through…

HIPAA, which stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, is a US law which establishes privacy standards that protect patients’ medical records and other health information provided to health plans, doctors, hospitals and other health care providers. What is PHI? Protected Health Information (PHI) under HIPAA Privacy Rule provides federal protections…

Imagine you’re a fine art collector having framed work hung up on a wall in your home. You admire how beautiful your new abstract painting looks with your modern furniture — until the nails bend ever so slightly too much, and the entire frame comes crashing to the floor. Your art is damaged, there’s glass…

In today’s rapidly-evolving career landscape, many of us can relate to taking a job in an industry completely unrelated to our college degree. Whitney Bennett can say she not only forged a career in a field different from her educational background, she navigated uncharted waters to build a thriving human resources department where none previously…

When I was a teenager, I had to closely watch my Cingular minutes to avoid getting in trouble for overage charges. And there were many months when the cell phone bill would arrive in the mail and I would get a rebuke from my folks for spending too much time on phone calls. Back then,…

Hello there, and welcome back to your favorite recurring series on the CallRail blog: News You Can Use. We review and explain the most important marketing and tech news, and break down how they may impact the wider economy. Staying abreast of the latest headlines is crucial for businesses, no matter what industry you’re in.…

Geo-routing (geographical routing) is an algorithmic tool that routes phone calls to a set destination based on the geographical location of the caller. With geo-reouting, callers are automatically routed according to the area code provided through caller ID, by manually entering the zip code of where they are located. Benefits of Geo-routing for Franchises With more…

As a pay-per-click (PPC) expert, there’s no denying that your marketing tools are supremely important to your job. You live in powerhouse platforms like Google Ads (formerly AdWords) and are always on the hunt for the best software to juggle a near-infinite number of tasks. After all, using top-tier tools and methods is what helps…

Nearly three years ago, CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence (CI) team started a journey into uncharted territory. The challenge: Use machine learning and AI to create a tool that makes classifying the quality of a phone call completely automated, saving valuable time for our users. At CallRail, our CI team is dedicated to giving businesses of all…

No matter how well you target your PPC campaigns, poorly designed ads and landing pages can make or break their success. The steps below will help you craft a high-converting PPC campaign, from first click to conversion. Step 1: Writing a PPC ad Before you start crafting your PPC landing page, you need to make…

Most CallRail case studies begin with a little shoe-leather research on our end — we review our internal analytics, see which users and industries are the most active, and then reach out to do interviews with the most notable accounts we’ve discovered. It’s less common for a case study to come directly to us, but that’s…

Hello, and welcome back to your favorite recurring segment on the CallRail blog: News You Can Use. We break down the most important headlines, and offer some tech news analysis about how these stories could affect the economic landscape. Because staying on top of the latest news isn’t just good civics — it’s also great…