More and more businesses are relying on cloud-based platforms and tools to empower their departments and offer high-quality services. In fact, G2 claims that by 2025, 85% of organizations will be “cloud first.” With cloud computing, SaaS products, and cloud telephony seeing advancements like never before, how can your business leverage the cloud to improve services and operations?

Today, we’re going to look at how cloud telephony can be used to power your marketing teams. And you’re probably wondering, what do phone services have to do with marketing and advertising? 

Cloud phone numbers — and their array of features — have revolutionized campaign tracking efforts by giving marketing teams in-depth information about their callers. We’re talking: information about demographics, preferences, and so on.

This information is useful in deciding which efforts are successful and which areas of advertising need more work. Let’s understand how!

What is Cloud Telephony?

Cloud telephony is essentially a business phone system that works through the internet or cloud. In other words, you can build a phone system virtually instead of tying it to a particular physical location. This gives you the flexibility to run and operate the phone system from any location. 

At its core, a cloud telephony system typically includes:

• VoIP services – Voice over internet protocol (IP) technology that transmits calls over the internet.
• Cloud-based business phone numbers – Virtual phone numbers that directly route over the internet. You can get phone numbers from different regions and countries, as needed.
• Internet connection – To successfully connect and make high-quality voice calls, supporting both inbound and outbound calling.

Why Switch to a Cloud Phone System?

Cloud calling helps businesses across various departments including sales, customer support, and marketing. Here’s a closer look:

Use local phone numbers — Streamline the calling process by using phone numbers with local area codes when making outbound calls to prospects and customers in different countries. 

Sales teams can use this to increase connection rates since prospects are more likely to answer calls from familiar numbers. Marketing teams can use this to conduct local market research or evaluate new potential markets.

Set advanced forwarding and routing — Automatically forward incoming calls to relevant departments and locations so callers can get support quickly.

Customer support teams can use this to send callers to the right department and improve first call resolution rates. Marketing teams can use this to understand where callers are calling from.

Save communication-related costs — Get high-quality local and international calling for comparatively inexpensive rates and without increasing overhead costs. A cost-effective way to upgrade your legacy phone system.

Since calls travel virtually, your teams can be located anywhere and communicate via any device. This means, no need to open multiple offices in new locations or invest in new hardware.

What Does Call Tracking Factor In?

So, where does call tracking come in, and what exactly is it? Call tracking is the method of studying and identifying where your calls are coming from. This process involves understanding:

• Where and how potential customers interact with your company
• And what convinced them to reach out to your business for a sale or query.

More specifically, by tracking calls, you can determine what marketing efforts are bringing these prospects closer to your business.

Your marketing teams can use this tactic to determine how well their strategies are working. Based on this, they can then decide to pursue certain strategies or make way for new ones. When you make tracking calls part of your marketing strategy, you can:

• Meet your customers where they are and customize your approach to meet their needs
• Compare different country campaigns and efforts side-by-side.
• Calculate ROI of all your local and global campaigns, and so on.

How Can You Track Calls?

Now, there are a few ways to watch and track incoming calls, depending on your business’ budget and resources.

1. Manual Call Tracking

You can integrate tracking within your call checklist. Have reps and agents ask callers where they are calling from during the intake part of the call, where they collect customer information. Alternatively, you can have reps conduct or send out surveys in follow-up emails or text messages. They can then note the collected information within your CRM. 

While this seems like an easy enough process, manually taking surveys and noting down responses can be time-consuming. And especially during a high call volume period, your reps and agents may struggle.

2. Using Cloud Phone Numbers to Track Calls

Another option is to use cloud phone numbers and forward all incoming calls to your main support center. You can run location-focused tracking with phone numbers from different target countries and regions. In this method, you buy country-specific numbers – like a Mexico local number or UK phone number – and advertise them on your marketing platforms. Then, when calls are made to a specific country number, you know where the callers are calling from. This way, you can easily track calls internationally or locally. And, you can determine which locations or markets are most responding well to your marketing efforts.

Or, you can choose campaign-focused tracking by distributing the numbers on different platforms. For example, advertise the toll-free number on your website. And then promote your local numbers in local stores, billboards, and other advertisements. Now, when customers call a particular number, you can tell if they’ve visited your website or come across a local ad.

Based on those results, you can choose to increase efforts in those areas or move focus to lesser-performing areas. You can also get a better idea of the demographic interested in your product or service and start catering more specifically to them.

3. Investing in Tracking Software

Lastly, you can purchase and use call tracking software to get advanced reports on incoming calls attached to different locations and campaigns. Again, this software will integrate with your cloud phone system to bring you desired results. 

Tracking software often provides detailed information about call and caller details, and is typically an option large enterprises choose to track very high call traffic. However, such software can be expensive, so research well to find one that is suitable for you.

Which Solution is Right for You? 

As you can see, tracking incoming calls is beneficial in understanding where your customers are coming from and how you can serve them better. But you need to find the right solution for your needs, budget, and resources.

Want to give call tracking a try? Start by researching different cloud phone services and call-tracking software providers. Understand what they offer and how much of that you actually need. Take into account the size and extent of your business, customer-facing teams, and audience. Then, compare all of this with your budget to arrive at the right figure. 

Once set up, call tracking will help you get closer to understanding your audience, making it easier for you to serve them better!