#51 - Stop Guessing: How to Track Calls and Fix Your Marketing

Most businesses have no idea where their phone calls are actually coming from—and it’s costing them more than they realize.

In this episode, we break down the difference between static numbers and dynamic call tracking (DNI), why guessing your marketing results is a dangerous game, and how improper tracking quietly drains your budget.

We also cover:
•How to actually track calls from Google Ads, SEO, and more
•The right way to balance tracking with your Google Business Profile (NAP)
•Common mistakes agencies and business owners make
•Simple tests you can run today to see if your tracking is working

If you rely on phone calls to grow your business, this is not optional.

RESOURCES:

Call Tracking Platforms

https://www.callrail.com/
Call tracking and attribution platform that ties phone calls back to marketing sources and integrates with Google Ads.

https://www.calltrackingmetrics.com/
Advanced call tracking platform with features for attribution, call routing, texting, and automation.

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Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI)

https://calltrackingmetrics.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6516810578061-How-Does-Dynamic-Number-Insertion-Work
Explains how dynamic number insertion works and how calls are tied to specific traffic sources.

https://www.callrail.com/features/dynamic-number-insertion/
Overview of how CallRail uses dynamic number insertion to track calls from different marketing channels.

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Call Tracking + Marketing Attribution

https://www.semrush.com/blog/call-tracking/
Explains how call tracking connects phone calls to campaigns, keywords, and marketing performance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call-tracking_software
General overview of how call tracking software works, including attribution and session-based tracking.

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Google Business Profile / NAP Consistency

https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177
Google’s official guidance on business information consistency, including phone numbers.

https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/local-seo/nap-citations/
Breakdown of NAP consistency and how it impacts local SEO and visibility.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken Carroll.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Phone tracking, doing it the wrong way is going to cost you thousands of dollars and puts you behind the eight ball compared to your competitors. Welcome back to Over the Bull. And today we're talking about phone tracking. Now, I know this probably sounds as exciting as a root canal, but I'm telling you right now, this is one of the most important things in your entire business. And to neglect phone tracking, or worse, misunderstand it, is a catastrophic mistake for any business that relies on phone calls. Now, call me crazy, but my guess is that's probably you. So let me ask you a simple question. Could you tell me right now exactly where your phone calls are coming from? What percentages are coming from Google Ads or Organic or anywhere else for that matter? And what are those calls actually worth to your business? Could you do that? Now most people can't. And what they do instead is they kind of guess or use the process of elimination or rely on a gut filling. And here's the reality: today you can track this on a granular level. And I mean it's not loose, guys. When I say granular, I mean granular. Now, if you're working with an agency or someone who's doing some type of marketing for you, and they can't clearly tell you where your calls are coming from, this is a huge red flag. Especially if you're spending real money. Now, let's be fair here. I work with a lot of businesses, and this situation is not just on the marketing agency. Some of this falls on the owners of a business. Because I've seen business owners spend thousands and thousands on ads but hesitate to spend a small amount of money to actually track what's working. And what it turns into is this simply trying to save pennies while bleeding thousands every month. Okay, because for a relatively small investment, you can understand where your calls are coming from, see what's actually working, and feed that data back into platforms like Google Ads. And this is where things change. Because now your marketing starts improving itself with the advent of machine learning and all these other uh mechanisms that help optimize ads. And by the way, I don't like the word optimize because it's an abused word that people use as an umbrella term, and it's just one of those buzzwords that have uh been hijacked by people who just like to use it in sales presentations. But basically, it makes things work better when I say optimize. Okay, so let's simplify this process. You don't need to be technical, you just need to understand the concept. So imagine if I have two buckets, and there's going to be something we're going to put in each one of those buckets. The first bucket we're going to label with static numbers. Now, this is what you're used to. Same number every time people call it, you answer. This is your communication main line, and it matters. Now, in the second bucket, it gets a little more complicated. We're going to talk about DNI numbers. Now, it sounds complicated, and the acronym stands for dynamic number insertion. Now, it's a fancy name, but it's a simple idea. The number changes based on how someone finds you. But here's the important part the number itself is not permanently tied to the source. So, simply said, when you have a DNI uh situation, it's basically a pool of numbers. And in those pool of numbers, you will dynamically swap based upon how someone finds your website. And it'll switch it. And when it switches it, then what you could do is you can record the source. Now most people think this number equals Google Ads, that number equals SEO, but again, this is not how that works. The system uses a pool of numbers and assigns them based on each visitor session, then tracks the source behind the scenes. So it's a tool. It's not an equation where this number equals that. And the idea is to understand the source and then let the tool be the tool and track the source and then swap out the numbers as it sees fit. That's all you really need to know. Now, let's talk about why this is critical for your business. Platforms like Google Ads are trying to optimize your campaigns. Now, campaigns is just a way you run ads within Google. It sounds really complicated, but just think a set of ads that you run for your business. But those ads need feedback. You don't run ads for clicks. Okay, now not after you start working on the ads. Now, there are multiple ways to track calls: call extensions, Google forwarding numbers, manual tracking, but DI is the most complete way to connect marketing activity to actual phone calls. Because it follows the user all the way to your website. So if someone clicks on your ad, lands on your site, and gives you a phone call, that needs to be tracked and sent back to places like Google. Otherwise, Google is making decisions without the full picture. Now, in a world of machine learning and complexity today, not feeding back that piece of the puzzle is catastrophic. There's no other way to put it. You'll never have an optimized clean campaign that does its job if you don't do this. Okay, so here's the simple truth. Incomplete tracking equals incomplete optimization. There's that darn word again. And incomplete optimization equals wasted money. It's really that simple. If you want your equation, that's your equation. Okay, now let's talk about your NAP score. Now remember, NAP consistency is important. I know, well, what is NAP? It just is an acronym for name, address, and phone number. Now you need to make this consistent across your brand, across the internet, in order to gain momentum. And if you're swapping out phone numbers, you just knocked out the P, right? Now, this is where people get nervous because they go, well, if I start using different numbers, am I going to mess up Google? Now, this is a fair question because Google does care about consistency. So, as I mentioned, Google looks at your name, your address, your phone number, and it wants consistency across your website, your Google business profile, and listings. Now, you may think, well, I don't have listings. You'd better have listings because that's why it helps build the crescendo of your Google business is by being in strategic places at strategic times. If someone says they're just going to optimize your Google business profile, but they're not talking to you about key listings in different locations and making sure that those remain consistent, you want another flag, there's you another flag. Okay, so let's break the myth here. So people assume I can only use one number everywhere. That's not entirely true. Now here's how we approach it, and this is one way to do it when implemented correctly. Your main number still exists everywhere. That's your foundation. Then on your Google Business Profile, you can use a tracking number as the primary and your real number as a secondary. Now, to be clear, Google's default recommendation is usually the opposite. But this setup works if your main number is still consistent across citations, your secondary number matches your real business number, and everything is implemented cleanly. Now, if we look on your website, this is a key component. When DNI code is properly implemented on your website, your real main number still exists in the code. The tracking number is swapped dynamically for users. So Google can still see and associate your business with your main number. Now, if it's improperly set up, you've got real problems. So you can kind of see where tech and marketing and all this kind of stuff is starting to overlap, and also with design. That's why at Integrus we try to do all of it because what we want to do is offer a complete solution that transcends the technical to the marketing all the way to the end. Because if you break a piece of it, you break all of it. Now, where people mess up, replacing their main number everywhere, letting tracking numbers spread across directories, removing their real number completely, that's when you're going to create some real problems. So remember, your main number is your identity. Your tracking numbers, well, that's your measurement. So now you've got static numbers for communication, dynamic numbers for tracking, and when combined properly, you get clarity without breaking anything. Now, have you had conversations with your agents here freelancers about this? Did you know that this even existed? Because if you didn't, and if you're not addressing it, then you're wasting your money, time, effort, and energy, and you're not learning the way you should be learning. This is huge. Now, let's talk about texting. Because this comes up all the time. Yes, some tracking platforms can support texting, but the real issue isn't compatibility, it's workflow. Do these messages go to the right place? How do they stay organized? Now, that's the real question. Now, for us, we keep one clean communication channel and we use tracking tools to capture the data, then pass that into a CRM and manage the communications there. Now, just like in these do-it-yourself website builders that don't work and all these AI tools that are supposedly to come out and be one size that fits all, and all these uh do-it-yourself design programs claim to be all this. Guess what? There is no one size fits all in this program either. And this is important because every business is different. If someone tries to force you into a rigid system, they're selling you software and they're not solving your problem. And that's really no good. So you gotta work with someone who actually understands the technology so that they can actually put together a plan that's going to work well for your business. Okay, so so let's make this practical. Here's how to test this for yourself. Number one, Google yourself, search your business, click your website, does the number change? If not, you may not have tracking properly set up. If it's your main number published everywhere, it's not set up correctly. Number two, call your own business. Check your system. Was it logged? Did it show a source? Can you find a source? Did someone tell you how to do that? Are you paying someone and they never gave you the ability to do it or understand it? These are flags. Okay, so then do a source test. This is from all kinds of places, ads, organic, direct, call each time. You should see where each one of those calls come from. Okay, so now let's talk about a Google Ads check. If you're running Google Ads, by the way, I think I hear a plane coming. I don't know if you guys can hear that, but uh I just heard something fly over. So I apologize for the uh Western North Carolina ambiance, but uh there you go. Um so Google Ads check. If you're running Google Ads, are calls being recorded as conversions? If not, Google's missing critical data. Is it even set up right? So the next thing is just talk to your agency. Ask, show me how many calls came from each channel. If they can't clearly answer that, then something's off. Now you may have been part of the problem and you may be and may not be part of the problem. Maybe they saw something and they kind of go, well, you know, you didn't ask for that, or this is not something you're paying us to be able to do. And if they've clearly said that or put guardrails on it, then you have to make some decisions. I met a guy here in the office the other day, and I was talking about the importance of tracking numbers. And he wasn't for it. He did not want to spend that little bit of money to track the numbers. And I mean, I'm talking under$100 a month in most cases. Okay, so speaking of that, let's talk about cost. You can do it, as I said, for under$100 a month in most cases. And if you're spending thousands of dollars on marketing, not tracking is not saving you money, it's wasting it. Okay. So let's have our final reality check. If you don't know where your calls are coming from, you don't know what's driving your business. And if you don't know what's driving your business, you can't grow efficiently. So this week I'm gonna throw a challenge at you. Ask yourself, do I really know what's working? If the answer is no, then that's where you start. Because clarity is what turns marketing into growth. Okay, guys, that's pretty much it with phone numbers. Um I am going to cut the podcast a little bit short this week. Uh, you know, we're finishing up a bunch of stuff around the office and um kind of handling a bunch of things, but this is critical. Okay, this is a short podcast, but understanding that your calls need to be tracked in a meaningful way that not only differentiates the number based upon the source, but also ties one number together everywhere you're marketing so that everything remains consistent so that your credibility or NAT score NAP score remains consistent. You see, there's a little song in dance here, and this is not easy. This is something you have to stop and do. It's not something you just plug in and then um run with it. A lot of decisions go into it. So make sure that uh you're talking to your person about it, set those guardrails up, accept the accountability where maybe you're not uh equipping them with the right uh funds in order to track it because it does take time to set all this stuff up. Um but it's critical. I mean, if you're serious about your business and you're not doing this on a level that you can really look at. And I guess the last thing I would say is as you're doing this, you really want to make sure that you're getting data in a way that you can consume it in a real way. Like I see a lot of people who are running like Google Analytics, they never look at it, they get these reports, they never look at it because it's complicated data. They're not getting what they need. And a lot of times you just need to know what you need to know. And so kind of setting those rules up with your agency would help because then you can focus on what are called KPIs. KPIs are simply key performance indicators. They just show what's important and what's not, and you need to focus on what's important. Okay, guys. Well, that's all I've got for this episode of Over the Bull. Hopefully this helps you out, and you um are a little better equipped to be a little bit better in your business each and every day. And uh till we meet again, thanks. This is Ken with Over the Bull.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you by Integris Design, a full service design and marketing agency out of Asheville, North Carolina. Until next time.