Search engine marketing for a service-based business is a cost-effective method of acquiring new customers. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to realize the potential of SEM because they don’t take the time to calculate return on investment.

How are you measuring the success of your search engine marketing campaigns? Key performance indicators go a long way to helping determine whether a campaign can be profitable; however, to truly understand the value of SEM you need to dig deeper and assign revenue to specific leads. This is the key to long-term success.

You can partner with any number of companies who will record and analyze your incoming calls to help you establish ROI; however, for most small to medium-sized businesses the process of auditing phone calls and assigning revenue is easy and insightful.

Any well-run SEM campaign in the service industry should be utilizing some form of call tracking, and those calls should be easily available for your review. In the first few weeks of a new campaign, my team and I will often listen to every call generated from our efforts, making notes with customer name and contact info so that our clients can calculate revenue generated from those leads. More often than not, once a client sees the value of having this information, it becomes a regular part of their evaluation and analysis of SEM.

Beyond just calculating ROI from SEM, regularly auditing phone calls provides insights into other aspects of the business. Listening to calls can help you:

•      Better understand your customers’ needs and wants
•      Train and coach your sales reps by reviewing missed opportunities and highlighting specific successes
•      Stay committed to customer service by monitoring overall quality of support

All of this information, combined with the raw activity/performance data, should help in evaluating the long-term profitability of SEM for your business.  Ferocious Media offers SEM with call tracking and recording.  If your business is looking for a transparent SEM solution that shows you just how successful it is performing contact Ferocious Media today!