Pay-Per-Call Overcomes Hurdles of Traditional Online Marketing

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A great post on ReveNews today by Adam Viener titled Pay-Per-Call from the Trenches talks about the growing popularity of Pay-Per-Call programs on the leading affiliate networks such as Commission Junction, Google Affiliate Network, LinkShare and ShareASale. His article details some of the many benefits of using Pay-Per-Call including:

• Publishers can get credit for phone traffic they are already driving.
• Companies offering higher-end goods and services (which have historically not converted well online) can now take advantage of performance marketing through the affiliate channel.
• Advertisers and Publishers can measure and get credit for calls and clicks.

The article goes on to list some hurdles the author has come up against when looking at Pay-Per-Call. And while the hurdles are in fact legitimate concerns, they are also concerns that the RingRevenue Pay-Per-Call platform exposes as challenges with traditional online marketing and actually solves.  

1. Phone # Replacement Code Implementation- One of the key advantages of promoting pay-per-call campaigns is that it prevents traditional "leakage" that occurs when a consumer picks up the phone to call instead of completing their purchase on online. With phone number replacement enabled on the Advertiser website, the RingRevenue platform will swap out the existing phone number on an advertiser's landing page with the publisher's unique phone number--ensuring the publisher gets credit when a phone call occurs. At RingRevenue we recommend all advertisers implement the phone number replacement on their campaigns as a best practice. In fact, across our partners running pay-per-call programs we see approximately 44% of Advertisers implement phone number replacement with their campaigns. This number is also growing week-by-week as Advertisers quickly see the value of using the phone replacement and that campaigns with phone number replacement are more popular with publishers. In a recent update to the pay-per-call platform, we have made it even easier for Publishers to vote with their dollars and find campaigns that specifically have this feature enabled. When finding new campaigns, publishers can sort by campaigns with the "Web Integration" code.  A big green check mark appear for advertisers who have phone number replacement enabled. 

2. Listed Call Times- The majority of advertisers running pay-per-call programs are large advertisers with fully staffed call centers that do operate 24/7. The case Mr. Viener relates of the advertiser taking the day off "to go sailing" is a fringe case and certainly the exception to the rule. Even still, our platform is all about transparency and publishers can easily see advertiser's defined hours of operations and call criteria and can chose campaigns which are the most competitive and will allow them to earn the highest commissions.

3. Call Leakage- Pay-Per-Call does solve the phone number leakage problem. It was also designed to help bring to the surface problems like the one described by Mr. Viener where an advertiser placed the customer on hold and then offered the customer call back on another number and not lose their place in line. This is clearly a case where an advertiser is attempting to short-change their publishers. We are glad to see the pay-per-call platform so clearly exposes this behavior. Not only is the advertiser short-changing their publisher, they are creating a poor customer experience for their consumer. Pay-per-call shines a bright light on these practices and again allows publishers to vote with their dollars by not promoting advertisers who engage in these practices. Again, we see this as a pretty fringe case and one that is not isolated to call-based campaigns. An advertiser who is willing to go to these lengths to create a poor consumer experience just to short-change their partners will see their publisher base quickly diminish and will not likely see good conversion rates among their consumers who call.

4. Ghost Calls- This hurdle is indeed something that mobile marketers are seeing, but the reality is it doesn't have anything to do with pay-per-call. In fact it is another case of an industry problem that pay-per-call actually exposes and overcomes. With Pay-Per-Call our platform and all of our partners only track and bill on actual phone calls placed. The way the leading Mobile Ad Networks operate is slightly different and this is where some of the confusion comes into play. Mobile Ad Networks measure clicks on a phone number and not the call. So if a mobile phone user clicks on a phone number intentionally or by accident and opts not to go through with the call, the Mobile Ad Network will track that as a call and bill for it. With pay-per-call advertisers only pay for actual calls, not clicks that don't result in a call. With our tracking capabilities, advertisers can see the true performance of their marketing efforts and drill into each call that connects and converts. Advertisers only pay for actual calls that meet their criteria.

5. Standard Landing Pages- In the pay-per-call platform, advertisers can upload practically any type of creative asset you can imagine from banner ads to text ads to video. Our platform creates transparency between advertiser and publisher that allows publishers to reach out directly to advertisers to request additional types of creative. Our goal is to empower advertisers and publishers to communicate and create high-impact campaigns and we give them the tools to make it easy.

Our partner's pay-per-call programs are continuing to grow with new advertisers and publishers signing on each week. With pay-per-call gaining momentum, visibility and adoption in the market place we see the hurdles that Mr. Viener presents as opportunities to communicate best practices and to illustrate how pay-per-call can help to overcome many of the challenges advertisers and publishers faced with traditional online marketing.

Have you tested the pay-per-call waters? What has your experience been?  We'd love to hear from you and get your feedback!