Pay Per Call Revisited

There are literally several industry journals promoting pay per call as the next big online medium to sweep the nation. And why shouldn't it be? Its business model is highly attractive given that you really only pay for"phone leads" that wish to call you after seeing a targeted ad.

After researching, reading, and talking to several pay per call companies, we decided to try a few to see if the above promises hold true.

Pay Per Call's Big Introduction
Back about a year ago, FindWhat (now owned by Miva) released one of the first pay per call networks. We jumped at the chance because many of our clients are regionally based and could always use more phone calls. After signing up and creating our ad (which was pretty straight forward), we were ready for lift-off.

Now I'm not going to lie. We weren't exactly waiting for the phone to ring off the hook, but expectations would be satisfied if a couple of phone leads would "dribble in" once and a while. In short however, results were not impressive.

So-called paid phone calls were hard to quantify for several reasons. First, Miva's call log considerably showed more activity than our caller id. This was easy to verify given that Miva publishes the time that the call was made and could be matched to our phone logs. Ok, no big deal. However, most calls were placed at odd hours of the night or early morning. This was a little concerning because our hours of operation are right on the pay per call ad. In addition, any calls that were verifiable during the day were generally wrong numbers or hang-ups.

After racking up ten or so calls, there were really no results to speak of. We contacted Miva and who was willing to back out the charges given our above experience. So all ended well, however a promising business model turned sour.

More Players, More Distribution
In a previous post, I spoke about the many the new players in the pay per call arena. Of particular interest, Ingenio (who powers Miva), has widened its distribution by offering ad placement in many new network partners including several local directories and AOL's local search.

After reviewing their potent offering, we felt it was time to give pay per call another chance at bat.

The Test
For this new program, we decided to beta test using two lucrative industries, mortgage and financial planning. Set-up was very similar to the first, with the exception that there many new categories to choose from and Ingenio recommends that you create multiple ads targeted each category. Ingenio also allows you to see other advertisers bids before making your ultimate bid. The fact that some of the advertisers we saw were over the $60 range gave promise that maybe we were in the dark to how effective this medium is.
The Results
We decided to bid middle of the road by taking a number 2 spot on the bid list for both industries which was around $55 for mortgage and $10 for financial planning.

After one week with absolutely no calls to speak of, we a contacted Ingenio to ensure that our listings were active and prominently displayed. Everything was right where they recommended it should be, but we still increased bids anyways because we were determined to get some calls to evaluate. (Tip: if your not bid #1, you wont show up on the first page of AOL's local page for all you SEMS out there!)

Calls began to trickle in, but results were literally identical to our first experience. Wrong numbers, hang-ups, and out of areas were ripe for the picking, while the sea of potential prospects dwindled before our very eyes. Ok, check change refund!

Great technology for the wrong application?
In our search for the best pay per call network, I did have the pleasure to speak with the part-owner of a new 2 year old company called VoiceStar. Unlike most pay per call companies, VoiceStar services surpass just pay per call, but also an advanced phone call tracking system for virtually any application. After touring a quick demo, my earlier wounds quickly healed when I saw the applications of this new tracking medium.

In a nutshell, VoiceStar offers you the ability to track phone calls from any medium by using unique 1-800#'s. When a prospect dial's the unique number, the call is tracked, voice recorded, and available to measure against other campaigns. Additionally, with their javscripting technology, unique phone numbers can be dynamically inserted into a Web page to measure the difference between pay per click adverting campaigns such as Google Adwords or Yahoo!'s sponsored search. Talk about measuring your real online ROI!

Summary
Although pay per call promises an intriguing business model, overall distribution and results have been modest at best. However, as the medium evolves, there is no doubt that phone calls will play an integral part in measuring and adding to your bottom line. Is it ready to sweep the nation, most likely not yet, but I advise not to disregard its merits as it might be coming to an advertiser near you.
[tags] pay per call, ingenio, voicestar, search engine marketing [/tags]