Australia's leading energy broker, Electricity Wizard, helps people find better deals for their homes by comparing a range of plans from key suppliers. The company's website generates thousands of calls per week for the call center, which is the only channel for signing new customers. Wanting a better way to understand which calls were most likely to lead to sales, Electricity Wizard tried Google Forwarding Numbers.
Goals
Understand which calls matter most to optimise marketing investment and maximise ROI
Approach
Used Google Forwarding Numbers to understand and optimise for the ad groups and times of day that matter most
Results
11% more calls
7% higher revenue
85% fewer abandoned calls
A better way of understanding which calls matter most
Increasingly, customers want to call businesses directly from Search on their mobile devices. In fact, four out of five smartphone users in Australia frequently need to call businesses from Search, and almost half say they will explore another brand if the option isn't available. Electricity Wizard and many other Australian businesses rely on their call centres to generate revenue, so it's essential that they are able to determine which advertising channels provide positive return on investment (ROI).
"The three key elements of our business that keep the wheels turning are our Australian-based call centre, our digital marketing investment, and the ongoing optimisation that we put into that account to continue driving higher quality and volumes of leads," says Alan Belkin, Electricity Wizard's chief executive officer.
The broker's media mix focused on Search to drive leads during operating hours. But with connected consumers constantly moving between screens and many touchpoints, the company had difficulty isolating the value of Search versus other channels. "Traditionally, the biggest problem we had with our digital marketing was that we were not able to understand which ad groups and which keywords were driving calls into our business," Belkin says.
Increased transparency with Google Forwarding Numbers
Google Forwarding Numbers now provides businesses with a unique phone number that is displayed with their ads on mobile, tablet, and desktop devices. Google Ads1 seamlessly routes customers' calls to the advertiser. Businesses see detailed reports about the calls generated by their ads. They can even set a time limit on these calls, which lets them determine what to count as a conversion within Google Ads.
Electricity Wizard saw the launch of Google Forwarding Numbers as a huge opportunity to measure the true value of its Search strategy. With more transparency, it could optimise and deliver a stronger ROI.
Gained valuable new data and insights
The electricity and gas broker saw immediate results once it began using Google Forwarding Numbers in February 2014. "By knowing which ad groups result in more calls, we can allocate more spend into those groups," Belkin says. "More important, Google Forwarding Numbers lets us improve our return on advertising investment by knowing which ad groups result in greater call lengths. We are able to optimise toward those particular ad groups because the longer the call, the greater the interest."
Google Forwarding Numbers lets us improve our return on advertising investment by knowing which ad groups result in greater call lengths.
Electricity Wizard also discovered which times of day were the most important to the business. "Between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. each weekday was when we were losing or missing the majority of our calls," Belkin says. "By restructuring our lunch breaks, we were able to resolve that abandonment issue and improve our abandonment rate by 85%."
A simple solution for a big impact
Electricity Wizard always knew that deeper data would help it better understand the performance of its Search marketing campaigns. Now it's also clear that the other decisions it can make while using this data can affect its broader business as well. In the first month after optimising its ad strategy, Electricity Wizard saw calls increase by 11%. Total revenue also grew by 7% during that period.
Electricity Wizard believe that features such as Google Forwarding Numbers give it a competitive edge in a cluttered market. With consumers connecting with businesses from so many touchpoints, understanding the paths to purchase and the key drivers to conversion is crucial. "It's absolutely instrumental for us to be able to track and optimise our Google Ads account to our calls," Belkin says. "Google Forwarding Numbers has given us the opportunity to do that."
