Call Tracking: Purpose, Types, and How to Use It Properly

How call tracking works

What's the Purpose of Call Tracking

Call tracking is one of the key tools in marketing analytics, especially for businesses where a significant portion of inquiries are received by phone. It is important not only to launch an advertising campaign but also to understand which channels actually work and bring in calls and sales.

1. Transparent Analytics of Advertising Effectiveness

One of the main tasks of call tracking systems is to identify which advertisement channels are the most effective in attracting buyers. With call tracking, you can determine how many calls came from Google Ads, from social media, or from SEO. This way, you can redistribute the advertising budget in favor of the more effective channels and discard the ineffective ones.

2. Increased Marketing ROI

Call tracking shows not only the number of calls but also the cost of acquiring each calling customer. This allows for assessing the actual ROI of each campaign, down to keywords and UTM tags.

Thanks to this, you can:

• reduce the cost per lead
• eliminate unnecessary expenses on "silent" channels
• understand which ads and creative efforts generate more targeted inquiries

3. Building End-to-End Analytics

Call tracking can be integrated with analytics systems such as Google Analytics, CRM systems, and call centers. As a result, marketers can build a complete funnel: from the first touchpoint to the deal. It shows how a person landed on the site, from which advertisement, how much time they spent, at what stage they decided to call, how the conversation went, and how it ended.

Such end-to-end analytics is particularly valuable in niches with long sales cycles, such as healthcare, real estate, education, or B2B.

4. Improving Sales Department Performance

Call tracking registers not only the call itself but also its recording, which is useful for controlling the quality of handling the inquiries. Sales department leaders or marketers can listen to these recordings, identify weak spots, train managers accordingly, and increase conversions into sales.

Usage examples include:

• analysis of sales scripts
• evaluation of response time to calls
• identification of "lost" customers
• understanding why leads didn’t convert

5. Understanding Customer Behavior

In conjunction with web analytics, call tracking helps to understand what specifically prompted the call: which webpage, offer, or advertisement. This gives marketers insights into user motivation and decision-making points.

For instance, you may learn:

• from which device calls are made more often
• at what time of day calls are most frequent
• which website pages generate responses more frequently
• which advertisements bring leads with the highest likelihood of purchase

6. Optimizing Advertising and Business Decisions

With call tracking data, you can make not only marketing decisions but also broader managerial decisions. For example:

• change the promotion strategy in regions with fewer calls
• redirect offline advertising (radio, TV, banners) to channels with verified returns
• implement additional communication channels if users call outside of working hours

Types of Call Tracking

Call tracking is divided into several main types, each suitable for different tasks and levels of analytics. Below, we will review three key types: combined, static, and dynamic call tracking.

1. Static Call Tracking

This is the simplest and most accessible type. Here, each advertising channel or campaign is assigned a separate phone number. For example, one number is displayed in an advertisement on a billboard, another in Google Ads, and a third in an email newsletter.

• Easy setup and implementation.
• Suitable for evaluating offline channels (outdoor advertising, business cards, flyers).
• Serves as an inexpensive way for basic analytics.

• No ability to track individual user behavior.
• Does not provide a complete picture if the marketing campaign is omnichannel.
• Poorly effective for online traffic with high visitation.

2. Dynamic Call Tracking

A more advanced option where different phone numbers are shown to website visitors depending on the referral source, keywords, geolocation, device, and other parameters. Numbers are automatically distributed from a pool.

When a user visits the website, the system "understands" where they came from — whether it’s search engine, contextual advertising, or social media — and changes the phone number on the page. This allows marketers to obtain detailed information about the user's path down to the specific search query.

• High accuracy of analytics.
• Linkage with web analytics systems (e.g., Google Analytics).
• Ability to track down to the keyword and UTM tags.
• Deep understanding of conversions and ROI.

• Requires technical setup and availability of a pool of numbers.
• More expensive to maintain than static tracking.
• Used only for online traffic.

3. Combined Call Tracking

This type combines the capabilities of both static and dynamic call tracking. It is used in both online and offline channels. For example, static phone numbers are used in print advertising while dynamic phone numbers work on the website.

• Versatility — covers all marketing channels.
• Full picture of calls from different sources.
• Maximum efficiency for end-to-end analytics.

How to Use Call Tracking

Let's picture a situation: there's a company that installs windows. Most of its clients prefer to discuss details over the phone rather than filling out forms on the website. In the morning, managers notice a spike in calls. One person called after seeing an ad on Instagram*, another one — after seeing a banner in an elevator, and the third one called from a link in an email newsletter. The call tracking system records this: each source corresponds to a unique number, and the calls are registered in the system indicating where the customer came from. The calls are then redirected to the company's main number.

Thanks to this analytics, the marketing department sees that the Instagram* ad generated 14 calls over a week, the elevator banner generated five, and the email newsletter generated one. Without call tracking, calls from offline channels would simply remain unrecorded, and the social media advertising might seem useless since the user did not click the "Submit Request" button but simply dialed the number.

At the end of the month, the marketer opens a report showing the number of inquiries for each advertising source. It’s clear which ads didn’t just attract attention but led to actual dialogue with the customer. This data helps make informed decisions: the most effective promotion channels are strengthened while those that do not yield results are re-evaluated or completely removed from the budgeting.

Without such a system, Instagram* advertising would likely have faced "cutbacks": according to web analytics, it did not result in inquiries, and no one would be able to prove otherwise. Meanwhile, it actually generated a significant portion of calls. Conversely, elevator banners, which were expensive but yielded little result, could have remained in the budget simply because no one tracked their actual returns.

Call tracking shows the real picture, not assumptions. This is especially valuable in niches where the call is the primary contact point with the customer. As a result, the company retains profitable communication channels and optimizes expenses without losing potential clients due to analytical "blind spots".

Conclusion

Call tracking is a way to understand which advertisements truly work and bring customers on board. It is especially important in cases where people prefer to call instead of leaving requests on the site. Thanks to it, you can accurately find out the source of the call: advertisement, website, or even a street banner. This provides businesses with insight into where to invest and which marketing communications merely waste the budget without producing any results.

Instead of guessing what worked and what didn’t, you get clear data. Call tracking for the website helps not just count calls but see the real effectiveness of advertising efforts.