Understanding which marketing campaigns generate genuine revenue is the cornerstone of an effective strategy. Yet for many businesses, phone enquiries are still a significant blind spot in their attribution models. When potential customers pick up the phone to make a purchase or book a service, the connection between that call and the marketing activity that prompted it often goes untracked.
This is where advanced call tracking comes in. Call attribution solves this problem by linking every phone enquiry back to its original source, giving you complete visibility over which campaigns are driving real revenue through phone conversions.
What is call attribution?
Call attribution identifies which marketing touchpoints led a prospect to contact your business by phone. It assigns unique phone numbers to different campaigns, channels, or even individual keywords, then tracks which number each caller dials.
When a prospect calls, the system captures critical data about their journey. This could include the ad they clicked, the webpage they visited, the search term they used, and the number of touchpoints they engaged with before converting. Unlike basic call tracking, which simply counts inbound calls, attribution provides the context you need to understand which marketing efforts generated them and whether those calls ultimately translated into revenue.
Why call attribution matters for revenue measurement
Phone enquiries are often your highest-value conversions. Prospects who take the time to call are usually further along the buying journey and are therefore more likely to convert. Yet without proper attribution, these conversions remain invisible in your analytics.
You might be investing heavily in campaigns that generate plenty of website traffic but few phone sales. On the other hand, you could be undervaluing channels that drive high-quality phone enquiries simply because you can’t see their contribution. Call attribution eliminates this guesswork by connecting phone conversions to the campaigns that generated them, then linking those calls to actual sales data.
How call attribution identifies revenue-generating campaigns
Dynamic number insertion assigns unique tracking numbers to different marketing sources in real time. A prospect clicking a Google ad sees one number. Someone arriving via Facebook sees another. This allows you to attribute each call to its specific source with precision.
Multi-touch attribution reveals the entire customer journey, not just the final touchpoint. A prospect might first discover your business through social media, later search for your brand on Google, and finally call after seeing a retargeting ad. Call attribution captures all these interactions and shows how each of them contributed to the eventual phone sale.
Keyword-level tracking for PPC campaigns provides granular insights into which search terms drive phone conversions. You can identify high-performing keywords that generate revenue through calls, then optimise your bidding strategy accordingly.
Connecting phone enquiries to actual sales
Tracking which campaigns generate phone calls is valuable, but understanding which of those calls result in actual sales is what truly drives revenue optimisation. Sales Matching links call data with your CRM or sales system to show which phone enquiries converted into customers and how much revenue each generated.
With this information, you can calculate accurate cost-per-acquisition figures for every campaign and channel. You might discover that while one channel generates more calls, another produces higher-value customers despite lower call volumes.
Using call attribution to optimise campaign performance
Once you can see which campaigns drive phone revenue, you can take action. Reallocate budget from underperforming channels to those generating high-value phone conversions. Refine your messaging based on what resonates with callers who convert. Optimise landing pages by understanding which content prompts prospects to call.
Stop making decisions based on incomplete data. Discover how advanced call tracking with providers like Mediahawk enables the call attribution capabilities you need to identify your revenue-generating campaigns and maximise ROI.
