Pay-per-call campaigns are a powerful way to connect with consumers at the moment they’re ready to take action. But not all pay-per-call providers are created equal. While some focus primarily on driving a high volume of calls, others prioritize conversion quality and ensuring that every call has a meaningful chance to result in a sale or booked service.

For advertisers, working with a partner who actively helps increase conversion rates can make the difference between a campaign that breaks even and one that drives significant ROI. This article explores the types of pay-per-call providers, why conversion-focused partners matter, and the key traits to look for when choosing one.

Types of Performance Marketing / Pay-Per-Call Providers

When evaluating potential partners, it’s helpful to understand the landscape of pay-per-call providers:

– Volume-focused networks: These providers prioritize filling your budget and keeping your call centers busy. They are mostly concerned with working with sources that can generate a lot of calls in your target area.

– Conversion-focused partners: These providers prioritize conversions. They invest in data, analytics, and campaign optimization to ensure the traffic they deliver is more likely to turn into revenue. Their approach balances quality with scalability.

– Hybrid models: Some providers offer a mix of both volume and conversion insights, delivering a reasonable amount of calls while also providing transparency and optimization to improve campaign performance.

Understanding the type of partner you’re engaging with is the first step in ensuring your pay-per-call program drives real business results.

Why Conversion-Focused Partners Matter

Advertisers should think beyond sheer call volume. Conversion-focused partners provide tangible benefits that impact the bottom line:

• Maximized ROI: Paying for calls that are more likely to convert ensures that every dollar spent contributes to revenue growth.
• Reduced wasted spend: Calls that are misrouted, unqualified, or poorly tracked can drain marketing budgets without producing results.
• Actionable insights: Partners that track and optimize conversions can identify trends, weaknesses, and opportunities, and provide data to inform strategic decisions (some partners will even make strategic improvements for you!).
• Long-term growth: A focus on conversion quality allows campaigns to scale efficiently, maintaining profitability as call volume increases.

Ultimately, a partner who prioritizes conversions will actively work to improve your results, making it easier for you to tie campaign performance to real business results.

Key Traits to Look for in a Pay-Per-Call Provider

When selecting a partner, advertisers should evaluate whether the provider demonstrates these key traits:

Proactive Customer Success Team
A customer success team that actively monitors campaigns, analyzes trends, and recommends optimizations can prevent issues and improve conversion rates over time.

For instance, the Soleo team works closely with advertisers to review campaigns, optimize sources, and identify problems before they impact performance.

Quality Assurance (QA)

Quality assurance is critical for ensuring that the calls you pay for are worth the investment. Look for providers who actively review calls, monitor lead quality, and address issues before they escalate.

For example, a proactive QA process might identify a recurring routing problem or specific geographies where you’re underperforming. This allows for adjustments to be made quickly.

Call Scoring

Call scoring allows advertisers to measure lead quality based on call content, duration, and outcomes. AI-powered call scoring is particularly valuable because it can analyze patterns at scale, identify trends, and flag issues more consistently than manual review alone. Providers using AI to score calls can give advertisers actionable insights to refine targeting, scripts, and campaign parameters.

Reliable Call Tracking Platform

Transparent and accurate call tracking is essential for understanding campaign performance. A robust platform provides precise attribution, detailed analytics, and easy-to-read dashboards so advertisers can see which campaigns, sources, or creatives are driving high-quality calls.

For example, Soleo has a proprietary pay-per-call platform, CallThread, that our team and partners use to monitor call quality and scoring, identify and manage call sources, and measure conversions and revenue.

Questions to Ask Potential Providers

To ensure a partner is focused on increasing conversions, consider asking these questions before you onboard:

• How do you monitor call quality and conversion rates?
• Do you provide call scoring or QA reports, and how are they used to optimize campaigns?
• Can your tools attribute calls accurately to specific campaigns or sources?
• How frequently does your customer success team review campaign performance, and what optimizations do they implement?

The answers to these questions reveal whether a provider prioritizes meaningful results or simply driving traffic.

Conclusion

When choosing your pay-per-call partner, look at more than cost per call or volume. Advertisers who prioritize partners with strong QA processes, call scoring, reliable tracking platforms, and dedicated customer success teams are better positioned to maximize ROI, reduce wasted spend, and scale campaigns successfully.

By evaluating providers through these lenses, advertisers can partner with teams that actively work to increase conversion rates, turning calls into measurable business results.