1. You begin by defining the details of your offer with your pay-per-call partner (either a pay-per-call network or directly with a variety of affiliates).
2. Based on the guidelines of your offer, your pay-per-call partner will generate calls in your category, typically by advertising a tracking number. The tracking number will be used to identify them as the source and will automatically forward the call to your business or to a designated call center.
3. An IVR is typically used to filter calls and can be provided by you, your partner, or if coordinated, both. When a call matches your campaign requirements, the caller is seamlessly connected to your established business line.
4. When the call reaches the predetermined duration, it becomes billable, and you pay your partner your agreed-upon bid price.

Read more: Pay-per-call Explained: How it Works

Where do calls come from?

Affiliates, publishers, and networks use a variety of channels to promote their tracking number including:

• Online – these channels include SEO, SEM, social media, programmatic, display advertising and other lead-generation techniques that use the internet.
• Offline – these channels include print, radio, television, outdoor advertising and direct mail.
• Carrier traffic – these channels include voice search calls, directory assistance calls (calls that come from consumers who call directory assistance), and intercept traffic (calls that come from consumers who call a business that is no longer in service and opt to connect to a related business).

Call transfers and their regulatory restrictions

With most inbound calls, the consumer finds the tracking number through the above channels, chooses to call, and then is connected to the advertiser’s line directly. However, some pay-per-call providers offer transfer calls as well. Transfer calls can be inbound (the consumer calls the third-party call center which qualifies the call before transferring it to the advertiser’s business) or outbound (the third-party call center reaches out to the consumer via SMS messaging, AI chat or by phone, typically after the consumer fills out a lead-gen form). TCPA and other national laws and regulations restrict how these calls are managed, so it’s best to proceed with extreme caution until you have a deep understanding of how to handle this traffic. Read more: Understanding Different Types of Calls

The do’s and don’ts of pay-per-call

When you first get started with pay-per-call, it can be hard to know what kinds of calls to allow and what practices you should adopt so you get the best traffic possible for your budget. This chart gives you an idea of the basic best practices when running a pay-per-call campaign. As you start out, these tips are meant to help you protect your brand from competitors and compliance threats as well as provide your callers with a positive consumer journey while you develop synergies with your pay-per-call provider.

How much does a call cost?

Price per call is influenced by several factors and can fluctuate depending on your industry, desired billable duration, competition in the pay-per-call space, and the time of year. In general, the higher the average cost of your service to the consumer, the more the call will cost you. For example, a call for appliance repair is cheaper than a call for auto insurance because one-time appliance repair service is less expensive than long-term auto insurance. But there’s another reason appliance repair calls are less expensive than auto insurance calls: there’s more auto insurance businesses willing to pay a premium for calls than appliance repair businesses, and the competition drives a higher price. You can expect your prices to fluctuate based on the competition in your industry sector as well. The price of your calls will also be impacted by your desired duration, which should be the amount of time you need to qualify the call on your end before you are charged. A 90-second duration generally costs less than a 120-second duration.

A note on seasonality in pay-per-call

Many industries are also impacted by seasonality. For example, the health insurance industry is busiest during open enrollment in November and December while home improvement businesses have a higher volume of inquiries in the summer months. If your industry has a busy season, you can expect your pay-per-call competition to steepen whenever the peak season for your business occurs. This can affect both the price per call and/or the required duration of your bid. Work with a provider that has a good pulse on the pay-per-call competition in your category, so they can help you anticipate and navigate fluctuations in call price to keep your bid competitive. Please note that when you start a pay-per-call campaign, there is a general ramp-up period with your provider. We recommend starting a campaign up to 3 months prior to your peak season, so the campaign is running at scale for your busy season.

Compliance in pay-per-call

The pay-per-call industry is regulated by laws and regulations that protect the privacy of consumers. Although most of the statutes and restrictions will pertain to the actions of your publishers, advertisers have been liable for the acts of their affiliates in certain cases. This means your brand could be held financially responsible for the wrongful actions of your call sources. To protect your brand from threats in the lead gen industry, it is important to understand when compliance issues are triggered and to ensure your pay-per-call partner has defined programs to proactively address these issues and mitigate risk. The most relevant laws and regulations in pay-per-call include: • Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) • California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) • Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) • Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC) • Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) • Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) • Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) • Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CANSPAM)

Protecting your brand

In general, look for a network that thoroughly vets all its call sources, reviews and approves affiliate creatives, and screens calls for quality assurance – both to improve your conversion rates and to flag threats such as robocalls. To further protect your brand, ensure your network has established integrations with quality control vendors such as those that focus on authentication of consent or run litigation scrubs from known predatory litigators. “Today, marketers are faced with increasing data and privacy challenges — which is exactly why you need consent-based marketing practices in place to protect your brand. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, consent-based marketing is the practice of only contacting consumers that have given prior express, written consent to be contacted – ensuring that only prospects who have actively expressed interest in hearing from you make it into your funnel. Marketers can create consent-based marketing processes in five steps:

1. Capture consent of interested consumers
2. Document consent for legal compliance
3. Qualify & enhance lead data
4. Filter & reject lead data
5. Contact the consumer promptly

Marketers across industries are using lead certification tools like TrustedForm to implement consent-based marketing and stay compliant with increasing privacy laws and regulations, validate lead data, and ensure they’re only contacting people who have actually raised their hands to be contacted. While ensuring you’re compliant with privacy laws is important, validating your lead data is just as crucial. For example, TrustedForm provides data along with its certificates, validating points such as website origin, lead age, time on page, typing speed, verified consent language, and more. By implementing technology that allows you to filter through these data points from compliant leads, you can increase the quality of leads that flow directly into your CRM — making your sales team happier in the process.” – Tracy Laney, Financial Service Sales, ActiveProspect

Protecting your brand when it comes to outbound calls and transfers

It’s always a good idea to partner with a network that has a documented compliance program, but if your campaign will accept transfer calls, there are some particular considerations you need to address. Outbound calls of any kind are subject to comply with the TCPA which restricts certain telemarketing practices using voice calls, SMS, fax, and auto machine dialing (robocalls) when communicating with consumers. When businesses are permitted to contact consumers for purposes of telemarketing, they must abide by the regulations outlined in this statute, including obtaining and maintaining proper consent records. In addition, outbound call sources may not contact consumers on the national Do-Not-Call Registry. Be sure you understand the regulations around the TCPA or work with a partner who does.

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Why Choose Pay-Per-Call

Top benefits of pay-per-call

Pay-per-call is a great way to get qualified leads for your business. With pay-per-call, you get all the benefits of performance marketing, with some additional advantages.

High-intent leads

Callers are often ready to buy a product or schedule an appointment at the time of their inquiry. This is because they are usually past the researching phase of their customer journey and are prepared to make a purchase. 25-40% of call-based leads turn into customers, and conversion rates can be even higher depending on your industry. Additionally, most businesses feel that if they are able to talk to a potential customer on the phone, they have a better chance to persuade them to buy their service.

Increased return on ad spend (ROAS)

Even though the initial cost per lead is generally higher in pay-per-call, calls are 10-12 times more likely to convert than other forms of leads, so you can expect your return on ad spend to be higher as well. Additionally, call-based leads turn into the best kinds of customers – they convert 30% faster, spend 28% more, and have a 28% higher retention rate than customers who come from other forms of leads (Forrester). This means your business can experience a more immediate ROI that continues to pay consistently in the long run.

Maximize your brand’s reach

Pay-per-call leads are usually consumers who are in the top or middle of the marketing funnel and who do not already have a brand in mind when they’re searching for your services. For example, a pest control brand might produce bottom-funnel leads by bidding on keywords like “termite inspection,” but pay-per-call providers would bid on keywords like “termite inspection reviews” or “best termite removal companies” to refer consumers to their brand partners. So with a good pay-per-call campaign, your brand can talk to consumers that you might not reach otherwise.

Access to call generation experts

Working with a qualified, experienced pay-per-call provider allows you to crowdsource your call-based leads from experts in call generation. Your partner, who has expertise in your industry, will earn the consumer’s attention and trust and connect the consumer to you when they’re ready to convert. All your business must do is convert the calls into sales.

Targeting for your most profitable services

A pay-per-call campaign can target your ideal consumer prole, so you can specifically focus on the services (like auto repair or termite fumigation) or customer segments (like U65 or insured drivers) you want to grow. Your pay-per-call partner will attract the right consumers through ad targeting and then present an automated front-end menu to further filter these calls.

Simple lead filtering

In addition to targeting the callers you do want, pay-per-call also makes it easy to filter out calls you don’t want (such as customer service calls) using front-end IVR menus, so your sales agents are focused on the calls that will bring your business the most incremental value.

Easy-to-measure results and quality

By using tracking numbers along with call recordings and transcriptions, it’s easy to evaluate your campaign’s performance and ensure you’re getting the quality leads you want. This also allows you to identify the call sources and geographies that generate the most qualified and valuable calls so you can and optimize your marketing spend accordingly.

Predictable call volume and budget

The pay-per-call model makes it simple to project how much you’ll need to spend to receive the number of leads you need to meet your business goals. With call pacing, you can specify the maximum number of calls you want on an hourly, daily, or monthly basis. This helps you keep your sales teams and call centers busy without overwhelming them or over-spending your budget.

Leads on demand

Once your campaign is up and running, it’s easy to ramp your spending up or down. If your campaign is successful, you can increase your budget or expand the geography. If, on the other hand, your campaign is o to a slow start, it may make sense to adjust your bid based on your competition or broaden your focus.

Convenient lead handling

Not all callers have the same needs, and calls for certain services may require a specialized sales agent. With Interactive Voice Recording (IVR), you can easily route phone calls to the right person or sales team. This makes it easy to ensure that your highest-value leads are handled by your most proficient agents.

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Pay-per-call compared to other performance marketing models

Different mediums of performance marketing yield different results. This is because the consumer is at a different stage in their customer journey when they use different channels, making them more or less likely to convert into a sale. The right performance marketing strategy for your company depends on several factors including your cost-per-lead (CPL) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) targets, the product or service you’re trying to market, your target consumer, and the customer journey. To help you decide if pay-per-call is the right approach for you, we’ll compare it to four other common performance marketing models: pay-per-impressions, pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-sale.

Pay-per-call vs pay-per-impression

In a pay-per-impression model, advertisers pay based on how many impressions, or views, their ad receives, usually in increments of 1,000. Common forms of advertising that use this model include display advertising and some social media marketing. This type of performance marketing is best used with the goal of increasing brand awareness among your target audience because it gives you a wide reach (thousands of views) for a relatively low cost. Pay-per-call is much more effective in generating measurable leads and is superior in direct response campaigns where the goal is to increase sales, not just awareness. It is also easier to demonstrate the value of your ad spend, since calculating ROI on brand awareness is notoriously difficult, particularly when compared to tracking calls and sales. Your targeting capabilities are also better with pay-per-call since it is intent-based targeting, not interest-based – you target people who are actively looking to buy your service rather than those who are interested in something related to your service.

Pay-per-call vs pay-per-click

Pay-per-click advertising charges advertisers for each click to their website. Common tactics for this model include paid search, some influencer marketing, and some social media marketing. Pay-per-click can generate awareness, and clicks have higher intent than impressions. Clicks are also the cheapest performance marketing lead you can buy, aside from impressions. Although clicks are relatively cheap, the burden of converting the clicks into leads falls on you and your landing page. With pay-per-call, consumers are already converted into leads for you.