A new report has recently been released from Marchex that looked at millions of calls made to businesses as well as analyzing ad-spending data from Google. They also looked at call growth projections from BIA/Kelsey. The report suggests that click-to-call commerce is generating over $1 trillion each year, and the number is going to grow.
Of course, this is a combined total for both ad based click to call and normal click to call found on most businesses websites. Other reports estimate that ad based click to call is at about $4 billion annually at this point, with that amount set to grow in the coming years.
To put some of these numbers in some perspective, the total US GDP is $18 trillion, so this report is claiming that at least one out of every $18 generated in the entire US economy is triggered, at least in some form, from a click-to-call transaction. This is obviously a massive amount of money, and not something any type of marketer should ignore.
Every day, millions of people will look up a business on their phone to gather information. From there, they often tap the phone number to give them a call to either further learn more about the product or service or to actually make a purchase. A very simple example of this would be going to a local pizza shop’s website and then tapping their phone number to order your pie.
Of course, the types of businesses that this applies to is nearly endless. People might click to call an auto dealership in order to make an appointment with a salesmen. They may click to call a ticket broker to get seats to a big game. When you really take a step back and look at all the ways people are using their mobile devices to browse to a website and then make a call, the $1 trillion number seems much more realistic.
Not surprisingly, some business types do better with click to call than others. The report found that a auto dealers, for example, have about 38% of their total calls made to get information about a product, and 20% are looking to make an appointment. A further 15% end up hanging up before speaking to someone at the dealership. Plumbers have a higher rate of appointments being made at 25%, and 26% are just general inquiries. The report goes through many industries to look at how well they are doing with different types of calls.
One of the biggest worries is that an estimated one in five calls are abandoned by potential customers because of issues related to poor customer service. This could be long hold times or complicated call trees or any number of other things.
As marketers, click to call can potentially make a huge impact on the overall business. Whether you’re using click to call ads to generate sales, or you simply have a phone number listed on your site to provide support or sales assistance, this report proves that it is absolutely essential to include this type of lead when planning your overall business strategy.
You can see the full report HERE.
