Dynamic Number Insertion – Journey from Click to Call
You’ve invested significant capital into digital marketing services and it seems to be paying off—that’s the eighth prospective patient to call and schedule a consultation this month. But how are these people finding you? Are your social media and Google Ads campaigns initiating contact or are organic search results driving all eventual phone calls? And once a visitor reaches your site, did they place their call without navigating elsewhere or did they end their browsing session and return at a later time or date before dialing your number?
In the past, we’ve discussed how UTM parameters can be used to help answer some of these questions by tracking information about click-throughs to your website. Today, we’re revealing how to take things a bit further with an innovative call tracking feature called Dynamic Number Insertion.
What Is Dynamic Number Insertion?
Dynamic Number Insertion, or DNI, is a component of call tracking that displays a unique phone number to people visiting your website based on the source from which they originally came (e.g. Facebook, Google Ads, Google organic search, etc.).
So, for example, let’s say you’re running a Google Ads campaign targeting the term “Dental Implants New Jersey.” Once a patient clicks through to your site, the DNI feature of your call tracking service will assign a distinctive phone number—different from your practice’s main number—to the ad for “Dental Implants New Jersey” when it appears in someone’s search results.
Now let’s say a prospective patient types this targeted keyword phrase into their Google search bar and sees your ad at the top of the results page. Should they click on your listing, they will be directed to the landing page of your website linked to the ad, but instead of seeing your practice’s main telephone number, the unique number generated by DNI will appear on their screen (in the same location(s) your number normally appears).
What’s So Great About a Unique Phone Number?
The beauty of DNI is that once someone visits your website via a search result, Facebook post, Google ads, etc., the distinctive phone number assigned to the source they initially clicked on will remain the same for that individual throughout their consumer journey. When a patient first accesses your site from one device and then ultimately uses a different device to take action (e.g., make a purchase, schedule a consultation, or contact the practice with a question), it is called cross-device conversion. It can be tricky to keep track of these types of patients, but DNI can be a helpful tool when it comes to monitoring cross-device conversions. In the event a patient who found you online eventually calls your practice, you’ll know the exact source that originally led them to you—regardless of whether they call immediately upon reaching your website, navigate away from and back to your site numerous times, use a different device to take action, or go dark for several days before finally calling. What’s more, you’ll be able to see how many times they visited your website before placing a call, view which specific pages they accessed while browsing, and actually listen to a recording of the conversation they had with whomever answered your phone.
How Is Tracking a Patient’s Consumer Journey Beneficial to Me?
In short, the ability to pinpoint the origin of a patient’s journey—beginning with a click and ending with a call to your practice—enables you to identify the channels that bring you the most conversions, as well as evaluate the overall success of various endeavors making up your online marketing strategy. (For instance, if you are interested in measuring social media marketing ROI, you can view the number of calls made by people who initially clicked through to your website from your Facebook page to better quantify the efficacy of your social efforts.)
Ultimately, with the information made available by DNI, you can better fine-tune your online marketing strategy to more aggressively target what’s currently working—as well as improve what’s not—to put your practice in the best position for success.
Have More Questions? Need Help?
Our consultants are always happy to assist in any way they can. If you would like more information on Dynamic Number Insertion—or anything Internet marketing-related—please don’t hesitate to reach out to Rosemont Media today.
Editor’s note: The original version of this post was published on August 21, 2018.