Pay Per Call Could Grow

Pay Per Call is one of those things that just seems ready to burst on the online marketing scene in a major way.

What I found really interesting in a recent Pay Per Call report summary from the Kelsey Group, was the author’s comment, “[Pay per] calls potentially also help ‘close the loop’ between online shopping and offline buying — the dominant transaction model into the foreseeable future.” We all know that people often shop and research online, but still buy locally. Pay Per Call is a way to convert a company’s national online marketing presence into directly trackable local Cost Per Lead actions. It is a way of harnessing the power of the Web and the power of the local Yellow Pages.

Because Pay Per Call is relatively new, the pricing models are still somewhat up in the air. There are flat fee models, auction models and tracking models vying for acceptance. While I think Pay Per Call will continue to grow, it is important to realize that to be truly useful, it needs to be part of a trackable component in a larger ROI-based marketing system. These larger marketing systems can include: Web sites, intranets, search engine optimization, CRM tools, customer databases, online catalogs and configurators, content-serving systems, pay-per-click, online and offline advertising and more.