Your phone number may be changing

A new marketing tool is starting to roll out to track calls generated by web advertising. They simply generate a new phone number for that specific client’s listing every time it is displayed. This number is then forwarded to your main number. Usage of this technology is limited now, but a ‘pay per call’ charge will be collected.

One company with the technology to do this, eStara, contacted me about discussing the subject here. At first I passed, as it doesn’t really apply to me right now, but after seeing the article
Can pay-per-call search really ring up sales? in BtoB Magazine, I changed my mind.

Per the article, one early tester of pay-per-call on Superpages.com is Tower Tech, a B2B company that might sell water-cooling towers to some of my clients (which is why I was suddenly interested). Tower Tech says they have gotten up to 30 calls in a month using the service. They are budgeting spending about $7,500 a year with Superpages.

This technology is being positioned for supporting advertising of service companies and local businesses, where a phone call is much more useful to the prospect than a website. EStara has an example of a hotel/spa directory using the technology, which makes a lot of sense.

Tower’s marketing mix (or not):
I was curious about Tower Tech’s web marketing, so I investigated. At Superpages, they were #1 for ‘cooling tower’. Superpages lists their URL, but you have to click on ‘phone’ to get the auto-generated number. Googling ‘cooling tower’ shows them at #10, and no AdWords listing. ThomasNet is overloaded with tower companies, but not Tower Tech. Nada on GlobalSpec, too.

Perhaps in a competitive industry, they have found a niche with Superpages, especially since their B2B sales seem to be done primarily through local distributors rather than direct sales like a good part of their competition. And that might also support using pay-per-call, too. I will say that their website is very good, too.