Click-to-call ads 4x more likely to lead to purchase
According to Marchex’s analysis of 24 million consumer-to-business mobile calls, many of these calls lead to an over-the-phone sale, an in-store purchase, a reservation or an appointment. This ‘click-to-call’ activity, they forecast, will result in more than $1 trillion in consumer purchases this year. Millennials were found to be the demographic “most likely” to use click-to-call.
“Our data shows that for many types of purchases, millennials prefer to contact a business directly by phone, and then are following through with purchases,” said John Busby, SVP of Consumer Insights for the Marchex Institute, the data and insights arm of Marchex.
Marchex’s ‘2015 Click-To-Call Commerce Mobile Performance Report‘ reveals that, across more than a dozen industries, between 5% and 25% of calls from mobile ads convert into a sale, appointment or reservation. In fact, they found that a ‘click-to-call’ interaction is four times more likely to lead to a transaction than a click to a webpage from an online ad.
“Although e-commerce is a major force in consumer spending, it accounts for just 7% of retail spending and less than 2% of total consumer expenditures,” said Michael Boland, Chief Analyst and VP, Content at BIA/Kelsey, a research and advisory firm. “The other 98% are increasingly influenced by smartphones and a phone call is often the bridge from the mobile world to the offline world for dozens of industries, including financial services, insurance, home services, health care and personal care.”
However, the research also found that as much as 20% of calls made via mobile ads go unanswered, meaning that for many businesses a lot of dollars are being left on the table.
