Ivy Rehab | Case Study
KPI Identification and Call Tracking
Instrumentation Lead on Paid Search.
Four15 aligned with Ivy Rehab on the importance of splitting calls by source (channel) and ad type, a conversion strategy for identifying the KPI’s that signaled a high-value call, and how we could use that data to optimize for appointments booked and potential sales value.
The original call tracking setup was a quick fix that allowed Ivy Rehab to track calls, but only in an aggregated fashion. There were no insights into where calls were coming from, either the search ads themselves which contained call extensions, or for the IvyRehab.com website.
We were also unable to ascertain the digital channel that was resulting in these calls (Google vs Bing), nor the value of these calls.
This prevented Ivy Rehab from properly tracking leads and sales from those calls back to various paid efforts. This ultimately lead to under-reporting on the effectiveness of these channels. This setup also meant that all calls were recorded as conversions, even if the call was not qualified. For all paid channels it is Four15’s prerogative to ensure attribution of appointments booked back to each media channel because it is imperative for informed decision making, optimization, and improving ROI. Four15 does not believe in spending our customers media budgets without being able to tell them exactly what they are getting for their spend, or having data that dictates our optimization decisions.
Our immediate priority was to improve Paid Search conversion tracking instrumentation for accurate data collection. Without a baseline of clean, accurate, and informative data, we would be unable to understand areas of improvement for account performance. We had to find a method for determining what calls were qualified and which were not.
Keeping their needs in mind, Four15 methodically worked in three steps to identify the length of calls that signaled a high value for Ivy Rehab:
Four15 and Ivy Rehab analyzed several months of historic calls tracked through Call Tracking Metrics. When completed, we identified calls of over 180 seconds represented those that most likely represented qualified leads that were likely to convert. While it wasn’t a perfect identifier, it did mean we could focus ad dollars towards those calls most likely to convert.
Our secondary action was to expand the number of phone numbers available to Ivy Rehab in CTM and allow them to separate calls by source (Website vs Ads) and channel (Google Ads vs Microsoft Bing). Previously aggregated under a single phone number, this new buildout would give us insights into performance differences and allow us to optimize each element independently.
Finally, we instituted target CPA optimization towards qualified calls, helping drive more leads across Ivy Rehab’s hundreds of locations.
Within the first month of instrumenting the 180 second qualification for conversions we identified that approximately 60% of the calls generated had been unqualified. While total call “conversion” volume decreased after this switch, optimization efforts towards these unqualified calls had been wasting a significant amount of time and budget. Now that we knew the calls we tracked as ‘conversions’ were high quality, we could specifically target our efforts to maximize impact Ivy Rehab’s ROI from paid search ads.
Prior to the instrumentation of source identification, we had hypothesized that ads were leading to very few calls and that it was the website that was the primary source of calls.
After the expansion of call tracking metrics phone numbers and were able to breakout website vs ads calls, we quickly saw that calls from the ads themselves were responsible for 30-40% of all calls coming from the Paid Search channel.
With this insight we quickly doubled down on ensuring all ad campaigns had a phone number present with call extensions, and expanded the reach of mobile click-to- call ads. This update also allowed us to break-out calls from Bing vs Google, which allowed us to prove the value of Bing as an advertising channel – where previously we had to rely on call estimates and web conversion data.
In all, this instrumentation aided in conclusively proving the value of paid search channels at driving qualified leads to Ivy Rehab’s businesses, and gave the digital teams the ability to prove and improve the value of conversions from paid search.