Dialing for Small-Biz Dollars

February 16, 2007 by Rich | 20 Comments
In Advertising, Marketing, Sales, Technology, Tools

Pay-per-call ads are luring to the Web service-oriented businesses that don’t have Web sites and prefer calls over clicks to rack up sales.

Three-year-old Rhode Island-based roofing company AS Enterprises had a big, although common, problem: not enough customers. Owner Ann Marie Appleton had tried offering free estimates in local circulars and flyers, but her competitors were doing the same, and the resulting leads were lukewarm at best.

Eventually, Appleton’s sales representative sold her on the idea of a monthly agreement for the company’s new Pay For Call service, where businesses pay for each call made to their business via SuperPages’ online local search results.

Appleton couldn’t be happier with her choice. The service costs around $600 a month, depending on how many times her ad is served and how many calls she gets. AS Enterprises totaled more than $240,000 in sales in 2006, up from just $60,000 the year before, and Appleton says a good 70% of that business came directly from her pay-per-call advertising.

Most pay-per-call advertising services work like this: First, companies bid for placement on keyword searches. Then their ad is served to the user based on location, and the company is charged each time a user calls; the ad itself is placed for free.

When companies register with most providers, their site is assigned a unique phone number that appears in the ad, so that the company can track how many calls actually come through the pay-per-call advertising system.

Businesses only pay when someone searching for their product or service picks up the phone and calls them.

People used to call just for the free estimate, says Appleton, but those who call from SuperPages are ready to do business. Her closing rate on calls went from 25% to between 60% and 70%, and her call volume has tripled.

Since the service requires that she bid against other businesses, each call costs about $25, but Appleton says she’d gladly pay twice that. “It pays for itself with just one job, and I get between four and eight good jobs a month,” she says.

Photo by SuperPages.