As a small business owner, marketer, or startup founder, you are well-acquainted with the value of data and analytics. When you run campaigns on and offline, you implement robust tracking tools to evaluate the value of every dollar spent.

But what happens when people call you? How can you track that?

Trust us — your inbound calls are a wealth of opportunity, they can lead to more business and help you improve in areas you didn’t even know needed help.

Here’s how:

1. Figure Out How Callers Find You

The first step is to track your calls so you can better understand how prospects are finding you.

How’d they get to you? Was it your PPC campaign? A word of mouth referral? PR coverage? Direct mail? Use a separate phone number for each campaign and take all the guess work out of it.

The number on your support page might be different from the ones on your marketing site or PPC landing pages, for example. You can track which numbers people are using to figure out where they’re coming from. Increase spend on the campaigns that are working and dial back spend on the ones that aren’t performing.

2. Evaluate And Ask Questions

Every call is an opportunity to drive revenue, improve business, or gain valuable insights.

Pay close attention to the reasons people are calling you and be on the lookout for trends and new opportunities. Always ask yourself:

• What’s going well?

• What issues keep popping up in calls?

• What trends are you noticing in your customer conversations?

• What features are prospects looking for?

• You get the point. Pay attention and track everything.

3. Set Goals

If you’re a Google Analytics pro, you’re already well-aware of this concept. In a nutshell, goals are actions that you want your website visitors to complete — making a purchase, completing a form, or sharing a piece of content with a friend.

Set goals for your phone calls too. Decide:

• How often your prospects should request more information or sign-up for free trials

• How long it should take for them to go from an interested party to a paying customer

• How fast a customer issue should be solved

• By understanding and prioritizing your goals up-front, you’ll be able to better optimize customer conversations.

4. Rely on Tools

If your business experiences heavy call volume, you probably won’t have time to track every last detail. If you find yourself in this situation, explore analytics solutions that can help.

Speak2Leads, for instance, is a web app that automates the follow up process for agents so you can connect with your leads in more efficiently, making the most of your agents' time. Lead performance reports allow sales teams to segment results over time and by geography. You can even monitor your success rate in connecting with your leads and use that as a success benchmark.

A variety of other phone call tracking solutions are also available in the Google Analytics App gallery.

Understand your goals and priorities — then pick the solution that best meets your needs.

5. Write it Down

Create a scorecard to measure how you’re performing. Select your “judging criteria” based on variables that you want to track over time — call length, time to conversion, number of follow-ups, complaint resolutions, negative feedback, happy customers, etc.

The more you write down, the more you hold yourself and your team accountable. Create a team challenge around this initiative, and encourage your customer service and sales teams to have fun with it. It can be fun to track your ROI. Plus, the more you do it, the more you’ll learn.

How do you measure the ROI of your business’s toll-free number? What are some of your favorite tools and techniques? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.