CallRail Releases Report Benchmarking Marketing

CallRailAI-powered insights platform, unveiled a new report on which marketing channels have the biggest impact on small businesses, titled “From Conversations to Conversions: How Small Businesses Can Sell Smarter.” The survey, based on 1.1 million prospects across across key industries – including automotive, financial services, healthcare, home services, legal, real estate and real estate investment – ​​provides businesses with one of the first datasets to benchmark marketing performance across their industry.

“It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by today’s marketing environment, especially for small business leaders who need to ensure that their resources are directed to the areas of maximum ROI for their business.”

Every small business dreams of growth, but limited budgets, limited resources and the complexity of multiple channels make it difficult to identify marketing efforts that drive meaningful leads. By pinpointing the channels that work best, businesses can optimize marketing spend, drive customer acquisition and increase profitability.

“It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by today’s marketing environment, especially for small business leaders who need to ensure that their resources are directed to areas with the highest ROI for their business,” said Laura Beussman, senior vice president of marketing at CallRail. “Our findings offer actionable insights to help these businesses make data-driven decisions and fine-tune marketing spend and strategy by identifying the top-performing marketing channels and keywords that drive conversations and conversions by industry.”

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Key findings from the report include:

• Key channels that drive conversations: Understanding what drives the calls and texts a business receives is critical to making data-driven marketing spend decisions in order to attract a higher volume of qualified leads that can truly drive business growth. The top three channels driving conversations remain consistent across industries and include Google Ads (37%), followed by Google My Business (23%) and organic search (22%).

• Missed calls are missed opportunities: Not answering the phone can have a major impact on a small business’s bottom line – up to 85% of customers whose calls go unanswered don’t call back. Healthcare emerged as the industry with the highest rate of missed calls (32%), closely followed by legal (28%), home services (14%) and real estate (9%).

• Channels for securing qualified leads and sales meetings: Qualified leads are often identified by call length, specific questions, or high-interest actions like scheduling an appointment—and are the most likely to convert. Key channels producing the highest number of qualified leads include Google Ads (47%), organic search (23%) and Google My Business (15%). Additionally, for businesses looking to convert leads into specific sales opportunities, primary channels include Google Ads (36%), Google My Business (32%) and organic search (18%).

• Linking keywords to customer intent: Using the right keywords will ensure that your ads reach the right audience and should reflect their search behavior. While the most used keywords are often specific across industries, common trends emerged, including “near me” searches (such as “plumber near me”), industry-specific searches (“personal injury attorney”) and niche phrases (e.g. “bridge financing” in financial services and “land for sale” in real estate).

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“Armed with these insights, small businesses can unlock greater growth by focusing marketing efforts on the channels they know will optimize opportunities—from lead generation to sales—while meeting the unique needs of their industry,” said Emily Popson, vice president of growth. Marketing at CallRail. “Now is the time to reassess your marketing efforts and assess where they stand so you can improve your strategy. One thing is clear across industries, conversational insight has an invaluable role in helping small businesses succeed.”

CallRail is Call Tracking and Conversation Intelligence^® remain the key to unlocking growth with actionable conversational insights by providing a clear view of which channels are driving the most qualified leads, meetings and sales, enabling businesses to make data-driven decisions that optimize performance.