As consumers increasingly use smart phones and devices to make purchases, click-to-call commerce is increasing in popularity amongst mobile shoppers. According to data released by Marchex, a mobile advertising analytics company, click-to-call commerce will constitute more than $1 trillion of 2015’s consumer purchases.
“Marketers are allocating more time to understand how to reach mobile consumers, especially millennials. 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.
Influenced by mass adoption of smartphones amongst consumers, Marchex’s study finds that consumers are four times more likely to make a click-to-call purchase when compared to online ads. Using data from 24 million consumer-to-business mobile phone calls and Marchex Call DNA, researchers have mapped, scored and classified phone calls, tracking the success of click-to-call purchases.
According to industry research group BIA/Kelsey consumers will directly call businesses from mobile publishers and apps more than 93 billion times in 2015. The study confirms that the majority of these phone calls conclude with scheduled appointments, reservations, product purchases and more. The stats from BIA/Kelsey research compliments and confirms the findings of Marchex including:
*Across more than a dozen industries, including insurance, travel, auto repair, legal services and home improvement, 5-25% of phone calls from mobile ads convert into sales, appointments or reservations.
*On average, a “click-to-call” from a mobile consumer is 4 times more likely to become a paying customer than a consumer clicking to a Web page from an online ad.
*Robocalls are a major challenge for click-to-call marketers, and issues vary by severity across mobile publishers. Marketers require analytics-based solutions to measure media efficiency.
*The “leaky funnel” of click-to-call commerce is often at the call center or local business. For some industries, more than 20% of phone calls from mobile ads are unanswered.
*Millennials are the most likely to “click-to-call” of any age group, and should be the target of mobile click-to-call campaigns.
“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.”
Marchex’s findings appear in a white paper titled “2015 Click-to-Call Commerce Mobile Performance Report”.
