Diversification of traffic sources for Pay Per Call marketing is something that RingPartner has been working hard to develop. We’re always looking for the next best thing, the next driver of high volume and high quality calls. The Pay Per Call industry is currently fuelled largely by mobile search. Many other forms of promotion, both online and offline, work well but there is one type of marketing we steer clear of – incentive.
Pitfalls of Marketing Incentives
Marketing incentives usually entail some form of an ad that urges a consumer to fill out a form, download an app or complete a phone call in order to receive a free product, virtual currency, or cash. While this tactic may work for some companies, it almost never does in Pay Per Call marketing. Calling a number and spending time talking to a call center agent is a larger investment and requires more of a genuine commitment than simply completing a form or downloading an app. Quite often, incentivized users that do spend the time on a call are quick to tell the agent that they’re not interested and the only purpose of their call is to receive the incentive. This greatly displeases the advertisers and wastes time for the agents.
Unauthorized incentive is the worst type of incentive, delivering unqualified, misguided and fraudulent calls. This occurs when publishers utilize incentive traffic without any prior approval from a network or advertiser. Few distribution partners can make incentives work and even fewer advertisers, especially those that will accept incent outright. If a publisher goes out of their way to incentivize a non-incent campaign on the RingPartner network, it is caught very quickly. RingPartner has the capacity to listen to each call and it’s incredibly easy to determine if a caller has been persuaded by other means. We also have tools and software in place to catch these unauthorized incentive calls.
One of the most threatening and worst tactics we’ve seen is secret shoppers. This method is used by publishers trying to game the system for unfounded commissions. Consumers are duped into a secret shopper program, usually via Craigslist, where they are paid for surveying or testing the skills and practices of call center agents. All they need to do is stay on the line for a set duration and they’ll be paid out. Of course, this is all a sham and there is no “secret shopper” program, but rather these publishers are incentivizing consumers to participate in their scam.
Read More: 5 Digital Marketing Mistakes New Businesses Make
Neither authorized or unauthorized incent has any long term benefits in Pay Per Call marketing and it harms relationships across the board. This is the main reason we don’t allow it at RingPartner. This kind of traffic is unprofitable, dishonest and shows a clear lack of respect for all parties involved. It results in longer call durations and lower payouts for our partners, damaging the industry, and that is something we cannot abide. We encourage all other Pay Per Call advertisers and networks to demand a higher level of quality from Pay Per Call marketing. And that is why we don’t allow incentive traffic, authorized or unauthorized traffic as a promotion type for Pay Per Call marketing, and you shouldn’t either.