<span style="font-weight: 400;">We often have internal debates about what Ruler Analytics actually is;</span>
<ol>
 	<li><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Is it call tracking?</span></i></li>
 	<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Is it visitor level analytics? </span></li>
 	<li><span style="font-weight: 400;">Is it marketing attribution?</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">The conclusion often is that... </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">It’s all of these things.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Although, we’re not sure if our customers see it in that way.</span>

I know you’re probably going to think I’m biased.

Ruler Analytics cuts me a pay cheque every month, so of course I’m going to say good things about the platform.

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Although, I’m being 100% truthful when I say, the results I achieve from using Ruler Analytics day-to-day are... </span>

<span style="font-size: 25px; font-color: #45474d; font-family: proxima_nova_alt_rg;">HUGE!!</span>

The following may sound sales-y, but please stay with me for this part. I promise, there is a point to all this - you have my word.

I can say hand-on-heart, that whilst we may have comparable competitors on certain aspects of our products, there isn’t a product that does ALL of these things like we do.

...and for a fraction of the price too (if I say so myself).

We don’t even tie you into a contract!

Not to come across as bragging...

<img class="aligncenter wp-image-2756" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/7-powerful-use-cases-for-visitor-level-analytics-www.ruleranalytics.com_.gif" alt="7 powerful use cases for visitor level analytics - www.ruleranalytics.com" width="702" height="395" />

<span style="font-weight: 400;">...but in the last 12 months only 1.4% of our customers who use our full product suite have chosen to end their contracts.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">If you’re already a Ruler Analytics user, you will gain 3 or 4 times the value you’re getting out of using the product by just reading this post, and taking the time to understand some of the wonderous ways we use it.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Let’s get started. </span>

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<span style="font-size: 30px; font-color: #45474d; font-family: proxima_nova_alt_rg;">1. Track Which Marketing Channels are Sending Calls</span>

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first.

95% of our clients are using Ruler Analytics for call tracking, AND it’s no wonder why.

Call tracking has been at the forefront of our marketing over the last year.

What is it the makes call tracking so powerful?

Well, I’m going use an example to showcase how paramount call tracking really is to businesses advertising their services and products online.

The former Online Advertising Manager at <a href="http://www.paychex.com/">Paychex</a>, Jesse Kanclez, made a hair-raising discovery when trying to work out the cost per acquisition (CPA) of their paid search campaigns.

Data revealed that their CPA had been on the rise for quite some time, and although there had been some rule-based bidding, the team had never actually conquered automated bidding before.

Kanclez also noticed that, no effort had gone into the conversion rate optimization on their landing pages (the web page visitors land on after clicking a PPC ad)

From there onwards, Jesse knew he had some serious work to do, if they were to successfully decrease the CPA of their paid search campaigns.

According to Kanclez, form submission was driving around 65% of Paychex leads, which left phone calls contributing 35%.

How did they know this?

Their call centre representatives would have to ask the lead how they heard of the company and manually enter the source of the lead after the call.

This is NOT an effective method of measuring the success of your marketing campaigns.

Luckily for Paychex, Kanclez realised this straight away, which led him to make the following statement:
<blockquote>"So, there is an area there where I recognised that we didn't have very accurate tracking to determine [if it] is coming from paid search, is it coming from an organic search or an email campaign, or a print piece, or anything like that. So, that was kind of the big decision there, to actually go ahead and use call tracking to kind of fill that gap”.</blockquote>
He also went on to say, “If we can more accurately attribute a phone call to paid search or organic where our cost-per-acquisition, especially on paid search, was increasing, [and] we were able to decrease our cost-per-acquisition with the added tracking that we can get from phone call tracking, we can spend this 'X' amount of professional service fees on a phone call tracking solution”.

So, that’s what they did. They enlisted the help of call tracking to understand the productivity of their paid search campaigns.

Before the tracking system was installed, Paychex were under the impression that their PPC campaign accounted for 10-15% of all leads.

<span style="font-size: 25px; font-color: #45474d; font-family: proxima_nova_alt_rg;">They were wrong.</span>

<img class="aligncenter wp-image-2757" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/7-powerful-use-cases-for-visitor-level-analytics-www.ruleranalytics.com_-1.gif" alt="7 powerful use cases for visitor level analytics - www.ruleranalytics.com" width="700" height="417" />

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After the call tracking system was put in place, the data revealed that PPC was in fact generating a MASSIVE 35% of ALL leads.

As you can already imagine, this discovery instantly reduced the CPA for paid search, as the team were able to attribute the telephone leads to their EXACT source.

NO GUESSWORK INCLUDED!

This piqued the interest of other teams within the marketing department at <a class="zem_slink" title="Paychex" href="http://www.paychex.com/" target="_blank" rel="homepage">PayChex</a>, and rightly so!

In no time, other marketers at PayChex were using call tracking to help reduce the ROI of their own marketing campaigns.

Call tracking had a huge influence on how they optimised their landing pages. Instead of just focusing on just form submissions, they spent time testing and optimising their call tracking numbers.

Thanks to call tracking, their results were <strong>HUGE</strong>!
<ul>
 	<li>From 2011 to 2012, Paychex saw a <span style="text-decoration: underline;">98%</span> rise in leads</li>
 	<li>Over the same time, their CPA dropped by <strong>43%</strong></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">You might be thinking, ‘I’ve thought about using call tracking, but I can’t afford to commit to something for 12 months, in case my circumstances change.’ </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">I get that.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">I’m a very cautious person. I like to plan ahead, and ensure my livelihood is protected. It might the March 2nd, but I’m already thinking 3 months in advance. </span>

Although I must point out, unlike other companies in the call tracking space, we have no minimum contract length.

Meaning you’re free to leave whenever.

Not only do we think this is fair, but it ensures that we’re constantly seeking to improve the product and to prevent anyone from leaving us.

Ruler makes call tracking simple. We onboard every user ourselves, manage the dynamic numbers and help guide you through the simple implementation on the technical side.

Once that’s complete, we are able to begin tracking calls in our dashboard, and within Google AdWords and Analytics through our native integrations.

Don’t worry, I’ll cover integrations later.

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<span style="font-size: 30px; font-color: #45474d; font-family: proxima_nova_alt_rg;">2. See WHO Converted, Not Just That a Conversion Happened</span>

There’s two types of website analytics:
<ul>
 	<li>Session based analytics</li>
 	<li>Visitor based analytics</li>
</ul>
You’re probably familiar with the session based analytics model if you’ve used Google Analytics.

If not, where have you been hiding for the past 12 years?!

It’s actually estimated that, <a href="http://marketingland.com/as-google-analytics-turns-10-we-ask-how-many-websites-use-it-151892">30-50 million websites use Google Analytics</a>.

Although, with session based analytics, there is no identification of visitors.

Conversions are simply reported as top line figures.

This is fine for businesses that focus on higher volumes and lower margins.

However if you are a business whose leads or conversions are worth a considerable amount of money, then you will want to know more about the visit and conversion, not just that it happened.

As I’m setting this post live on a Thursday, I feel like a #TBT is in order for the next part.

7 years ago, I co-founded an SEO agency with my business partner Daniel.

On a daily basis we would struggle to demonstrate our efforts to our clients. We could tell them that conversions were happening, but we couldn’t tell them who those conversions were.

Come through Ruler Analytics.

<img class="aligncenter wp-image-2758" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/7-powerful-use-cases-for-visitor-level-analytics-www.ruleranalytics.com_-2.gif" alt="7 powerful use cases for visitor level analytics - www.ruleranalytics.com" width="701" height="297" />

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With visitor level analytics, the focus is the visitor. NOT the session.

You can breakdown your data, understand what pages are popular with your audience.

More importantly, you can a flawlessly attribute the source that helped convert a visitor into a potential lead.

Ruler Analytics identifies visitors historically over multiple sessions.

When they convert, you don’t only see the form fill data alongside the marketing data, but you can see every visit that user made before they converted - even if it was weeks ago!

Visitor level analytics is something National Claims Helpline found great satisfaction in.

National Claims Helpline is a leading claims management company based in the UK. Because of the nature of their business, they wanted to provide their visitors with an impressive, yet comfortable experience after they clicked through from an advertisement.

Their solution = visitor level analytics.

National Claims Helpline went ahead and utilised visitor level analytics to understand what their guests were doing along their journey.

Since they started tracking their customers individually, the marketing team at NCH have been optimising their landing pages based on previous human interaction.

<img class="aligncenter wp-image-2760" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/7-powerful-use-cases-for-visitor-level-analytics-www.ruleranalytics.com_.png" alt="7 powerful use cases for visitor level analytics - www.ruleranalytics.com " width="801" height="191" />

&nbsp;

In my opinion, this is the most efficient, and unobtrusive way of collecting data about your visitors.

<span style="font-weight: 400;">I mean, have you ever been browsing on a website and been asked to fill in a survey for a chance to win a year's supply of unnecessary ‘things’.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">I have, many times. And if I’m honest, I actually find this approach quite intrusive at times. </span>

As I have a background in marketing and co-founded my own businesses, I appreciate <strong><em>why</em></strong> individuals implement surveys on their website.

It’s an obvious way of gathering data on what website visitors are looking for and what they’re thinking. That data can go on to improve their online experience.

The exact same reason why National Claims Helpline and I use visitor level analytics.

Same goal, just a different approach.

Although, rather than waiting round in the hope someone will complete my online survey.

I can just log into Ruler, see <strong>exactly</strong> who has been on my website, reveal the source they used to find me and discover what they have and haven’t been looking at.

It really is as <strong>simple</strong> as that.

&nbsp;

<span style="font-size: 30px; font-color: #45474d; font-family: proxima_nova_alt_rg;">3. Add Hot Leads to Our Sales Pipeline</span>

This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to start making money back from an investment in Ruler Analytics!

Our companies feature matches the IP addresses of your business against database of known businesses. We can identify who is looking at your website, even if they haven’t filled in a form or submitted their details.

We have an automation that recognises when a certain company has engaged with our content for an extended period of time.

This gives us an indication that they’re interested in what we have to offer.

We pipe this company into our CRM for a sales person to reach out to them.

The results are amazing, and the win rate for leads discovered this way is no less than a form fill.

By reaching out proactively, we’re able to address any apprehensions that the website doesn’t.

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<span style="font-size: 30px; font-color: #45474d; font-family: proxima_nova_alt_rg;">4. Finding Out Which Channels Send The Best Quality Leads</span>

We briefly touched the benefits of <a href="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/visitor-journeys/">visitor based analytics</a> earlier, and this is an extension of that.

When you know who a conversion is, you can begin to get an understanding of what your best leads look like at the point of conversion.

Let me give you a mind exercise to help explain what I mean.

Imagine you’ve got two channels, Facebook Ads and Google Ads. In Google Analytics, you can see the following:

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2761" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/7-powerful-use-cases-for-visitor-level-analytics-www.ruleranalytics.com_-1.png" alt="7 powerful use cases for visitor level analytics - www.ruleranalytics.com" width="649" height="157" />

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A fair conclusion based on this data is that both Facebook Ads and Google Ads performed equally.

<span style="font-weight: 400;">However, if analysis allowed you to see that business domains convert better than personal ones, how would you feel if the mix looked something more like:</span>

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2768" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ruleranalytics-roas.png" alt="" width="550" height="221" />

You’d be able to conclude that whilst they send you similar volumes of leads, Google Ads are a lot higher quality.

Of course this is a simplistic example, but this is what is possible if you inspect your data and are diligent about your approach to analysis.

<span style="font-family: proxima_nova_alt_rg; font-size: 30px;">5. Uncovering Which Part of the Product Our Leads Are Most Interested In</span>

When someone converts and that lead gets passed over to sales, it’s important that we know exactly which part of the product they’re most interested in.

To do this, we analyse the journey taken by each lead and build up a profile of what they’re interested in based on the pages they visited.

Come through visitor level analytics.

<img class="aligncenter wp-image-2763" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/7-powerful-use-cases-for-visitor-level-analytics-www.ruleranalytics.com_-3.gif" alt="7 powerful use cases for visitor level analytics - www.ruleranalytics.com" width="801" height="362" />

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The majority of the time, it’s a toss up between our call tracking and company tracking products.

Although at times, we are able to build up more complex profiles based on the patterns in the blog.

For example, an individual may have read a couple of articles about PPC, before signing up to a demo.

With this data, we would be able to tailor our messaging towards the needs and problems that persona encounters, which really helps improve our win rates.

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<span style="font-size: 30px; font-color: #45474d; font-family: proxima_nova_alt_rg;">6. Share Marketing Data With Your CRM</span>

Anyone that’s worked with a CRM will know one thing - they’re super annoying to keep updated.

If your schedule is anything like mine, updating your CRM will most likely be at the bottom of your list of priorities.

Ruler Analytics is unique in that we don’t require our own forms to be able to extract the data from them.

Any form fill that takes place on your website will be extracted by Ruler and imported into our database.

How is this even possible?

Before you say it, no we don’t dabble in the dark arts.

<img class="aligncenter wp-image-2764" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/7-powerful-use-cases-for-visitor-level-analytics-www.ruleranalytics.com_-4.gif" alt="7 powerful use cases for visitor level analytics - www.ruleranalytics.com" width="799" height="388" />

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When you install the Ruler Analytics javascript tag on your website, it will be able to identify any form fill data that’s submitted. It’s really not that interesting and you’ll just have to trust us - it works.

We have over 750 integrations, which allows you send data to many popular marketing and sales tools.

We even have native integrations with Google Analytics and AdWords.

There’s another huge benefit of sending form fill and phone call data via Ruler Analytics too, we also have the marketing data for that form fill.

So not only will we tell you that Joe Bloggs is now a lead, but we will also inform you which marketing channel, campaign or keyword he came from.

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<span style="font-weight: 400;">This allows you to create better alignment with your sales and marketing teams.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">You can find more information on how to integrate your data with 750 applications here: </span>

<a href="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/ruler-information/transfer-ruler-analytics-data-sms-pipedrive-100-web-apps-using-zapier/">How to Transfer your Ruler Analytics Data to SMS, Pipedrive and 100+ Web Apps</a>

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<span style="font-size: 30px; font-color: #45474d; font-family: proxima_nova_alt_rg;">5. Uncovering Which Part of the Product Our Leads Are Most Interested In</span>

The truth hurts but you need to know it.

CEOs don’t trust marketers.

This isn’t just a generalisation, a recent study by the <a href="https://www.fournaisegroup.com/ceos-do-not-trust-marketers/">Fournaise Group</a> found that this statement was true to the tune of 91% of all CEOs.

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Can you think </span><strong><i>why</i></strong><span style="font-weight: 400;"> they don’t trust marketers?</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">When you’re in a boardroom, speaking about things like clicks and conversions will send your reputation down the tank. </span>

As much as your day-to-day may rely on these figures, they don’t pay the bills.

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In 2017, marketers need to be able to frame themselves as an investment rather than a cost centre. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">This means we need to be able to demonstrate exactly how much revenue our efforts are bringing in.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Return on Ad Spend allows us to do that.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Here’s how <a href="https://adexchanger.com">AdExchanger </a>describe it:</span>
<blockquote><span style="font-weight: 400;">“ROI optimizes to a strategy while ROAS optimizes to a tactic, yet some marketers use these terms interchangeably. ROI measures the profit generated by ads relative to the cost of those ads. It’s a business-centric metric that is most effective at measuring how ads contribute to an organization’s bottom line."</span></blockquote>
So how does Ruler Analytics helps you measure Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)?

If your business has an extended sales cycle, (this is the case for most businesses that aren’t low value/margin ecommerce) it isn’t enough estimating your ROAS based on an average.

The point of revenue often isn’t the point of conversion (when the person becomes a lead/a deal is created), we can’t even use custom goal values in Google Analytics.

What we need to do is attribute the correct marketing source to the lead in our CRM or order management system. Something that Ruler Analytics allows you to do with ease.

With this data, we are able to calculate the exact amount of revenue generated for every campaign, channel and EVEN keywords!

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<img class="aligncenter wp-image-2765" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/7-powerful-use-cases-for-visitor-level-analytics-www.ruleranalytics.com_-5.gif" alt="7 powerful use cases for visitor level analytics - www.ruleranalytics.com" width="799" height="449" />

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Imagine the impression you would make on your company by being able to prove an unarguable return on investment that is 4 or 10 times the resources you’d be given.

THAT is how you make an impact in business. And how marketers must be measuring their campaigns in 2017.

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