Eric Nagel

Everyone these days is talking about Local Lead Gen(eration) – a local form of affiliate marketing. As a marketer, you’d generate leads for a local business (via PPC, SEO, offline marketing, etc) and the business will typically pay you per phone call or e-mail.

Shoemoney wrote about it, Ad Hustler posted a series on his blog, and now I’m going to show you how to easily track phone leads.

In local lead generation, a local phone number is important. If you’re in the 716 area code and have an ad with a 812 area code, you’ll lose leads. Hosted Numbers is a service that, for just $7.95 / month, you can get a local phone number set up in any city in the US. The call will be logged and forwarded to any phone number you specify. The local package gives you 1,000 minutes / month, with additional minutes costing 3.9¢ each. At this price, you can get multiple numbers, and use one for a print ad, one for a PPC campaign, and another for your SEO work.

You can then take these phone calls and integrate it with your Google Analytics account, so you can view your website stats and incoming phone calls all from the Analytics dashboard.

You can also get advanced caller ID information from Hosted Numbers. For 20¢ per successful caller ID lookup, Hosted Numbers will return the caller’s name and address. You could easily sell this back to your local business for 50¢ per lead.

So if you’re doing local lead generation, and you’re not tracking phone calls via a service like Hosted Numbers, you’re leaving money on the table.