Yesterday, I attended a webinar called “Delivering Quality Leads to Platform Neutral Advertisers”. Organized by eStara, I was exposed to some interesting pay-per-call data in a presentation by Robyn Rose, Vice President of Marketing for Superpages.com. Five case studies involving different individual advertisers (florist, satellite TV provider, locksmith, personal injury lawyer, laser eye surgery) were presented.

Highlights:

• Average monthly spend went from $300 (locksmith) to $2500 (satellite TV)
• Average cost per call was spread between $3.70 (laser surgery) to $35.00 (locksmith)
• The estimated conversion rate went from 30% (lawyer) to 82% (florist)
• Average sales were between $64 (florist) and $1992 (laser surgery)
• Sales ROI was between 2 (locksmith) to 309 (laser surgery)

In addition, we were told that the actual cost per call at Superpages.com is completely determined by market demand. Advertisers set budgets and determine how much they want to bid in their vertical (heading) and in their geography. Superpages doesn’t believe in package of calls at a fixed price and they prefer to let the market decide. They’ve also found that the product is really successful for service-based businesses (plumbers, landscapers, realtors, medical professions, florists, etc.) but some product-based companies embrace it as well if they have a call center. Businesses attracted to the product are either local or national in scope.

What it means: Superpages has to be commended for sharing some ROI information around pay-per-call as there’s not a lot of data out there. People that have been around me for a couple of years know that I’m a big, big proponent of pay-per-call as a future way to monetize online and print directory searches. Looking at the some of the numbers above, call-based advertising could be very attractive from a business case point of view.