by Greg Ives - KeywordRanking.

AOL incorporated Ingenio's pay-per-call technology into their sponsored links. In my recent article Pay Per Call: Should Marketers Care? I ask who's PPCall pitched to and discuss what I see as PPCall's main issues.

Not to keep dumping on PPCall, but I came up with some more issues recently that made me ask, "will PPCall be sweet nectar for marketers?"

Now, no. Down the road, yes.

Here are a couple problems I see with the current model:

1) Marketing 101:

There's no freaking call to action on the landing page. Here is an example of an AOL PPCall ad for "Mortgages".

When users hit the landing page they find a company name and a phone number, just like they'd looked it up in a phone book, which they didn't. No call to action = WEAK. If it were me searching for a mortgage, I would click in, back out and not call.

We need to see more of a blended landing page for PPCall, with links to the site. But then what's the difference between the a PPCall landing page with links and a landing page that emphasizes a phone number?

And why not just over-emphasize your phone number in your PPC ads?

Until we see the introduction of click-to-call technologies PPCall may remain useful primarily for those without websites at all... and mortgage marketers.

Still, the PPCall ads, for now, show up higher in AOL's sponsored link results. If your clicks cost more than US$2 now in AOL and your prospects actually pick up the phone it might give you a decent return.

2) More research needed:

Potential clients want to be sold before they talk with a salesperson. Sales conversions are better if you can get propsects to call instead of visiting your site, but propsects would rather look around before getting sharked up by a salesperson.

It's similar to a car dealership. You don't go running up to the salesperson and say give me what you got. You want to do your research and look around first.

3) Fraud and Price:

There's no system in place to prevent unwanted or crank calls. You will pay a minimum of $2 per call which is steep for many businesses in niche markets. Imagine Joe the local plumber paying $2 for every incoming call from a call-fraud phone bank in the Philippines. That is not sweet nectar.

Still, it's a good idea to have your marketing agency look into PPCall for your business and do a test to check out the conversions. You might find that there's a little nectar there for you after all.

Greg Ives is the Paid Search Director for Websourced's KeywordRanking.

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