Hear that? It’s the sound of 162 billion phone calls to businesses resulting from the search, social, and display advertising appearing on mobile phones.

Today’s marketers are shifting more and more of their spending to mobile. BIA Kelsey, a leading research firm focused on local advertising and marketing, expects the number of conversion calls to increase to 162 billion by 2020.

Calls to businesses have always been part of the buying process, particularly for purchases that are complex, expensive, and infrequent. Now that consumers have their phones with them at all times, more customers are calling when they first think about the purchase, during the research process, or immediately after the sale. Phone conversations have become a very important part of the customer experience.

The big takeaway is that with all of today’s focus on capturing analytics from your digital tactics, you might forget to capture the same attribution data from your phone conversions. Without a complete understanding of both your digital advertising and call conversions, you could end up spending your money in the wrong places.

And another thing—since phone calls convert to revenue 10 times more often than web leads, make sure you include your phone number on all your digital ads, offline campaigns, websites, and mobile apps. You don’t want to miss a call!

Quote of the Week: “The phone started ringing off the hook… the rest is history.” – Byron Ferguson