Mobile app usage increased by 58 percent in 2015, a recent Flurry study found. App categories that saw the biggest growth included Personalization, News and Magazines, Utilities/Productivity, and Lifestyle/Shopping.

While these particular app types saw major year-over-year growth rates in the last 12 months — ranging from 81 percent (Lifestyle/Shopping) to a whopping 352 percent (Personalization) — there’s something missing from the Flurry study. Namely the phone app. Phones are likely the most used app on smartphones across the population — despite being ignored in most major studies on app usage — and the implications for local businesses are considerable.

Call Data Proves Phone Calls are Up

CallRail’s most recent quarterly data shows that phone calls to businesses are up 7.69 percent in Q4 2015, compared with Q4 2014.

October realized the biggest gain of 10.22 percent, with November seeing a 7.44 percent gain and December netting a 5.14 percent gain. The data is collected and anonymized from 898 Canadian and U.S. companies in industries including professional, e-commerce, retail, healthcare, and automotive who use CallRail’s call analytics software.

Q4 2015 is the fourth straight quarter of increased call growth among businesses that use CallRail. In Q1 of 2015, calls were up 16 percent. In Q2 of 2015, calls grew by 19 percent. In Q3 of 2015, calls increased by 5 percent. These numbers prove that rising call volume is not an anomaly, and that all the headlines about Millennials preferring texts to calls fail to paint the full picture of how people use smartphones to communicate.

In addition to call volume increasing in 2015, time spent on calls increased by as much as 20 percent. The facts are clear: Users like the phone app and find value in it.

What we’ve noticed in our data at CallRail is backed up by BIA/Kelsey analysts, who estimate that users will make 73 billion calls to businesses by 2018, up from 30 billion phone calls in 2013. As businesses aim to target ever-more-connected smartphone consumers, they shouldn’t ignore the “lowly” phone app.

The phone app may be left out of so many studies about mobile app usage because many people don’t even see the phone icon on their smartphone as an app at all. They just see it as the button they press when they want to place a call, similar looking yet substantively different from an app.

Click to call technology (all over the web now) makes it simple for mobile searchers to call a business and ask questions about location, services, or hours. It’s often easier for a user on the go to get a quick answer over the phone than to search a mobile website for the information they need. Ad extensions also reinforce the ease of using the phone by making it simple for users to call from an ad with one click.

Additionally, voice search may play a role in habituating users to the concept of calling local businesses. When a searcher is already talking to their phone for search purposes, then talking to a service provider is a natural next step.

Why Businesses Need to Care About the Phone

With all the talk about marketing to smartphone users, the phone is getting left out of the debate over how to engage mobile users on their devices. Yet the numbers show that phone calls cannot be ignored.

Retail, food service, medical, automotive, home improvement, health and beauty – all of these businesses are receiving more phone calls. This volume is only projected to grow, if the BIA/Kelsey projections hold true. Local businesses can start taking advantage of the steady stream of phone calls by focusing on two areas of marketing: local search visibility and call tracking. (We recently focused on exactly this in a webinar with Local Search Association’s Greg Sterling.)

Local search visibility is most impacted by local SEO, which helps searchers find local businesses offering the services they need. Focusing on local SEO to business websites and directory listings can be fairly straightforward, if challenging. While call tracking requires somewhat more time to set up, it also delivers larger rewards, helping businesses close the loop on advertising ROI. Once configured, call tracking delivers valuable analytics showing which marketing channels drive first-time callers to connect.

Businesses who dive into call analytics can unpack relevant information over why users call and what information they request. They can offer a service menu that makes it easier for callers to find basic information, or connect right away with the person who can help them with their needs. By providing efficient customer service, companies can increase satisfaction, customer loyalty, and ultimately customer retention.

Along with helping business provide better customer service, call tracking can also help marketers make informed decisions around their ad spend. Call tracking provides valuable insight into what’s working and what isn’t working. Businesses can see (via call volume) which ads generate the highest number of first-time callers.

New customers cost anywhere from $10 and under for industries like retail to hundreds of dollars for financial firms, Entrepreneur reports. So any data that can help marketers spend wisely is well worth the investment.

In the fight for the mobile consumer, the humble phone may be one tool that’s overlooked by small business marketers worried about competing on the next Periscope or Pinterest. And while smartphone users are entertaining themselves with apps like these, they’re also using the phone app more frequently to contact local businesses. Catch this trend on the upswing by implementing call tracking for your business now.