How to track phone calls from Google Adwords

There was a time in online marketing where the optimal way to make contact with your target market was through emails or a website contact form. Both methods require the prospective customer to enter their contact details, which can be used for future promotion purposes if no sale results.

Of course, this is still vital to an online marketing campaign, but another form of contact, which to some may seem a little archaic, is becoming more and more effective: asking searchers to ring a telephone number. And now the technology is in place to do that directly from a Google AdWords advert and monitor how effective the campaign has been.

A window of opportunity

The fact is a telephone call will put a prospective consumer directly in touch with sales staff at the time when they are passionate about the services and products you are seeking. That hot window of opportunity can be accessed if your adverts offer direct communication with an individual who has the skills to convert and talk up the product in question.

Why Now?

The mobile phone is now more or less a computer in our pockets. We can easily access anything on the internet that we can on our desktop computers, laptops or tablets. The important factor about a mobile phone is when the searcher is viewing your site he/she has a telephone in their hands and can make direct contact by simply clicking a button.

Also, according to a recent Google study 70% of searchers have called an advertiser directly from the search page rather than clicking on the ad.

How your telephone number is shown by AdWords

On SERPS on your desktop computer the number is seen below the domain address on the third line. On mobile SERPS it is seen as an icon depicting a telephone receiver. They are initiated from the same settings in AdWords at group level and we recommend that you use a different number or extension for each group so you can easily track which ad is giving the best response.

You can also use the Free Google Tracking number . There are benefits for each. If you use your own number, users may write down the number and so can always call you again in the future. Also, for bigger companies, you can use local numbers dependant on where the ad is being shown to give the impression that you are offering a local service. With the Google Tracking number you can track the number of calls, which campaign they came from and how long the call lasted. Subsequently you can calculate cost per call via Google Analytics.

Tracking data with Google Voice

Once you have Google Voice you can track all the different telephone numbers you may be using on your Google AdWords ads which allows for myriad of data supplied in Google Analytics. If you make each telephone number peculiar to each campaign or ad group, then you are going to be receiving two sets of results. Calls which occur before the click (i.e. the searcher is interested in the ad and rather than clicking through to the website, phones straight away) and calls after the click (the click through to the website also resulted in a call).

Now if you want to get really technical you can even track the calls which became an actual sale by using Google’s unique click id!

The telephone is making a comeback in hyperspace – don’t underrate it as a highly powerful method for conversions and future leads.

Ask us. Web Results Direct is extremely successful at delivering ROI driven paid advertising campaigns on multiple digital platforms. Its PPC consultants are all Google AdWords Certified Professionals and Bing Ads Accredited Professionals. Contact us on 01483 429222 or learn more about our PPC marketing consultancy services.