Google AdWords is one of the most popular platforms for driving targeted traffic to websites. Through various AdWords campaigns, you can attract website visitors, and you can track which visitors take particular actions, such as filling out a contact form, or making an e-commerce purchase. This data can then be used to optimize your campaign, allowing you to allocate more of your advertising budget and resources toward parameters that worked, such as particular keywords, ads, geographic targets, and even time of day that generated more leads and/or sales.
Phone tracking is equally important. In the earliest days, we recommended platforms like CallRail to help provide trackable phone numbers. In essence, providing a range of phone numbers that could be displayed dynamically, such as rotating numbers on your website for visitors who clicked through an AdWords advertisement. This allowed us to track phone calls as leads, just like we tracked e-commerce sales and contact form submissions. Systems like CallRail can still be leveraged to help track a wide variety of search, digital and offline marketing campaigns, and by anyone looking for full phone call attribution from their marketing efforts. For those interested specifically in phone calls from AdWords campaigns, the folks at Google have continued to evolve their own call tracking for all AdWords users.
It started with the ability to show a unique phone number in your ad on Google.com. If someone called this phone number, even if they didn’t click your ad to visit your website, this could be tracked as a conversion. These phone numbers are more likely to be used in some industries than in others. For instance, if you’re looking for an emergency 24/7 plumber or locksmith, you may call for a quick quote, rather than spend time reviewing their website and online collateral. Even in industries where shoppers are less likely to call, they help us to get a better picture of how successful your marketing efforts are and what your overall return on your marketing investment looks like. It can also increase your overall conversion rates, since shoppers like to know that they can call you if they need to.
More recently, Google has stepped it up a notch with a few new innovations. These include:
- Call-only ads: These ads are great for instances where you really want the shopper to call you. For instance, if you have a website that isn’t mobile-friendly or a very complex product, but you do have a great sales staff that can help a shopper place an order, call-only ads would have the potential to offer better conversion rates than sending shoppers to your website. In some cases, your sales team may be able to increase the average order value by helping to upsell the customer and offer complementary products.
- Call-length based goals: A call that lasts 10 seconds probably didn’t generate you any revenue and ideally shouldn’t be counted as a conversion. Google will now allow us to filter these goals based upon call-length, keeping your goal tracking more accurate.
- Website Call Forwarding: You can now use AdWords to change the phone number on your website for visitors that click through an AdWords advertisement. This requires you to place some code snippets into your website for each place your phone number is normally displayed, but will show a unique phone number when the shopper clicks from an ad, and loads your website. When they call the unique phone number, the conversion is tracked based upon which ad they clicked.
This kind of call tracking is becoming even more feasible for businesses, since shoppers rarely write down or otherwise record phone numbers for businesses anymore. If they need to call you again, they simply go back to your website. This shift has dramatically decreased the likelihood that a shopper may try to reach back out to you in the distant future and have any difficulty reaching you.
If you’re interested in running a Google AdWords, Google Shopping, Bing Ads, or other pay-per-click marketing campaign, or have an existing campaign and want a complimentary audit to see if an award winning team of experienced digital marketing professionals could improve your bottom line, consider reaching out to the RandMarketing.com team. We help you to take advantage of all of the latest features to optimize your internet marketing, while allowing you to focus on your products and customers.
About the Author
Robert Rand of RandMarketing.com was educated at NYU Poly and has managed the development and marketing of hundreds of websites. Along with Rand’s award winning team, he helps clients take their businesses to the next level by employing best practices, while staying at the forefront of the eCommerce and internet marketing industries. From technical issues to traditional marketing efforts, Robert takes pride in providing our clients with services that will make a difference in their bottom lines.
