When data is good, it’s one of the most effective marketing resources you have. However, you can’t know how well a PPC campaign performed without reporting and data. You don’t want to be wasting your advertising budget on clicks that don’t produce any follow-through. However, the right data enables you to create and tweak your most effective campaigns while discontinuing your least effective campaigns. Implementing call tracking for Adwords and other PPC campaigns provides you that critical data that brings your marketing to the next level. 

A company called GreenPal utilized data to gain a greater understanding of the local market as well as create better targeted ads for customers who expressed concern about price. They quickly saw an increase in click-through rates of 200 percent along with 30 percent more on-page conversions.

Green Pal is not alone. Many companies use this type of data to improve the performance of PPC campaigns. They use a variety of sources to do so, including Google Analytics. This site and others like it offers in-depth details about how people found and landed on your website. Unfortunately, it can’t tell you anything about those who discovered your website via their mobile phone.

Call tracking with PPC enables you to merge your existing metrics with data you receive from phone campaigns. This further enables you to make better decisions about current and future marketing campaigns.

With call tracking configuration, you buy one or more telephone numbers that forward to your business phones. They can be toll-free or local numbers depending on your phone service provider. You have the freedom to purchase multiple tracking numbers and receive a unique way to track each PPC campaign and phone number. The numbers can appear in your PPC ads directly or another location that you choose. Our program also allows you to establish dynamic number insertion directly on your business website as part of your overall PPC campaign.

Advantages of call tracking for Adwords and other PPC campaigns

Many business owners underestimate the power of the telephone call to close deals with their new customers. It’s true that most people prefer to receive marketing updates via email. However, they still want to connect to a live person to discuss specific questions they have about the product or service in question.

According to HubSpot, 19 percent of people are ready to talk to a salesperson during the awareness phase, which is the earliest phase of the buying cycle. This number jumps to 60 percent when customers transition from the awareness to the consideration phase. Further, half of all customers want to discuss pricing with a live representative the first time they call a company. When you consider the number of customers who want to make direct contact via phone, you can see how important it is to obtain data from call extensions that you place in your ads. Here are some ways you can do that:

Call data: Reporting from call data makes it possible to determine call volume as well as the peak times of day for calls. With this data, you can refine your marketing campaigns and put more resources into those that produce the greatest return on investment (ROI).

Keyword data: Thanks to call tracking, you learn which keywords prompted your PPC ad, so you can tweak your bids and target audience. Obviously, you want to use the keywords that will bring the highest call volume to your company.

Overall campaign performance: It’s highly valuable to be able to track the conversions you received for each campaign. Our conversion metrics make it possible to figure the actual financial value of each campaign as well as make better decisions based on your marketing budget.

Split testing: When you test different versions of your landing page to see which one produces better results, it’s helpful to have a unique identification number for each one. You can choose to assign a dynamic number to each page or use other determining factors when deciding whether version A or B brings better results.

Tracking sources: With our call tracking platform, you can trace the call source and identify the specific marketing campaign that brought the customer to your website. This eliminates the need to ask the customer directly. This can be especially useful when you’re running numerous PPC campaigns at the same time or when customer searches come from multiple networks outside of Google.

How to Choose a Call Tracking Provider

At CallSumo, we understand that many other companies offer call tracking for Adwords and other PPC marketing campaigns. In addition to dynamic call tracking, we recommend looking for the following features when choosing a provider:

Call Duration:

The reality of business is that not every phone call that comes in from a PPC campaign will convert to a paying customer. When determining your conversion metrics, it’s important to leave out such things as hang-ups, very short calls, and disconnected calls. You will end up with skewed metrics if you include every call. With call integration established, you can merge data from call duration into your Google Analytics tracking provider. This makes it possible to set a minimum duration for phone calls that you will include with your overall metrics.

Call Flow:

One of the best ways to understand customers and gain insight into their journeys is to monitor calls. Here are some specific things to note:

• Why do some customers quickly hang up? Does the experience not match what they expected?
• When calls become too long, what can you do to make them more efficient?
• How well are individuals and teams performing with customers?
• What are some of the most common customer concerns?

Call Recording: Most companies that offer call tracking offer call recording as well. We encourage you to look at both the length and quality of recordings when choosing your provider.

Call Tracking by Source:  It isn’t possible to track keywords on all types of platforms. Facebook ads, for example, use demographics, interests, and social engagement rather than keyword tracking. When you’re attempting to track a call without identifying keywords, it’s useful to make a connection between specific phone numbers and their source. For Facebook, you could consider having numerous phone numbers and then using only specific numbers for your ad campaigns on that platform.

This is also a good option for Instagram because you have limited space to place a link. However, you can include a call-to-action that includes a phone call when you place ads on both Instagram and Facebook. When you track the ad response, you see which ads from social media sources are most effective. This is in addition to the performance metrics and social insights that you receive.

Platform Integration: Raw data received from call tracking is more useful when you can combine it with Google AdWords, Analytics, or a similar program. Make sure that your provider offers this service.

Tracking via Keywords: Don’t forget to track call conversions by the keywords customers used to find your company. You should be able to find keyword data for every call.

How to Use Call Tracking for Adwords Most Effectively

Customer leads are one of the most essential things for any business. If your current business model makes it possible to gain new customers by telephone, you need to step up your game in terms of tracking calls. That means it’s not enough to enable ads with trackable numbers attached to them.

Tracking each call as if it’s the same won’t allow you to understand the effectiveness of your individual marketing campaigns. Most marketing experts agree that only about one-quarter of leads are both legitimate and qualifiable. However, only about half of these people can make an immediate purchase. It’s important to take the time to develop a strategy that enables you to insert call tracking into every PPC campaign in a manner that best serves your company and your customers.

It’s also important to note that every customer lead you receive doesn’t hold equal importance. Most marketing experts agree that only about one-quarter of leads are both legitimate and qualifiable. However, only about half of these people can make an immediate purchase. It’s important to take the time to develop a strategy that enables you to insert call tracking into every PPC campaign in a manner that best serves your company and your customers.

We also encourage you to consider the follow when establishing a PPC call tracking campaign:

• Local phone numbers tend to improve conversions because customers assume your company is closer to them than that of your competitors
• Run split testing continuously to get a good feel for the ads, keywords, and landing pages that produce the highest quality of calls
• Use dedicated telephone numbers on each ad if you choose to use call extensions
• Be sure to route calls to the specific salespeople who are best equipped to meet the caller’s needs

In summary, we believe that tracking calls to your business and creating unique numbers that match each advertising campaign are essential to identifying the campaigns that deliver the highest ROI. You need to understand your audience and carefully consider the ads you run to reach them. CallSumo is here to help you choose the best platform to make this happen.