If you rely heavily on phone calls, then tracking the ones coming through Google Ads should be an essential part of your PPC campaigns. Getting the tracking right is like halfway to nailing it. But, what happens when you track phone calls as clicks? ꛷
- What is PPC Call Tracking?
- The Limitation(s) of Google Ads Call Tracking Solution
- Handle Clicks as Leads to Improve Your Conversions & Data
- How to properly track phone calls from Google Ads: Setting Up Call Tracking Campaigns
- Analyzing Call Data to Improve Your Campaigns & Conversion Rates
- Implementing Strategies to Increase Call Conversions
- Using Offline Call Conversion Tracking to reveal your real ROI
- How to Discover The True Value of Your PPC Calls
- Takeaway
- Gain full visibility on what makes your phone ring
What is PPC Call Tracking?
PPC Call Tracking is a crucial tool for any marketer running pay-per-click campaigns. It allows you to track phone calls from your Google Ads campaigns, providing valuable insights into the effectiveness of your advertising efforts. By treating your clicks as leads and implementing PPC call tracking, you can gain a deeper understanding of which campaigns and ads are driving calls as well as the source of those calls.
Google Ads can provide only basic call tracking. Third-party software, on the other hand, offers much more robust call analytics. They give you detailed information about each call, such as call duration, call recording, and caller demographics. This rich call insight enables you to optimize your campaigns and improve your conversion rates.
Treating clicks as leads means recognizing the potential of every click to turn into a valuable phone call. By tracking and analyzing the data from these calls, you can gain a deeper understanding of your audience and tailor your campaigns to maximize conversions. This mindset shift can lead to improved campaign performance and ultimately, increased revenue.Treating clicks as leads means recognizing the potential of every click to turn into a valuable phone call. By tracking and analyzing the data from these calls, you can gain a deeper understanding of your audience and tailor your campaigns to maximize conversions. This mindset shift can lead to improved campaign performance and ultimately, increased revenue.
The Limitation(s) of Google Ads Call Tracking Solution
While Google Ads call conversions can give you basic call data, it lacks the depth and detail that you need to truly optimize your campaigns.
- It doesn’t tell you if your callers converted: Google Ads Call Tracking can inform you about the number of calls generated by your ads, but it doesn’t provide information on whether those callers converted into customers or completed desired actions. This lack of conversion data can make it challenging to assess the true effectiveness of your ad campaigns in terms of generating revenue.
- It doesn’t tell you which path your callers followed before picking up the phone: Google Ads don’t reveal the specific online journey that led to a call. It doesn’t show which landing pages they visited, which CTA they clicked, or which ads they interacted with. This contextual information is crucial for understanding caller behavior and optimizing your advertising strategy.
- It only offers quantitative metrics: While Google Ads Call Tracking provides quantitative metrics such as call duration and call start time, it falls short in analyzing the qualitative aspects of phone conversations. The content and quality of these calls, including whether they resulted in a positive customer experience or led to a sale, are not captured by this tracking method. Without this qualitative data, you miss out on important insights into customer interactions.
Handle Clicks as Leads to Improve Your Conversions & Data
When it comes to crafting PPC strategies for improving your conversion rates, the only way is to start treating your click-to-call CTAs as leads. By tracking PPC calls with a call tracking tool, you gain valuable insights into your audience and tailor your campaigns accordingly.
Don’t Limit Your Data With Google Ads Solution. You Can Have So Much More.
- Contact and Demographic Information of your phone leads to enhance your Audience Targeting
- Multi-channel Tracking combining Organic with Paid touchpoints
- Enhanced ROI and ROAS Calculations based on the true Sales Value
- CRM Enrichment with Phone Leads ready to nurture down the funnel
- Call Recording and Transcription to evaluate the quality of each lead
- Phone Lead Scoring for better lead classification
- Multiple Call Conversion Actions to create a Phone Channel (from click to actual sale)
- Better Call Experience using a variety of features such as call whispers, greeting, or IVR which you can easily drag and drop in a call flow
- Offline Conversion Tracking to see which campaigns lead to high-value sales.
- Richer Reports for a deeper understanding of what makes your callers call you and track performance of your agents
- Automation rules to tag your organic and PPC calls without manual effort
Treating your PPC calls as leads is a mindset shift that can greatly improve your campaign performance. By recognizing the potential of every click to turn into a valuable phone call which can turn into a valuable sale, you can make informed marketing decisions, allocate your budget effectively, and ultimately drive better results for your business. So don’t underestimate the power of treating your clicks as leads and leveraging call tracking to maximize your conversion rates.
How to properly track phone calls from Google Ads:
Setting Up Call Tracking Campaigns
- Create your Free Nimbata Account
- Calculate your Tracking Number Pool with our Pool Estimator (check out our guide here)
- Add your unique DNI Script to your website
- Set up your call flow as simple or advanced you need to create your desired caller experience
- Simply create your call conversion(s) in Google Ads and create a rule for each one in Nimbata
Analyzing Call Data to Improve Your Campaigns & Conversion Rates
Analyzing call data is a crucial step in improving your PPC campaigns and increasing your conversion rates. By understanding which keywords and ad creatives are driving the most calls, you can make data-driven optimizations that lead to better campaign performance.
When analyzing call data, pay attention to metrics such as call duration, call recordings, and caller demographics. This information provides valuable insights into the quality of the calls generated by your ads. For example, if you notice that calls from certain keywords have longer durations and higher conversion rates, you can allocate more budget to those keywords and optimize your campaigns accordingly.
Furthermore, analyzing call data can help you fine-tune your targeting and messaging. If you find that certain demographics are more likely to call and convert, you can adjust your campaigns to target those specific audiences more effectively.
Nimbata Call Reports to keep an eye on:
- Call Distribution by Channel: This report provides information about how calls are distributed across different channels, such as Facebook, GMB, Ads, or any other. It helps you understand which channels generate the most phone calls.
- Calls by Weekday: This report breaks down the number of customer calls based on the days of the week. It can help you identify patterns and trends in call volume throughout the week.
- Calls by Call Tag: This report categorizes customer calls based on specific “tags” or labels that are assigned to each call. These tags can represent the reason for the call, the department it’s routed to, or any other relevant classification.
- Calls by page: This report provides insights into the specific web pages of a website that generate customer calls. In essence, the “Calls by Page” report allows you to pinpoint the online touchpoints where users are most likely to seek assistance, have questions, or convert, facilitating improvements in user experience and customer service in those areas.
Implementing Strategies to Increase Call Conversions
Treating your phone calls as leads instead of clicks means that you have to be strategic and think beyond “If they call fine, if not it’s also fine”. Phone calls represent a higher level of engagement and interest in your product or service, as they require effort and time on the part of the caller. Understanding this, you can implement several strategies to optimize call conversions:
- Design your Landing Page To prompt phone calls
To encourage more phone calls, optimize your website’s landing pages. Communicate the benefits of your product or service and include persuasive call-to-action (CTA) elements that prompt visitors to make that crucial call. Highlighting the value they’ll receive from calling can be a powerful motivator. - Test different CTA placements
Experiment with the placement of your call-to-action buttons or links. A/B testing different positions on your website can help you identify where CTA placement generates the most call conversions. Sometimes a simple change in button color, size, or positioning can have a significant impact. - Use Call Extensions
Call extensions add clickable phone numbers to your ads, making it convenient for potential customers to call your business directly from them. It simplifies the process and can lead to higher conversion rates. - Improve Caller Experience to reduce call abandonment rate
A positive caller experience is vital. Ensure that calls are promptly answered, and callers are greeted professionally. Implement efficient call routing and consider offering interactive voice response (IVR) systems to direct callers to the right department. Minimizing hold times and providing helpful information can reduce call abandonment rates and increase conversions. - Ensure that your call tracking is right and invest in what works Accurate call tracking is essential. Use call analytics tools to monitor which marketing channels, keywords, or campaigns are driving the most valuable calls. By identifying what works, you can allocate your marketing budget more effectively, focusing on strategies that yield the highest call conversions.
Using Offline Call Conversion Tracking to reveal your real ROI
💡 If you’re already using Nimbata, the quickest way to attribute a value to your phone calls is through automation rules.
For service-oriented businesses with fixed service prices, the most effective method is using call surveys. For instance, when your agent presses “1” following a successful call, a rule can automatically tag it with the specific service (e.g., Dental Cleaning) your client has booked and assign its value. This data can then be seamlessly transmitted to Google Ads, providing a clear view of your campaign’s impact on ROI.
For any other business that doesn’t have fixed prices, the optimal approach is to employ an automation rule that defines the criteria for a sale. Subsequently, you can relay your call conversion data back to Google Ads, utilizing your Average Order Value (AOV) as the value for the sale.
How to Discover The True Value of Your PPC Calls
If you want to build a successful and ever-growing marketing plan, then you must understand why feeding Google Ads with qualified phone call leads is important. Google Ads rely on algorithms to target customers and make them click your ad or pick up the phone. And those algorithms need data and a history of what works for you and what does not. High-quality leads are part of this history. Training Google Ads with by feeding them with high-quality leads, makes their algorithms more adept at targeting your ideal potential customers, who are also more likely to convert. I don’t need to tell you what this process leads to. Better targeting means more effective ads which means better click-through rates which means higher conversions. Simple as that.
Take a real estate business, for example. Their goal is to sell properties, and while there are people interested in buying, not everyone is ready to make an immediate purchase. Many potential buyers are still in the research phase, gathering information and exploring their options.
Google Ads don’t know at first though, what this real estate business considers a high-quality lead. But, customers with a high chance of conversion who call the office, visit the property and seriously discuss buying it, have a specific profile. A certain income range, location of living, age group, whatever. It doesn’t matter, as long as the business can identify that they are a high-quality lead and feed that lead to Google Ads. Google will then know that this is the target group that brings you money and thus will try to target them more. In due time, this will reduce ad spend on less qualified leads, making your marketing more cost-effective. By analyzing these metrics and making data-driven optimizations, you can maximize the value of your phone leads and drive better results for your business. So don’t underestimate the importance of tracking and analyzing these PPC metrics to ensure the success of your call tracking efforts.
Additionally, the more qualified leads you feed into Google Ads, the more effective your automated bidding strategies will become. Automated bidding relies heavily on machine learning to optimize bids for conversions, and the accuracy of this optimization is directly tied to the quality of the data it receives. When you feed the system with qualified leads—such as phone calls that result in conversions—Google’s algorithms can make more informed decisions about where and when to place your ads. This leads to a more efficient allocation of your budget, as the system learns to prioritize leads that mirror your best customers, rather than wasting resources on clicks or calls that are unlikely to convert.
Leveraging this approach can have a cascading effect on your overall marketing strategy. As you continue to refine your Google Ads campaigns with high-quality lead data, you’ll find that your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) decreases while your overall return on investment (ROI) improves. This is because the system becomes increasingly adept at identifying the right audience at the right time, ensuring that your ads reach those most likely to engage with your business. In essence, by continuously feeding your Google Ads with qualified leads, you’re not only improving the immediate performance of your campaigns but also setting the stage for long-term success.
Now that you understand the value of feeding high-quality leads to Google, we will talk about identifying those leads. To do that, you need not just your experience and knowledge of the market. But the proper tools as well. In this case, call tracking.
Call tracking platforms nowadays do much more than simply measuring calls and attributing them. Most tools also offer advanced AI features, conversation intelligence capabilities, and automations that can help you reach important conclusions regarding the quality of your leads.
Lead Metrics
Metrics are crucial, so before we speak about AI and conversation intelligence, let’s talk about them. There are some key metrics you should pay attention to, that will help you determine the value of your phone leads and make data-based decisions about your marketing campaigns.
One important metric is the Cost Per Lead (CPL). This metric calculates how much it costs you to generate each phone lead. By comparing your CPL to the revenue generated from those leads, you can determine if your campaigns are cost-effective and allocate your budget accordingly.
Also, the Lead-to-Sale Conversion Rate is a crucial metric for measuring the quality of your phone leads. This metric calculates the percentage of leads that result in actual sales. By tracking this rate, you can identify the most valuable leads and focus your efforts on generating more of them.
Conversation Intelligence for Lead Management
Conversational intelligence hinges on advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. These tools extract crucial insights from spoken or written interactions, far surpassing traditional methods based on superficial observations.
With the data provided by conversational intelligence, you can make deep changes and optimize your strategy on multiple fronts. After all, lead generation is a team effort and not a one-man show. All business aspects must align toward that goal, one way or another. Here is, how conversational intelligence can help with lead generation and sales.
Understanding Your Customer is Key
Converting leads is a complex process requiring the right content and understanding of customer needs. Conversational intelligence helps identify customer pain points and preferences, enabling targeted content creation and lead nurturing.
Data-Driven Lead Evaluation
Traditional lead evaluation methods are subjective and inefficient. Conversational analytics transforms this process, using AI to analyze call data for sentiment, duration, and keywords. This empowers you to prioritize qualified leads and optimize resources.
Boost Sales Team Performance
Conversational analytics provides valuable insights into sales team performance. By analyzing call recordings and transcriptions, you can identify strengths, weaknesses, and coaching opportunities. Additionally, understanding customer behavior patterns helps tailor sales interactions for increased success.
Takeaway
To make the most out of PPC call tracking, there are some best practices you should follow. First, ensure that you have set up call tracking for all your campaigns and ad groups. This will allow you to gather comprehensive data on the calls generated by your ads and make informed decisions about optimizing your campaigns.
Next, regularly analyze your call data to identify trends and patterns. Pay attention to metrics such as call duration, call recordings, and caller demographics to understand the quality of the calls generated by your ads. This information can help you optimize your campaigns to generate more high-quality leads.
In addition, optimize your call conversions by testing different ad copy and call extensions. Experiment with different formats, positions, and devices to determine which combination generates the most calls and conversions. This will help you maximize the effectiveness of your ads and drive better results.
Finally, don’t forget to incorporate call data into your offline conversion tracking. By attributing offline sales to specific phone calls, you can accurately measure the real sales value generated from your PPC campaigns and make informed marketing decisions.Finally, don’t forget to incorporate call data into your offline conversion tracking. By attributing offline sales to specific phone calls, you can accurately measure the real sales value generated from your PPC campaigns and make informed marketing decisions.
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FAQ
What is PPC call tracking?
PPC call tracking is a method used to track phone calls generated from pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns. It allows advertisers to attribute phone call conversions to specific ads, keywords, and campaigns.
How does PPC call tracking work?
PPC call tracking works by assigning unique phone numbers to each visitor that comes to your website from different channels, ads, keywords, or campaigns. When a customer calls one of the tracking numbers that you have placed in your website, Nimbata attributes the calls to the specific channel, campaign, ad etc, and records extra data such as the caller's phone number, callers name, call duration, location of the callers and much more.
What are the benefits of PPC call tracking?
The benefits of PPC call tracking include: 1. Enhanced ROI measurement: It allows advertisers to accurately measure the return on investment (ROI) of their PPC campaigns by tracking phone call conversions. 2. Optimization of PPC campaigns: By analyzing call data, advertisers can optimize their PPC campaigns for better performance. 3. Improved customer service: PPC call tracking provides insights into customer behavior and preferences, enabling businesses to improve their customer service.
What features should I look for in a PPC call tracking solution?
When choosing a PPC call tracking solution, look for features such as: 1. Dynamic number insertion: The ability to dynamically insert tracking numbers into PPC ads and landing pages. 2. Call recording: The option to record calls for quality assurance and training purposes. 3. Integration with analytics platforms: Seamless integration with Google Analytics or other analytics platforms for comprehensive campaign reporting.
Is PPC call tracking suitable for my business?
PPC call tracking is suitable for any business that relies on phone calls as part of its sales or lead generation process. It is particularly beneficial for businesses running PPC campaigns to drive phone call conversions, such as local service providers, healthcare practices, and automotive dealerships.