Use Website Call Conversions for Better Lead Tracking

Website Call Conversions in a Nutshell

If you conduct any type of search advertising, you know that one of the greatest benefits is being able to see exactly what works…and what needs improvement. This is where Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising shines. When properly set up, your campaigns can reveal how visitors reached your site and the percentage that resulted in conversions (sales, signups or inquiries). This ROI data can then be used to sharpen your marketing efforts.

However, one shortcoming was the inability to track phone calls from people who clicked your ads. Yes, Google’s Call Extensions provide a way to track calls placed directly from ads. However, once anyone clicked through to your website, that was it. There was no way to track phone calls placed from your website back to any of your referral channels.

In August, Google unveiled Website Call Conversions, which enables you to finally track phone call leads back to AdWords activity. Assuming that you are already running an advertising campaign in AdWords, setup is somewhat straightforward (more on that below) and definitely worth it.

How Website Call Conversions Work

Once you have Website Call Conversions set up, a unique forwarding phone number is generated every time a user clicks on your ads. Through the magic of a JavaScript snippet, this trackable phone number can be dynamically inserted in those places on your site where you already display your normal business phone number. It can show up within the header, page content and footer. The unique phone number generated for each user is “live” for 90 days. This means that it’s not necessary for the prospect to call on the first visit to your site – they can come back later and still see the forwarding number. When they finally dial the number, Google attributes the call “conversion” to the original ad click so that you know that AdWords is responsible for the lead.

The best part is that there is no additional charge for the forwarding number and conversion tracking. Advertisers are only responsible for the cost of the ad click that triggered the website visit. It appears that Google is looking to further prove the business value of PPC advertising, not only online, but further downstream as well.

The setup process isn’t entirely easy for non-technical business owners – you’ll probably want the assistance of your SEO and/or web developer to make sure it is implemented correctly and showing up in your reports. The key elements required are:

• Create a valid AdWords Call Extension
• Insert 2 JavaScript code snippets into your website HTML
• Tag phone numbers you wish to swap with a CSS selector (we recommend using “class”)

So what happens if a visitor comes in from organic search, direct or any other non-PPC channel? Nothing. The JavaScript code is bypassed and they continue to see your normal business phone number (unless they previously clicked on one of your ads within the 90 day window).

We’re excited about this addition to the conversion tracking toolkit, because we live in a multi-touch world. More than ever, prospects are exploring multiple channels as they move from the research and discovery phase to completing transactions. Gaining deeper insight into their behavior will help digital marketers make the most of each touch point and yield better results.

Need us to do this for you ASAP? Call us at (281) 980-4900.

Tags | adwords, automatic, google, PPC