Canadian Businesses Can Now Track Calls Coming from Their Google Ads

Announced Today: Canadian Businesses can Now Track Calls Coming from Their Google Ads

Google announced today that they are rolling out their call forwarding program in Canada, finally. What this means is when you place an ad with a call tracking phone number, you can measure the mobile calls you receive through phone clicks from Google search ads. It’s great news for advertisers because they can tell how many calls are coming from their online ads and have a better idea of the return on ad spend.

“54 percent of calls to businesses are the result of mobile channels.” Invoca

How it works. You provide Google with a telephone number and they give you another number that can track clicks on mobile. The new number redirects to your existing number. Brilliant technology. The call volume will show-up in analytics, so it helps businesses understand that when they spend $1.25 a click and get a call it is worth the spend. Previously, a business may think they spent the money and had no return because there was no tracking. The only way to do it, was left to the people answering the call to ask “How they heard of them” and the margin of error could be large.

Adding phone numbers to your ads makes it easy for people to call when they are waiting for a friend, the commuter train, sitting on the back porch – anywhere people have mobile phone access.

Google says, “when you use Google forwarding numbers with your call extensions and call-only campaigns analytics provide you with useful information about the caller’s area code, call duration, and whether the call was answered.” You can use local or toll-free numbers. There are options to do call only ads – so the ads will only cost money if someone clicks to call, driving to your business. You can share the numbers across all of your Google pay-per-click ads (PPC) too. Depends on your strategy.

This is gold. The added benefit is it can help you understand your business too.

For example:

• How many calls aren’t being answered? Why aren’t they being answered? What time are people calling and do you have staff on hand to answer those calls? You can set the call button to only show up during your hours of business.
• Why are so many calls coming from one area and how can you leverage that area – doing full online and offline campaigns?
• Length of time on the calls…should the average call take 3 minutes but it seems it was taking 20? Do you need a script? Are people answering the phone trained on the things people are asking?
• Is there more information you need to add to your website based on the questions? Are people calling to find the nearest location to buy your product? Do you need a store locator?

From a business perspective, Canadian digital marketing agency DirectAccessDigital.com’s Co-founder Eric Rodgers says, “It helps our client reps when we show them that digital search marketing is really driving business. From there, they take it up-stream to their C-Suite, and get more budget allocation and to prove that digital marketing is an activity that is not optional for any successful company. We’re closing the gap on attributing offline sales back to the web. When you are the digital performance agency for one of the top five banks in Canada, it’s really important to be able to account for every penny spent.” Eric won the Google Search Excellence Award two years in a row, even though it’s only given out to twelve people a year. He knows what he’s talking about.

While click-to-call has been around for years and call-only campaigns started Feb 2015; it was only announced today that the call forwarding tracking is available in Canada. DirectAccessDigital.com’s, Senior Search Campaign Manager, Chris Masci, explains how the click-to-call campaigns are working for clients, “Call extensions typically increase clickthrough rate by 6-8%. This allows further attribution from search and with the ability to assign a dollar value to a call that lasts over 5 minutes, we are able show further value of our campaigns to clients.” He adds that “clients really like the efficiency this brings to our performance driven campaigns. Reducing the path the user needs to get to their end goal allows our clients to build a closer relationship with their customers. The cost is the same as if the user just clicked on the ad.” DAD clients include some Fortune 500 companies and mid to large size businesses in all different verticals.

Want to learn more? Contact Us info@directaccessdigital.com or call us toll-free 1.855.752.8665

Marchex Reports, in 2014, mobile call extensions drove about $4 Billion in revenue for Google and Bing. It says 19% of calls were new customer inquiries, 15% were repeat phone calls, 30& customer service calls, and 36% were short calls.

Guest Post:
Ceri Nelmes, Senior Digital Strategist @ DirectAccessDigital.com. Ceri’s been in the digital space for 15+ years starting as an SEO for a UK agency, and has worked directly for big brands, start-ups, publishers, not-for-profits, and the CPG industry in all facets of digital marketing. She’s worked on websites in almost every category/vertical. She brings a wealth of experience and expertise to our clients at Direct Access Digital.

Resources Google Video: How to Add Numbers to Your Ads

• Google FAQ about How to Add Phone Numbers to Your Ads. Covering what phones numbers can do, the benefits, examples, how to set-up the ads, creating a call-only campaign, creating call extensions, Monitoring Performance
• Google: Add forwarding numbers for advanced call reporting. How to guide.
• Feedback: Charge Up Your Phones with Call-Only Campaigns