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Before we get started, let me ask you as a business owner or marketer if you like making smart, data-driven, efficient decisions that will generate more business? I am sure your answer will be yes! No one likes making decisions blindfolded and without knowing the facts and data. In the PPC world, the key to making smart decisions is knowing your conversions trends, paths, and of course tracking your conversions, which in many cases means tracking your phone calls.

The main benefit of call tracking is that it provides valuable data that a business owner needs in order to make smart decisions. No one likes throwing money if they don’t see the value in their return.

One of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is that we can measure how many conversions we are getting from our online advertising efforts. In traditional marketing, you are not able to measure the exact calls or revenue generated from a billboard, poster, or flyer. If you are not taking advantage of call tracking, you are making decisions in the dark.

Many lead generation and ecommerce companies rely on receiving calls to actually complete a sale. Calls to U.S. businesses from paid ads have grown 110 percent since 2014 and calls from mobile devices are expected to grow by 74% by 2019. With so many consumers converting by calling businesses, it’s critical for advertisers to be able to track, attribute and report calls.

In the video below, we will briefly explain the three main reasons why you should have call tracking installed in your online advertising campaigns:

Want to learn more? Read this detailed explanation about the benefits of call tracking:

You Can Measure Your Investment

You can now know what you are getting for every dollar you invest by getting a complete picture of the results of your advertising efforts. When advertisers include call conversions alongside web-based conversions (contact forms, demo downloads, online chat, etc) they can provide a complete picture of the value they bring.

This is important to know! On Google Ads, they only provide the option to track calls from the call extensions. This means that the calls that come from the website after someone clicks on an ad are not being tracked. For us to obtain a full picture of your call conversions you need to hire a third-party call tracking company. Usually, if you have a premier advertising agency they should provide this for you.

Here are White Shark Media, there is no additional cost to install call tracking on your campaign. We make sure to provide reporting analysis and phone call recordings (if applicable) to our clients in order for decision making and control of the quality of leads. Many of our new clients had no idea how many calls were getting from their Google Ads or Bing Campaigns; this is a big mistake since they have been spending money without knowing their full return on investment.

You Can Know What Keywords Are Generating Calls

You want to make sure that the keywords that are spending your money are actually the ones generating calls. It helps us be more cost efficient.

For example, you can have 10,000 keywords but there might be only five that are generating phone calls. You want to make sure you allocate your budget towards those five that are converting.

By knowing what keywords are generating phone calls, you can expand on other similar keyword variations from the top converting keywords and generate more calls that way. You can also pause the rest of the keywords that haven’t generated calls and are draining your daily budget.

Optimize for Time of the Day

Call tracking can teach advertisers a lot of things, including when and where your business is getting more calls, including at what specific days of the week and what times. Based on this data marketers can also allocate budget to peak business hours and maximize return on ad spend.

For example: If you see the trend that Wednesdays from 12pm-1pm is significantly higher on phone calls, you can make bid adjustments to increase your ad position during those times and get more exposure.

Or on the other hand, you notice that Sundays are usually slow and your cost-per-call is too high, you would probably pause ads on Sundays and allocate that budget towards your top performing day of the week.

Monitor the Quality of the Leads

Many other advertising agencies might claim they generate calls for your business, but at the end of the day what matters is how qualified those leads are.

If you are a computer repair shop and you get calls for cell phone repair, these calls are not valuable for your business and there is definitely a need to change your keywords selection on your campaign and a  need to add negative keywords.

Many call tracking platforms give the option to record phone calls for advertisers and business owners to monitor the quality of the calls. Keep in mind that the recording of the calls is usually only legally permitted only if the caller is aware he is being recorded. Usually, for health and legal industries, the recording is more sensitive, however, it is always a possibility.

Conclusion

As the world continually becomes more mobile, phone calls remain an integral part of doing business. Knowing which of your advertising efforts are driving people to call you is the key to maximizing your marketing return.