The most important first step when setting up an advertising campaign is tracking. When leads come in, you should know exactly where they originated so you can make intelligent marketing decisions.
Installing Google Analytics to track form fills or purchases on a website is easy. But – how does one do it with call traffic? When everyone is calling the same phone number, businesses have no way of knowing if a person is calling from a Google ad, Yelp, social media, or organic search!
We have helped dozens of companies set up call tracking so that when a call comes in, we know exactly what ad led to that call. From there, we can add more budget to the ads that are driving calls, and reduce investment in the ads that are not.
Here is how we do it:
1.Get a call tracking provider: We are a huge fan of Call Tracking Metrics, but other services like RingCentral also work great!
2.Set up phone numbers: You will need to buy a few toll-free or local phone numbers from your provider. Typically, you need to purchase more than one for any given web traffic source so the site can assign phone numbers to different website visitors.
3.Install website pixel: Call Tracking Metrics uses a website pixel to dynamically swap out any instances of your phone number on the website for one of your tracking phone numbers each time someone visits your site. With the pixel installed, web visitors see the tracking phone number instead of your direct line, and when they call it, we can attribute it back to the specific ad that drove the call.
4.Integrate with Google Analytics: When you integrate your call tracking provider with Google Analytics, you can report on call volume from within Google Analytics. From there, you can add it as a custom conversion in Adwords as well!
5.Start reporting: You are ready to launch your ads and watch the calls come in! Run reports in your call tracking provider and Analytics to see where your calls are coming from, all the way down to the specific ad/keyword!
And, never forget the Right Left Agency motto: Track, Analyze, Optimize, REPEAT!
