Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone, but…
You’re not tracking phone calls you’re getting from AdWords, are you? In fact, I bet you’re not tracking phone calls you get from any of your dozens of traffic sources. I’m willing to bet that when phone calls come in and orders are made, nothing gets tracked back to its traffic source.
If the above is true, don’t worry – you’re like 95% of other ecommerce stores out there. Let’s get ahead of the curve with a few key points you’ll want to start thinking about when sales happen over the phone.
- What traffic source led to the call?
- Did the call result in a sale?
- If a call did result in a sale, how much was it worth?
- Most importantly: How much revenue do I make from AdWords every month, both from online transactions and over the phone sales?
You can’t establish baselines of how profitable AdWords, BingAds, or any other traffic source is – including SEO – unless you’re tracking phone calls, logging sales, and observing the data.
The truth is that most businesses think that logging phone calls back to their traffic source is impossible. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s simply not true.
- You CAN track the traffic source that led to the phone call.
- You CAN log if a phone call resulted in a sale.
- You CAN log how much any particular phone call was worth to you.
- Most importantly: You CAN know exactly how much revenue was generated from phones calls from AdWords (or any other traffic source for that matter).
Here’s how to track phone call sales and conversions from AdWords
Use a Call Tracking Provider
At Search Scientists we’ve always used Call Rail with our clients. (No affiliation). Call Rail works with USA based clients keep track of their phone call sources and revenue. We’re experimenting with UK & Australia based providers, so if you have any recommendations, we’re happy to hear them!
Set Up a Web Hook to Log GCLID
Here’s a piece of top-secret information. Every click that originate from AdWords get a GCLID, or Google Click ID. This unique click information can be sent along to Call Rail using a webhook. The use of web hooks are one of the main reasons we use Call Rail.
Allow us to clarify what’s going on below:
- A GCLID is a specific ID that is logged with every AdWords Click. This information is sent to your website.
- Unfortunately, if you’re not using a web hook, there is nothing to log the GCLID.
- After a sale happens, the customer support rep logs the phone call revenue back to its source inside the call tracking app.
- A quick export and upload back into AdWords will allow you to see which ad led to which phone call which led to how much revenue.
Log When Sales Are Made
Your customer support rep needs to then take the extra minute at the end of a sale to log into your call tracking app, and write down the amount of revenue per the phone call generated.
Import Call Tracking Data Back Into AdWords
Here’s where the magic happens. With the use of a little-known feature of AdWords, you can actually import conversions and sales that happen offline. As long as the proper information is attached in your call tracking export (GCLID & Revenue) it will actually match up the revenue to the actual ad the person clicked on before they called.
Relax in the Warm Glow of Tracking Phone Call Conversions
Congratulations, you’re now tracking phone call conversions inside AdWords. This will allow you to truly understand your return on ad spend (ROAS). At Search Scientists, we push all of our clients to track phone call sales. An AdWords account you can measure, is an AdWords account you can optimize.. which is an AdWords account you can profit from.
Are you tracking phone call conversions from AdWords? Better yet, are you tracking revenue from phone calls? Get started today, and start building an AdWords campaign where you can track everything, from top to bottom.
This post is part of a series: ‘100 Days of AdWords Help’.
One Reply to “Day 3 of 100 Days of AdWords Help: Track Phone Call Conversions”
A 2017 comment to this excellent 2014 post: Grasshopper supports both AdWords and Bing call tracking: https://grasshopper.com/resources/call-tracking-for-business/ppc/