A few weeks ago, I noticed that phone numbers were appearing in our Google Adwords Text Ads. This was surprising because our pay-per-click management company took the initiative for this experiment. Great job guys! We have previously posted on Google’s launch of Google Call Tracking and a comparison between Google Call Tracking and Mongoose Metrics and are very excited to see Google enter the competitive landscape.
Additionally I was excited to have some real world data from Google to compare against our Mongoose Metrics system in an effort to understand how this tool can be used by customers to optimize and increase their ad spend. We view the Google tool as a complement to the Mongoose Metrics infrastructure and understand that there will be situations where Google Call Tracking is the best fit for our customers. Our goal is to gather enough information to talk intelligently and steer the customer in the direction which best fits their needs.
Conclusions:
- No cost (currently) means its definitely worth an experiment.
- Text ads do drive phone calls.
- Google Call Tracking data is summarized by campaign and day, no individual call logs or recordings.
- Unsure whether calls from the Ads are sales related or support related.
Would be nice to see:
- Access to per-call logs and recordings (preferably via API).
- Access to keyword-level performance reports.
- No charge permanently.
When I asked our PPC management firm for the call related data behind this campaign, they sent me over the below spreadsheet and noted that “
Due to the limitations of the Google Call Metrics program, we can provide only limited data describing the day calls were produced, the campaign that produced them, and the average call time for calls from that campaign on that day“
We receive summary information by campaign for all of the calls which are triggered. This is because Google currently allocates a phone number per campaign. Because we can only receive summary data, understanding how to tie this information into the distinct calls our organization received is impossible; however, knowing that calls are actually triggered out of text ads is a surprise piece of information. My guess is that these are likely support related calls, but without discrete detail I can’t easily support this conclusion. I definitely advocate the program if it helps people reach us quicker (even if it is for support versus sales) however, I would not be willing to pay for support related calls.
Tags: Call Tracking, click to call, google call tracking, PPC
