Wondering how to better quantify the benefits of an SEM campaign?
If you are anything like us, sometimes conversion tracking via forms and even click-to-call leaves us wanting a little more precision.
We as search marketers keep in mind our end goal of guiding business to our clients. Perfecting on-page conversion optimization tactics can still result in a significant portion of visitors to the site who prefer calling versus submitting a form (e.g. ordering something online).
There isn’t anything wrong with that, really. Our campaigns are still driving new customers to our clients, whatever contact method they choose. But the downside of calls versus contact form submissions is something every SEM knows – calls from the site are not easy to trace back to your work in particular.
In a time when digital is still getting pushback from in-house traditional marketing specialists, a few extra brownie points certainly wouldn’t hurt. Luckily, AdWords just implemented a tool that makes it easier to deliver credit where credit is due.
Other Helpful AdWords Features Leading Up to This
One great feature of AdWords is click-to-call, which to clarify, is not what this latest update covers.
For a while now, we have been able to get a summary of how many people selected your phone number from a mobile screen by clicking on an ad. We could also get the numbers on who clicked on an ad, for one reason or another wandered away, realized his or her mistake and came back to fill out the contact form or buy something.
These are pretty helpful features, but what if this delayed conversion is a call from a number on the site, instead of the measurable actions listed above?
Previously, you had to hope all your clients (or salespeople) somehow kept track of every phone inquiry’s source. This would also entail the caller recollecting they selected an AdWords ad versus an organic search result a month ago.
Meanwhile, children of all ages continue throwing pennies into mall water fountains, and will probably have their wishes granted sooner than that dream coming true. Don’t quit your day job and join them just yet…
This Pretty Cool New Thing AdWords Does (The Newest AdWords Feature)
Drumroll, please: a cool new feature in AdWords generates a unique phone number the that “clicker” will see on the site for the next 90 days after following a paid SERP listing link.
This enables the following benefits:
- Delayed calls still attributed to unique ads
- Metrics on which keywords are drawing the most interest
- Direct tracking of delayed call conversions
- Value assigned to each call can vary according to the site page
One happy customer quoted on Google’s blog asserted that their AdWords calls increased by 147%. That ain’t messin’ around. Long story short, you should probably look into this for your SEM clients, or for your own business if you run AdWords in-house.
Want to learn how to set up AdWords call forwarding? It involves inserting some code snippets into each page where you’d like to see the feature, so be sure you are comfortable with HTML/CSS before trying it. We also specialize in this sort of thing, so feel free to give us a ring for assistance.
Has anyone tried this yet? The announcement is a little over a week old at the time of publishing this post, so you could have seen some call volume already if you acted quickly.
We would love to get some insight on the improvements you or your clients have seen in the comments below.
