Newbies Guide to Call Tracking For Ads

It’s every advertiser’s dream for having an efficient, productive, and manageable call network. With certain features like call tracking enabled in your company, you can do just that and so much more! Here’s how to set it up for your business.

We’ve all at least once experienced a frustrating time with texts, emails, and chats. There has been a time when we had no idea how our recipient felt and, well, times when we had no idea what they even meant. Reading the plain text on our device’s screen gets no gears running in our heads, except probable confusion. No matter how effectively one types, they’ll never get to the level of phone calls.

If there’s one mode of communication that gives us the convenience of portable and accessible contact, it is surely phone calls. They are one of the most beneficial networks for personal and professional use, given their perks. People generally prefer a live conversation with voice or audio communication. Much more than reading and typing textual messages, real-time conversation works better. 

Even though technology keeps advancing, there’s no match for vocal communication. Let it be in person or over a call. For businesses, customers prefer talking over calls much more than writing down their issues. Some of the advantages phone calls offer for businesses are:

• Offers a real-time, live mode  communication
• Provides better clarity on the context on the context of the conversation
• It helps customers feel comfortable, thereby building a reputable relationship with them
• Increased credibility and trustworthiness and hence customer satisfaction many folds.
• Makes it easier to persuade customers, answer their questions, listen to their problems and many more notable upper edges.

When it comes to professional use, phone calls give many resourceful advantages, which include:

• Improved sales response for advertisements 
• A better understanding of the customer’s needs through other aspects of the conversation
• Increased charitable generations for non-profit organizations
• Insights of customer’s situation 
• Ability to record and replay calls and have recorded data

For efficient customer service, a business needs to handle many calls and incoming lines at once. With the simultaneous connections, the company needs many more features and facilities. Just an accommodative and versatile phone number with call forwarding isn’t enough. With the chances of missing calls, companies need to properly give calls back. A service like this is inevitable for any company that values its sales, profits, and customers.

What is Call Tracking?

What is this software that’s deemed “necessary”? Call tracking is a process through which one can get data and demographic analysis from phone conversations. It’s used by callers, marketers, and business managers for calls with recipients.  This proves itself useful as one can focus exclusively on their campaign, tailoring, or customer needs.

The process includes figuring out how callers to our business found us. This helps enhance advertising strategies across the various options and determine the most successful campaigns. Using the feature, a company can attribute to the specific marketing channel that has reached the caller.

The software also records information through audio recordings and identifies the source of the call. Without the feature, one can misinterpret and misattribute the caller’s behaviour. Hence the company can miss potentially profitable return opportunities.

Call tracking can record the following information from the conversation:

• The source of the caller or the marketing source that helped our company reach them.
• The number that called our online virtual business number, helping to identify missed calls and frequent callers.
• In some cases, the region and location of the caller.
• Popular calling time amongst the plethora of calls.
• Audio and data recording of the call, thereby, call summary.

Types of Call Tracking

There are 3 essential types of call tracking.

Campaign level tracking:

We can assess a specific number for every campaign through this method, be it online or in person. For relatively measurable advertisements, one can use this method to

• see which reached the general public more
• gained better call returns. 

The problem with this would be that lower cookie window periods will miss insights over a longer ad campaign. It only attributes to the last call without considering the history of the number’s calls or campaigns viewed.

For example, for a 30-day window, a longer period will miss insights from customers who contact after. If a person views our online campaign from one web page and returns after a while, the campaign level tracking only shows the page they found the number from. It doesn’t tell where they initially turned into a customer from a visitor.

Session level tracking:

Here, individual numbers are given to each website visitor. This works especially for smaller ad cycles over a limited demographic. If there is a larger chance that the visitor will become a customer, the customized number could be a great addition. It is valued only for a limited time during the session and gets recycled after.

This type of tracking uses Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI). The only problem with such calling would be that the data tracking and recording only happen while the customer stays on the campaign. If they decide to leave and come back, they’ll be assigned a different number. This resets the progress.

Visitor level tracking:

This is probably the most efficient mode of tracking. It helps us trace back to the history of all the websites and advertisements visited by the customer. Even if they leave the website and come back again, there should be no problem connecting to the same line. The longer period of assignment helps in persistent and prominent campaigning.

Problems faced by marketing agencies and teams

For any business, advertising is an essential aspect. The basic aim is to gain popularity, get more customers, persuade callers and website visitors to avail their service or buy their product. In such a case, there are constant troubles that advertisers face like

Technology:

Updating techniques too fast or staying back in time for too long are both not ideal.  Depending on the majority of our customers, we need to stay relevant with the technology we use. For example, even though sponsored ads and text communication are preferred for Gen Zs, phone calls remain the easier mode of persuasion.

Not being relatable with the target audience:

Sometimes, businesses lose the interest of visitors even with useful services. They might seem irrelevant if targeted towards the wrong audience. 

For example, everyone loves taking photos. If a business wants to sell a nostalgic remake of a VHS camera, their campaigns should be focused on convincing people who grew up with VHS cameras and tapes and not someone who doesn’t know about it. There are much better cameras equipped in everyone’s mobile phones today. Even then, enunciating on the nostalgia factor, the company can easily sell its products among millennials.

Similarly, every business needs to have enough insights about their customers. This helps in devising better advertising strategies.

Using the same strategy across various platforms:

Similar to being irrelevant, a business can’t maintain the same sales points across various ads. If so, the chances are they aren’t working efficiently. For a business with a wide spectrum of target audiences, they need to analyze the viewers of each campaign. 

For example, a campaign on social media might persuade and capture the attention of younger potential customers. At the same time, traditional between-the-shows television ads appeal to older viewers. A business needs to understand which platform is suitable for which group of people. Then, they can alter their advertisement’s core spelling points to the particular group.

When should you activate call tracking?

Any stage of a business can use the benefits and solutions of call tracking solutions. Activating the feature can help them check out several marketing goals. If our business requires understanding the following, considering the feature would be a good option.

• Determine active and successful marketing channels: 

One of the best uses for lucrative businesses is understanding the status of their advertisements and their reach. Any useful advertisements need to persuade viewers into customers. It should at least instigate curiosity in them about our service.

• Analyzing calls: 

With recording and transcribing features of tracking, one can analyze the leads and focus on what exactly the customer needs. Every company does need to serve and satisfy callers better.

• Figure out driving keywords:

With visitor level call tracking, we can easily track Pay Per Call (PPC) visitors and understand which keywords have intrigued them to give us a call. (PPC essentially means that a publisher gets paid every time website visitors use their link to check out the advertising company.)

• To get increased Returns on Investment (ROI):

Any business needs better profits from the money spent on promotions. Visitor and campaign level tracking helps us strategize and plan strategies according to the callers’ needs.

• To easily solve advertising problems: 

The features of tracking can easily solve nearly all the problems mentioned above.

Key Uses of Call Tracking

For a multi-channel business, the key uses of call tracking are:

• Enhancing customer service
• Getting increased returns on the capital invested
• Increasing caller rates
• Converting more callers and viewers to customers
• Building a better relationship with customers 
• Improving executive’s conversation and rhetoric skills.

Benefits of Call Tracking

A network service like Limecall helps businesses serve customers better. By tracking their digital journey to the company, a wide variety of businesses like marketing agencies, enterprises, franchises, service providers, commercial retailers, etc., can be benefitted.

• In-depth analysis on ROI: 

Call tracking makes the ROI of various advertisements visible and locates the most profitable and spread out ads.  With that, we can effectively plan similar and attractive plans for the company.   Companies can also start making smarter and lucrative clientele decisions moving forward.

• Enhanced customer service: 

It’s the customers who make or break our business. Happy customers equal better reach. Along with advertisers, word of mouth is also an effective way to spread the news. Only satisfied customers recommend our services to their friends and family. 

In such a case, customer satisfaction doesn’t just depend on the quality of our services. It is also based on the way they engage with our agents. With call tracking, sales executives can understand the specific needs and give tailored answers to callers.

• Understand the success of offline ads:

Session level tracking helps get basic analytics for digital and online advertisements published. But, there’s no established source to calculate the source of callers when it comes to offline advertising. The advertisements they referred to can be decided only via campaign-level tracking.

By identifying the number the caller is calling, we can easily understand their mode of engagement. Be it flyers, pamphlets, television videos, or billboards.

• Use better Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and keywords: 

With collected data, such as the source of the call, the advertising method they are familiar with, etc., we can understand which PPC websites are working well. Now we need to use similar keywords from the campaign across other platforms.

• Automated bid strategizing: 

Companies can also take advantage of Target return On Advertisement Spend (TOAS) and Target Cost Per Action (CPA) with conversion tracking.  This helps in better stratification and optimization of existent ads.

How does call tracking help advertisers?

Let’s consider the situation. A new and coming company wants to sell unique sweet treats and desserts that were popular 20 years ago. They don’t just want to limit their ads to adults and want to keep their target audience open. For everyone who loves sweets and sugary snacks, just one website, ad video, or sponsorship is not going to seal the deal. 

Owing to the diverse interests of the audiences, the company needs to decide where they need to spend money on. This includes both the type of advertisement and the method. To do this, they need to know the reach of each of their campaigns. They should first set up campaign level, session-level tracking, and visitor-level tracking on each of their calls. Now, they can easily identify the most successful modes and the most appealing keywords.

Once that’s done, the company needs to focus on adapting existing advertisements and frame new ones. According to the feasibility on different platforms, they invest more from where there are more clicks or calls to the company.

With call tracking, they can now identify which mode is all-inclusive and which ones attract specific age groups. For instance, their sponsored post on Instagram increases the number of young customers interested in the candy. The advertisements can now be made more attractive for the younger audience. They can use relatable content, familiarity and impose a journey back in time.

If a PPC link on a famous blog elucidates the nostalgic appeal, the company needs to emphasize more on it there. All these analytics can be figured out by checking the number the callers call, analyzing their demographic, and identifying the source of their interest. This is all done by employing call tracking in business numbers and advertising.

Now, the company has a wider range of customers, better customer service, and strategic planning. With all on point, it is on the way to being a profitable, well-known business, thanks to tracking features.

Features of Call Tracking

• It helps us capture caller names, phone numbers and even an idea of their location in some cases. This helps us follow up on potential customers and offer them their desired service with ease. 
• It also helps us identify the source, especially for successful conversion (caller to customer) calls and longer, specific ones. These have a better chance of scoring more from callers.

• The recording feature helps us get a better idea of customer needs, specific to groups with similar characteristics. This can also be used to analyze agents’ performance and how they interact with potential callers.

• Call tracking helps us identify overall ROI and campaign success. This is based on the business line people make calls to, DNI of callers, and PPC advertisements across platforms.

• To correlate sources of calls, DNI is the most feasible option for businesses. This helps us track specific details of the caller’s relationship with our advertising.

• Instead of attributing success to the last touch, it helps identify the root channel that led the website visitor to call.

• It also offers integration with advertisement platforms. This gives a connected network of advertising success.

• Along with recording, calls can also be transcribed if tracked. With this feature, it is much easier for us to search through keywords and understand the intention of calls better without much hassle.

• Cloud-based services like Limecall also offer call reports, giving us a 360-degree view of the leads.

How to Activate Call Tracking for Ads

• After getting a business number, create a pool of numbers to be used across various advertising campaigns. 
• With the help of a simple code conversion from HTML to JavaScript, insert the specific phone number for the PPC link.
• This number remains specific for the site and the visitor no matter if they leave or stay.
• The encrypted code also helps identify keywords that trigger the ad and made the viewer click the contact option. 
• Without having to add numbers to the pool, they keep getting regenerated and recycled for other users.

How to Use Call Tracking for your Business

To integrate our Google Ads account with call or location extensions and phone calls, we need to follow the steps given below. Before doing so, ensure that we have a functional Google account and access to call reporting in our location. 

Along with those, we’ll need either a call extension, call advertisement, or location extension with call reporting. This can be done in the setting of our Google service.

Step by Step Guide to Using Call Tracking

1. To track calls from ads using a Google Ads account:

• Sign in to the google account and click on Tools.
• Go to conversions via the Measurement option and click on add.
• Go into phone calls and select “Calls from ads using call extensions or call-only ads.”
• From the dropdown menu under Category, we can access different conversion segments.
• Go to Value for assigning a worth for each call if needed.
• Depending on sales or leads, we can customize the options under Count. To personalize conversions, we can also specify the least timing for the call.
• Select the length of tracking after an ad has been clicked through the Conversion window options.
• To attribute calls, click on the Attribution model. Identify through a journey of links, the one used for the main persuasion.
• Create, and the call conversion tracking is now activated.

2. To track how ads from websites lead to phone calls using a Google Ads account and a Google forwarding number:

We can use Google forwarding numbers instead of our business number for free. To avail of every necessary feature, we’ll need to have a Google Ads account and call forwarding accessible in our country. We also need a website to put in our ad. As we need to replace the HTML code with JavaScript, we need access to edit the page. Then the tracking can be set up in 2 parts.

i. Create a conversion:

• Open Measurement on the Google Ads accounts and click on add icon.
• Click on “Calls to a phone number on your website” and name the conversion for easier maintenance.
• We can assign the call’s worth and add descriptions for reports.
• Add the destination number, a Google forwarding number, and specify the call length.
• Enter the duration for conversion action and click on Create for finishing the setup.

ii. To enable conversion tracking for the first time, a global site tag and phone snippet need to be added. This replaces the phone snippet with a Google Forwarding number. This can be done by web developers efficiently.

Once the code is embedded, 

• Open Google Tag Manager and select the desired workspace.
• Click on Tag and create a new one.
• In Tag Configuration, select “Google Ads Calls from Website Conversion” and specify the destination number.
• Enter the Conversion ID and label and create a trigger for callers.
• Save and Publish.

3. To enable conversion tracking using a Google Ads Account without a Google forwarding number using our business number:

We’ll simply need a Google Ads account and a website. We need editing freedom for adding JavaScript snippets in place of HTML.

i. Create a conversion action using the steps mentioned above.

ii.  We need to set up a conversion tracking tag either by installing the tag yourself. This can be done with web developers or by using Google Tag Manager.

To enable the Google management system, 

• Copy the Conversion ID and Label and follow the steps mentioned above for setting up conversion tracking.
• After completing the setup, choose the basic addition for setting up a click trigger or add a function call to the code for a customized button. The latter needs a custom event trigger for working.

4. For using a service provider to set up call tracking:

We’ll first have to contact our cloud-based network provider for a pool of numbers for advertising. With integrated teamwork, the tracking feature can be set up in 4 easy steps.

• Create tracking phone numbers with your service provider.
• Set up call diversions and forwarding.
• Assign numbers to various advertisement platforms and ad campaigns.
• Encrypt the specially designed code by your service provider in the websites.

Conclusion

Considering all the advantages it has to offer, it’s inevitable to advertise for any business. Be it using Google forwarding numbers and Google Ads account, using online business number providers, or integrating both, the features of call tracking helps meet business goals and go beyond.

With the best features, including

• Better ROI,
• Enhanced advertising opportunity,
• Overall outlook on ad campaigns,

Every company will surely benefit by employing call tracking for their services.  

Service providers like Limecall offer many more features like call forwarding, interactive voice response, personalized greetings, and automation for better customer service.