How to Track Call Only Ads Conversions?

In our previous tutorial, we have discussed “how to set up call only ads” campaign. We also said, setting up Call only ads campaign is pretty straight forward but measuring the outcome is very complex! In this blog post, I am going to share why outcome measuring is complex for call only ads campaign.

Call Only Campaign is Costly

If you never tested call only campaign, you might think that call only campaign is very affordable. To get a phone call to your business land phone or mobile number, you just need to pay for a click. But in reality, call only campaign is not that affordable. People who saw your ad and click on it, they will get a pop-up notification first “whether s/he would like to make the call”. If S/he confirms, Google forwarding number will route the call to your business phone number. This is very good scenario, right? You are paying only for valid phone calls made to your cell phone or mobile.

But what if that person didn’t make the call? Will you be charged for the tap? Unfortunately, yes. You will be charged whenever someone taps on your ad, doesn’t matter if the person makes the call or not. Out of 100 clicks on your ad, you might get only 1 valid phone call. But Google will charge you for 100 clicks!

Do you have any doubt on my previous statement? Feel free to dig deep about this:

Call only campaign cost when clicked but not called

Here is a screenshot of my conversation with a Google representative about this:

People Like to Know About Your Business First

You might be thinking now, why the heck people would tap on your ad if they are not going to make the phone calls? Your call only campaign ads clearly indicate to make the call and it’s not like other search campaigns ads, then why they just tap on the ad and close it before making the phone call?

Well there may be few reasons behind this:

-When they tap on your ad, they might be thinking, this action will bring them to your website instead of making a call!

-They would like to know your business first. They like to see what you are offering and if it does have a real value for them. In the next attempt, if s/he is interested, s/he will make the call.

-Hanging up before you or your representative receive the call! Yes, it’s 2016 but people sometimes get shy without any valid reason. Maybe, s/he is not that curious to give you a proper introduction!

-They click due to interest. I call this category of people as “dumb people”.

How to Track Call Only Campaigns Conversions

Google makes it confusing to track call only ads conversions. If you check this article, especially the “Monitor performance” section, you will have a double thought for sure! Check the statement under “Look at the performance of your call-only campaigns“. It says:

Calls from your ads will appear under the “Clicks” column in your reporting table for each call-only campaign.

What does it mean? Does it mean, my client got 21 phone calls from Call Only ads campaign? Check the following image:

Of course not! My client got only 1 valid phone call out of 21 clicks. Under “phone calls” column, you can see there are 3 calls.

But 1 call is missed, 1 call lasted for 12 seconds (I set 15 seconds to count a successful conversion when I set up Phone call conversion for this campaign. Therefore, 12 seconds call can’t appear under “conversions” column) and 1 call is the actual conversion as it lasted for more than 15 seconds (57) .

I Asked Google to Change that Statement

That statement made me confused. If you were setting call only ads campaign for the first time and you saw that statement from Google help tutorial or any other source, what would you think?

I saw there were 21 clicks this month and I was guessing, my client would be very happy that he received 21 phone calls for just a few dollars! When I asked about it, my client said he didn’t get any phone call!

I re-read the whole article and some other topics. At last, I talked to Google’s representative about this just to be 100% sure that clicks don’t mean successful calls. Clicks are just clicks and I should focus on conversions column! Hopefully, Google will remove or correct that statement pretty soon!

Last thing I want to share just for fun

No one is perfect! I am not perfect, you are not perfect and Google is not perfect. Above image is showing that I am Adwords certified and my certification is valid through Jan 1, 1970 🙂 I didn’t born then!

Next section is showing, I am passed and my certificate is valid through August 17, 2017! This one is correct 🙂

About Ekhlas Uddin Jewel

Ekhlas Uddin Jewel is Google Adwords certified individual & SEO, SEM, SMM specialist from Bangladesh. He is the founder of SEO-Service-Provider.Org. For large SEO/Adwords project(s), please feel free to contact him.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•