Essential Knowledge for Google Ads Call Only Campaigns

Have you ever tried to contact a business only to discover that they had no phone number on their website? When this happens, it can quickly frustrate people, and they can lose faith in a brand if they feel that there is any reluctance or distance when it comes to customer service.

By offering your phone number, your business gains credibility, and this helps foster trust with your audience. With this in mind, call-only campaigns are a rising force in the advertising world.

You may wonder, what are call-only campaigns?

In the simplest terms, these are ad campaigns that exist to encourage people to call your business. Therefore, they only show on devices that can make calls.

Let’s see what call-only ads can do for your business.

Why Call-Only Campaigns Are Important

Mobile is the future. Studies from Google show that around 70% of searches on mobile end up with the user making a phone to a business.

This rapid move to a mobile-first world has led to Google releasing call-only campaigns. This offers several key benefits for your business.

• Speed — This is easily the fastest method of driving visitors to interact with your brand offline.
• Less digital touchpoints — You don’t need to worry about lead forms or landing pages. Instead, you can focus on keywords and your bids to drive more calls.
• Leverage urgency — For businesses that naturally receive a lot of calls, such as financial institutions and insurance companies, call-only ads help them get more traffic. If people have a more pressing need, like requiring a locksmith or plumber, then a call-only ad is great.

How to Run Successful Call-Only Campaigns

Marketers should be aware that the keyword bids in these types of campaigns are a little higher. This is because Google Ads charges for clicks, not on the calls. However, after a user clicks on a call-only ad, the chances that it will lead to a call are quite high.

Another important thing to realize is that traditional strategies for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising won’t work with a call-only campaign. Instead, you’ll need to get familiar with call-only campaigns best practices.

1. Begin By Bidding High

As calls are worth more to your business than clicks, the bidding tends to be more competitive. It’s best to bid high from the outset so that you can gather more data about keyword performance early on. After that, you will be able to make better decisions on how to optimize your ads.

2. Create a Compelling Description

You have just 35 characters to tell viewers about your offer. By using concise and compelling language, you can write a strong call-to-action (CTA) that inspires action. Any mention of a discount or special offer will help!

3. Schedule Ads for the Maximum Return

It’s a good idea to schedule your ads to show during business hours, so you will have staff available to answer calls. By analyzing trends in peak call times and customer behaviors, you can adjust bids and schedules to maximize the return on your call-only ads.

4. Location Targeting

Implementing location targeting will enable you to target people in the area. With local phone number and language related to events in the neighborhood, you can encourage more people to call.

5. Target Call-Centric Keywords

It makes sense to focus on people that are more likely to call. Therefore, if your data indicates certain people need quick solutions, like making a booking or timely purchase, then you can use keywords that instill urgency. (e.g. call today, act now, book before it’s too late etc.)

6. CTR (Call through Rate)

Not the usual ‘CTR’ that marketers track, but an important one all the same. When a user clicks on a call-only ad, a dial pad will appear with the number already programmed in. All it takes is another click to make the call.

By assessing how many calls you are getting relative to your clicks, it’s possible to optimize your bids for a better return on advertising spend (ROAS). If you’re seeing a lot of abandoned calls, there may be an issue with your keywords or ad copy that turns people off at the last moment.

7. Focus on Call Quality and User Experience

The caller experience is crucial here. People who ring your business do so because they want solutions. You need to ensure the process is streamlined. A complex phone menu is far from ideal and increases the risk of people dropping off.

You should ensure all calls are properly directed to the right team. Furthermore, adding some personalization based on the ad or keyword that referred each call can enhance the user experience.

What to measure in Call-Only Campaigns

By analyzing the caller experience and the responses you are getting to see what calls become sales, your business can gradually improve your service. Once you bring the quality up to a satisfactory level, you can start working on driving more quality traffic to your ads.

Here are a few key metrics to monitor for every call:

• Call length — Define several time bands for call duration, which clearly set out how long a call must be for the person to be considered a lead.
• Time of the day — This will allow you to determine peak hours.
• Location — It’s useful to know the location of your callers as you can then optimize campaigns with location-targeting.
• Conversion Rate — This is the most important metric as it lets us know how effective the campaign is.

Data Is the New Oil

As far as marketing is concerned, data analytics is integral. In fact, without data and proper analysis, your call-only ad campaigns are useless.

To get the most out of these campaigns, you need to ensure data analysis is intertwined from the beginning. The reports from PPCexpo will enable you to dig deeper into your campaign results, visualize key data points, and learn much more about ad performance and audience behaviors.

Check out our visualization library today to make the most out of your digital marketing data.