When approaching how to grow your online business, several key strategies come to mind, like SEO, social media, PPC ads and others.
These strategies operate on digital channels, which makes sense for growing an online business.
But, have you ever thought about growing an online business… over the phone?
Call campaigns through Google Ads can be an effective tool to increase sales and acquire new business directly.
This discussion will look at how to grow your online business with the help of call campaigns. We’ll also explore how call campaigns work and the best strategies to optimize them.
Growing an online business is an immense challenge that has only become increasingly difficult as the years pass.
There are millions of businesses marketing themselves and conducting business on online channels. This can make it nearly impossible to get your own online business to stand out and produce results on digital platforms.
Overcoming the thick competition online requires the proper knowledge and skill set. In other words, you need to know how to grow your online business before you can actually start the process.
The harsh reality is, without this knowledge and expertise, you’re unlikely to succeed in growing your online business.
As an online company, answering phone calls may seem like a non-essential aspect of growing your business.
However, there are several benefits that customer calls provide to your online business:
Ads created in call campaigns are polished-up to show only on mobile devices that are capable of making calls. These ads are very supple with how they can appear. To enhance performance and optimize for mobile, your ads may not always show every line of text you enter when setting up your campaign. Likewise, select extensions, which are available for call campaigns, may also be hidden in order to make the most of the smaller screen space on mobile devices.
Here are some salient points to know about using call campaigns:
Like any type of PPC strategy, call campaigns require constant attention and optimization. If you don’t work at improving your call ads, they will struggle to perform.
This section will look at 9 tips for growing your online business using call campaigns. Utilizing these tactics will improve your strategies and maximize your results.
The headline is often the first thing that search users see. It’s almost like your first impression. So, you need to make it count.
Your headline needs to capture the audience’s attention and compel them to call your business.
However, this is a fine line, mainly because your ads may not always appear with your phone number through the Google Ads call extension.
The best strategy to optimize your headline URLs is to A/B test them. This means running two campaigns with near-identical headlines. Typically, only a word or two is different.
You can measure which headline outperforms the other, giving you inside intelligence on how to craft the best hooks for your ads.
Along with testing your headlines, it’s also vital to do the same with your ad copy. Your ad descriptions add context to your headlines and further promote your business.
You’ll be able to create up to 3 descriptions, but not all of them will always appear. So, think strategically about what information to prioritize in each piece of your ad copy.
Again, you want to use your ad copy to encourage calls without being too heavy on this topic, in case your ads don’t appear with your phone number.
A/B testing also works for advertising copy. You should pay close attention to your metrics and see which ad messages get the best response.
When you first start working with call campaigns for growing your online business, it’s wise to bid higher than usual.
You’ll burn some of your ad budget, but you’ll gain more data in the process. These insights will help you better understand how audiences respond to call campaigns and give you actionable intelligence on how to improve them in the future.
In the long run, the value of this data will offset the money you spend acquiring it because you’ll be able to turn your call campaigns into profitable successes quickly.
Essentially, you’re paying to learn firsthand how to grow your online business using call campaigns.
You can significantly improve your ads’ chance of appearing with call extensions by specifically targeting call-related keywords.
Google Ads’ algorithms are adept at recognizing the intent of a user’s search and match ad and search results accordingly. This includes how Google Ads utilizes your selected ad extensions.
For example, a plumbing company targets the keyword “call a plumber near me,” while using the call extension. There is an almost-100% guarantee that Google Ads will recognize this phone-related keyword and display your ad with your phone number.
Plan your call-specific keywords strategically. Try and target the ones that produce the best results at the cheapest CPC.
This should be obvious, but a surprising number of businesses get this step wrong when adding call extensions to their campaigns.
You only want customers to call when someone is available to answer the call. Otherwise, you’ll be paying for phone calls that no one was able to answer, thereby wasting your Google Ads budget. Plus, customers won’t enjoy calling you just to reach your voicemail.
Luckily, this is very preventable by creating an ad schedule for your call campaigns that match your business or customer service hours. An ad schedule guarantees that your call ads only appear to users when you’re available to receive calls.
In any PPC campaign, location targeting can be a real asset. Not only does it improve your targeting and allow you to make more personalized ad messages for each area, but you can also adjust bids per location.
This is crucial if you’re a business that only operates locally. You don’t want to pay for clicks or calls from areas outside your service zone. Instead, you want to tighten your location targeting to only include the areas you serve.
Be sure to filter your campaign results by location to find the areas with the best results. Some geographical areas will generate more call results than others. These may be the locations you want to target.
Since the Google Ads call extension doesn’t guarantee that your business number will always appear, not all of the clicks for your Google Ads call campaigns will result in calls.
Thus, you need an effective way to track your actual call-through rate. In other words, how many of your impressions result in phone calls? More importantly, how many of those calls actually connect to your business?
When a search user clicks your number, it will automatically enter your number into their call app and begin connecting them to your business line.
Some prospective customers may not realize this or mean to call right away. They’ll end the call before you have time to answer.
You need to separate these abandoned calls from those that reach your phone line. Only then can you optimize your PPC campaign for the best results that grow your online business.
Receiving a call is just the next step in the process. Once you’ve optimized how to get people to click and call, the next objective is to encourage those callers to convert.
There are two ways to approach call quality. One is the actual quality of the call itself. Do you have a clear connection in a quiet place where you can hear the caller and vice versa?
For instance, a construction company doesn’t want its Google Ads call campaigns to connect to a foreman on a noisy job site with poor reception. The calls should go to a quiet office.
The other element of call quality is your ability to encourage or persuade the caller to convert. Companies spend heaps of money perfecting call scripts and hiring the people with the right, cheerful demeanors to maximize results.
The bottom line is simple. Receiving calls is important, but only if the conversation sparks something.
Even with your best efforts, there will still be calls that don’t result in conversions – many, in fact. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end of the road.
Retargeting is the act of marketing to people that have previously engaged with your business on some level. You can retarget anyone from a past customer to someone that called your company and hung up.
Once a prospective customer calls your business, you have a channel you can use to reach out and engage them again. It’s possible that the timing just wasn’t right during your first conversation. They may still require your products or services, but haven’t had the time to call back.
That said, many people have their guard up against cold calls. You need to make sure you aren’t being too intrusive, or you could lose their potential business for good.
No matter how you approach your marketing or Google Ads campaigns, data is crucial for learning how to grow your business online.
More specifically, the intelligence that your data holds. Between all of your costs, clicks and calls, there are mountains of metrics that can reveal everything you’re doing right and wrong.
The problem is that turning data into insight is an uphill battle, especially in the digital age where information moves at hyper-speed.
To resolve this problem (and many other data-related gripes), many professionals utilize sophisticated marketing tools, such as PPC Signal.
PPC Signal is a Google Ads optimization software tool that uses the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate substantial chunks of the ad campaign optimization process.
Specifically, the tool automates the monitoring of your PPC campaigns and detection of significant changes.
Think of it as a 24/7 babysitter for your Google Ads account that alerts you any time something changes unexpectedly, whether good or bad.
PPC Signal is always on and always working, meaning you’ll never miss any significant shifts, trends, outliers or other noteworthy changes to your PPC metrics.
When the AI engine behind PPC Signal detects a noteworthy change, it analyzes the data and packages all the information inside a convenient alert. These alerts are complete insights that are ready for you to take action.
You can even get PPC Signal dashboard on daily basis on your email inbox. Whenever the PPC signal completes its analyzing processes by gathering and implementing AI logics, it sends you an updated signal dashboard.
Each alert appears on the PPC Signal main screen. This menu acts almost like a catalog of current changes across your Google Ads account. You can then choose which insights you want to explore further and resolve.
Let’s say look at a specific insight in this sample account.
In this example, conversions have decreased 50% for this particular campaign-ad group-keyword combination. That’s a notable drop that is definitely worth exploring further.
By clicking the Explore option, you see a more expanded view of the data.
This chart is interactive and allows you to add additional metrics. If you were managing this campaign, you might want to see if clicks are also declining.
The picture becomes far more troubling once you add the clicks to the chart. Not only are you losing 50% of your conversions, but clicks are rising at a high rate. You’re paying for these clicks and generating web traffic, but failing to convert these visitors into new business.
That’s counterintuitive for how to grow your online business! You need to act quickly to fix this problem and repair your return on investment for this campaign and keyword.
Any PPC campaign needs to be optimized. You have to be vigilant and pay attention to how your campaign performance rises and falls, particularly when it’s costing you money.
Call campaigns are no exception to this. There is no such thing as a set-and-forget strategy for Google Ads.
Using PPC Signal’s filtering options from the main dashboard, you can specifically select your any metrics and can filter out the results.
You can also select specific metrics, times, locations and other dimensions to filter your available insights. With these settings, you can dive into the precise parts of your Google Ads account that matter most to you and your goals.
Simply put, PPC Signal is the best PPC optimization tool, no matter what you intend to achieve using Google Ads marketing.
Online businesses offer many advantages that offline and brick-and-mortar stores can’t provide. These advantages extend to the customers and the owners of online businesses. For instance, customers can shop from online businesses from the comfort of their homes, or on-the-go using mobile devices.
Meanwhile, growing an online business allows you to reach a wider audience and has fewer overhead costs.
It depends on the scope of your campaigns and overarching ad campaigns. A call-only campaign is acceptable if you only want to drive calls to your business and are not interested in growing your online business through web traffic.
However, a standard ad using the call extension is more versatile, will typically rank higher and sees more engagement because of its expanded size.
A call-only ad features the business’ phone number as the headline, meaning the link that search users click. The business name is also listed, along with a very brief description. Comparatively, a call-only ad is much smaller than other types of paid messages in Google Ads.
A call-only ad, as its name suggests, will only generate calls. Each click to the ad will result in a phone call to your business. Standard ads using the call extension will sometimes appear with a clickable business number that connects search users to your business via the phone. The ad may appear other times without the call extension available.
The advantage of the call extension is that you will generate both website traffic and calls. Plus, call extension ads are larger and more prominent on the search results page, thereby drawing more engagement metrics.
There is no precise recipe for growing an online business using Google Ads. Some businesses will prosper from call campaigns, but others may not find it so valuable.
If there is one thing that any business using Google Ads can benefit from, it’s PPC Signal.
Knowing how to grow your online business in the Digital Age means mastering your data. Your PPC metrics hold valuable and actionable insights that tell you everything you need to know about how to improve your strategies.
The more proactive you seize opportunities and mitigate risks, the faster you’ll grow your online business through PPC campaigns.
Not only does PPC Signal help you discover these critical changes in your campaigns, but it also automates some of the most time-consuming steps in the Google Ads optimization process.
The time-saving value alone is worth the investment in this AI marketing tool!
We will help your ad reach the right person, at the right time
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