Video Transcription for Google Ads Website Call Tracking:
Good afternoon this is Thomas Green with Ethical Marketing Service. This video is going to be a how-to on setting up on-site call tracking. It is a conversion action which is very infrequently implemented on to accounts. I think it’s a know-how thing. This guide will be on how to do it which makes it a more simple.
An explanation for what on-site call tracking is someone clicks an ad they end up on your site. They find the phone number, and from there they dial the phone number from the website.
If you don’t have on-site call tracking setup, unless it’s a third party, if there’s no conversion set up in Google Ads then Google doesn’t get credit for producing that call. This means that your data is inaccurate. Also it might be the advertising isn’t proving as beneficial as it might otherwise be.
First thing we need to do is to make sure the call extensions are configured correctly. Get the phone number from the site and make sure that call reporting is on, otherwise this won’t work. So for this particular campaign an extension you set up and the call reporting is on.
Then go to tools and conversions, add a new conversion. Select phone calls and then calls to a phone number on your website. It doesn’t matter what you call the conversion. Remember that the conversion name will come up in the code. I don’t usually use a value. If you are calculating the lifetime value of a client & know how many calls is required then include it here. The option to count every conversion/call or just one is if one person calls multiple times it’s going to come up as a conversion. So you would select that as in what your preferences are.
The Call Length, Conversion Window & Attribution Model
The call length I normally put it at 45 seconds. You specify this because if a call that’s ten seconds long counts as a conversion that’s probably not accurate. This is because it could be a wrong number. I think if we call this 45 seconds long it’s probably not a wrong number and you’re having a conversation.
The conversion window is how long the delay is between the click and the call. I personally think that the longer the better because it makes the data more accurate. The attribution model is how clicks get credit, I will probably cover that in another video. Create this and then continue.
How to implement the code
The next step is who implements the code on your site. If you do have a developer you can email it here. I tend to do all this stuff myself so if you click install the tag yourself.
Global Site Tag
The first part of the code is the global site tag, needed for if it is not already on your website. This will be in the head tag of every page of your website.
Phone Snippet
A important part for this particular exercise is the phone snippet. If we copy the phone number and paste it in here. The important part about this particular exercise is that the code, the call extension and also the website the phone number has to be formatted the same on all of those.
So if you have it for example like that on one of them and like that on others then this isn’t going to work needs to be exactly the same and there can’t be any dash dashes or brackets. Basically what Google does is it looks for something on the site, for this particular piece of text on the site. Then replaces it with a Google forwarding number, so it’s basically the number that comes up in the call extension. If for the phone number appears differently then it won’t be able to find this piece of text and it won’t work. The phone number needs to be formatted the same like it is a piece of text.
Creating the snippet
Once you’ve added it here create a snippet and this goes right after the global site tag. So you would have this in the head of every page of your website. Underneath it you would have this and basically what it’s doing is it’s looking for this phone number and replacing it with the Google forwarding number. Once you’ve done that you click done and all that’s required now is to implement that code on your website. As I’ve said is it goes in the head of the website that’s important and if you implement that using the instructions that I’ve given you now have free call tracking.
One thing you can’t do is use Google forwarding numbers for other purposes. For example, if you see a call extension and a different number come up on your website and it’s a Google forwarding number anything I can use that elsewhere.
Warnings about Call Tracking
The disadvantage of free call tracking is that they can use different numbers at different times. Let’s say a number comes up and the last three digits changed from 123 if you use that one day. Then maybe next week you try it again it’s going to go to a different business. These aren’t permanent numbers they’re temporary. Google will rotate them, in my view it’s still a positive and it helps with make the data accurate.
If you have any questions I’ve been doing this type of Google Ads Website Call Tracking conversion for a long time.. Feel free to put your questions in the comment section. If you’re interested in management you can visit us at ethicalmarketingservice.co.uk .Thank you very much for listening.
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