In this episode of Actionable Marketing In Minutes we discuss call extensions and how they can help you with your paid advertising campaigns.

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Episode 22 – Understanding Call Extensions

Problem

Most businesses highly value phone calls for generating new business leads, and is the goal for many Google search campaigns. Tracking these types of offline conversions has always been complicated. Even if a business is fairly confident that their paid ads are driving phone calls, there is still the question of what keywords or ad messages are resulting in the calls. And arguably more importantly, what keywords and ad messages are wasting money on paid clicks for low value leads.

Even though key metrics such as click through rates, bounce rate or time on site are rightly considered indicators of performance, they do not tell the whole story. More and more, we see strong evidence that purchasers who are further down the decision making path tend to make a phone call, spending less time on a site. Whereas, people who are early in the decision making process, such as the research phase, spend more time on a site.

Join me for the new few minutes as we explore an option in Goggle AdWords to increase the effectiveness of generating and analyzing these phone conversions.

Solution

Call extensions are an addition to you ads that insert your business phone number without taking away from your ad text. They can be a handy tool for any campaign, but are particularly valuable for local campaigns and campaigns where mobile impressions are likely. They are one of the most effective methods for you to optimize your paid advertising campaigns that will lead to successfully generating phone leads.

In addition, call extensions make it easy for customers to call you directly from your ad and for you to better understand the value of your campaigns by measuring the phone calls that your ads generate. Advanced call reporting allows you to see and analyze both the keywords and ad messages that generate new business for you as well as determine what keywords and ad messaging do not result in a positive ROI.

Benefits

Call extensions, like other d extensions we’ve covered, provide you additional real estate within a search result, and allow searchers a means of connecting with your business right on the search result. This is key because it can increase both your click-through rate and the rate at which you’re able to turn searchers into customers.

Here are the benefits of adding call extensions to your campaign:

  • Adding phone numbers to your ads makes it easy for people to call you on the go.
  • You can share these numbers across ads within an ad group or entire campaign.
  • Clicks on call-only ads exclusively drive calls to your business.
  • You can set numbers to show only when your business can take calls.
  • You can count calls as conversions, and learn more about call conversions.
  • Call extensions have typically increased clickthrough rate by 6-8%.

How are you solving the issue of tracking phone conversions? Connect with us on Twitter or on LinkedIn to share your thoughts or ask a question you’d like to explore in a future episode.

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