Track your phone calls in online marketing

Have you ever had the phone ring with a new potential customer, but you don’t know whether the call came from your Google Ads campaigns, search engine optimisation, ads on other websites or other online marketing channels?

Here, I’ll help you get a handle on how to track your calls as conversions in Google Analytics.

The term you need to know is call tracking, which has become increasingly popular in recent years, as companies (and agencies) can now demonstrate even better results from their online marketing through phone calls from potential customers.

How call tracking and phone call monitoring work

Call tracking works by purchasing an external service from a provider, where you pay a monthly fee. The amount depends on how many unique visitors your website receives each month.

There are several different call tracking agencies, but in Denmark I can highly recommend Bellmetric, where you can get started with call tracking straight away. Bellmetric offers excellent customer service and constantly develops and improves their call tracking with new features.

It starts with a small piece of code

You start by inserting a small piece of Javascript code on your website or webshop. This code ensures that each new visitor sees a unique phone number, which is reserved for that visitor for, for example, 10 minutes. You decide how long the unique number should be reserved for the visitor.

This means that when the visitor calls the unique phone number, they are automatically redirected to your main number (or other numbers) – completely without them noticing.

If the user decides to save the unique number and call your business later, call forwarding on your numbers can be maintained for up to 2 years.

The user has now made a call to this unique number, and the call is registered by Bellmetric, which collects data on the call using the Javascript code placed on your website.

Track phone calls directly in Google Analytics

With help from Bellmetric and their Javascript, we can track this phone call in, for example, Google Analytics and thereby link the phone call with your online marketing activities. Of course, you need to have Google Analytics available for this.

If you don’t have Google Analytics, your call tracking provider will usually also offer a decent statistics module you can use, but with Google Analytics we can track ALL our online marketing activities that generate phone calls.

Google Analytics is free and is Google’s own analytics programme, used by millions of websites and webshops worldwide.

Setting up and tracking call tracking in Google Analytics

Once you have inserted your Javascript on the website, you need to create a goal in Google Analytics. I’ll show you how easy it is to set up in Google Analytics with Bellmetric, and I’ve made a short video:

Opsætning af Calltracking i Google Ads

Efter at du har opsat Calltracking i Google Analytics, kan du f.eks. importere dine mål fra Google Analytics direkte ind i Google Ads og se dine opkald som konverteringer på søgeord og opkald. Her ser du hvordan du importerer dit mål fra Google Analytics, som jeg opsatte før i ovenstående video. Denne øvelse gør sig gældende for alle de mål du opsætter i Google Analytics.

You do not always need to stop online marketing

I have seen examples where online marketing was stopped because the company, for instance, did not receive sales, completed contact forms, or meet other on-site goals.

From a purely goal-oriented online marketing perspective, this might seem reasonable. However, what is often overlooked is that online marketing can also generate a significant number of phone calls. I work every month with many clients focusing on leads and revenue. I often see that many online marketing campaigns only generate phone calls.

Example of call tracking with Google Ads

If you are familiar with Google Ads, let me give you an example of how important call tracking can be for your Google Ads campaigns.

Google Ads is about paying per click to your website on selected keywords and ads.

I often see Google Ads campaigns for higher-value products where visitors call first, then the customer receives a good offer, and afterwards the business sends a payment link or invoice by email.

This means these sales are often registered as “direct” sales in Google Analytics, not tracked, and not registered as a sale from Google Ads. This is, of course, not ideal for your Google Ads campaigns, because if you do not track your calls, you will not record conversions from your Google Ads campaigns.

Let’s assume we did not have call tracking for a client, and, for example, £50 was spent on a keyword/ad. As an agency, we would automatically pause the keyword, as there was no recorded revenue or other measurable goals.

So the client would miss out on future revenue from the same keyword, which could ultimately be extremely valuable for businesses and end up costing a lot on the bottom line if call tracking was not set up.

Now that we have Google Ads campaigns with call tracking, we can track whether we get calls, sales, downloads, completed forms or other goals on the website. This means we can now go full throttle with online marketing that works and stop what does not.

Does it all sound a bit confusing? We can help you get started with call tracking and much more. Contact us here or call 71 99 34 74.