Understanding Call Tracking Basics

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Why Track Calls?

Pay Per Click can be an expensive but highly effective form of online marketing. But how do you know what’s working? There are various measurement techniques that our team uses, including Google Analytics, Conversion Tracking and Call Tracking. While Adwords offers built-in Call Tracking, this is a highly limited option, and so we rely upon an excellent third party call tracking provider to streamline goal tracking for our clients. Call Tracking is crucial for businesses that rely on phone calls, and may have to pay a higher Cost-Per-Click to get them. We use Call Tracking for many of our clients, in a wide range of industries including plumbers, lawyers, dentists, tutors, optometrists, chiropractors, etc. We have found that using Call Tracking helps to significantly improve the performance of Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns and any other online (and offline) marketing.

A good Call Tracking System will provide you with multiple local (or toll free) phone numbers that you can use for marketing purposes. You can do this by associating each number with a direct source i.e. Google Organic, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, etc. These are “virtual” numbers and simply forward callers to your regular number(s). Additional features involve custom greetings, call routing on a schedule, as well as the fact that all calls received can be measured and recorded, with some truly amazing statistics.

Flexibility & Features

*You can use Call Tracking for offline ads such as local newspaper ads, flyers etc. For example, purchasing a unique tracking number for a Print campaign will record all calls to that number, giving you a clear picture of every lead generated by your print ads, and better enabling you to calculate your return on investment (ROI).

*You can create custom recorded greetings which callers will hear before being connected to your business.

*You can create schedules which will determine who receives calls, and when, depending on the time and date the call was placed.

*You can assign numbers to almost any source you can think of, and be able to measure/filter the data to determine what’s working best for your business.

Please contact support@savvyk.com if you are interested in any of the above features, and our Support team will be pleased to discuss with you!

How Does “Dynamic Number Swapping” work?

The phone number on your website can dynamically change based on the source of the visitor. This is the key to tracking where calls are coming from. Thus someone visiting the website via a Google Ad will be shown a different number to call, than an organic visitor. Based on the calls to various tracking numbers, you have immediate feedback on the number and quality of leads being generated by each of your various marketing efforts. Here’s how that works:

1. Each time an ad (Google Ads, for example) is clicked through, a cookie is assigned to the source (visitor), which the call tracking system uses to decide which number to generate.

2. So, if you decided to run a test click through your ad, you should see the Adwords number appear instead of the regular website number (and so on, for various sources)

3. HOWEVER, you would actually continue to see the Adwords number for 30 days from your IP, given the ‘shelf-life’ of the cookie, even if you typed a direct URL. This 30 day period acts as a safety net, because someone who came in through an ad might not call right away, for example. If they do so within 30 days, however, then it can still be counted as a conversion attributable to Adwords, which is where the caller came from initially.

4. For testing purposes, the way to get around the cookie is to open an Incognito browser, then type the URL directly to see if the Organic/regular website number appears. You might then test if the correct number appears for other sources, by mimicking a click-through from them. Here’s how to do this for Adwords, specifically:

5. For example, for testing the number swapping for Google Ads, appending /?gclid=test to the end of the website URL effectively mimics a click-through from a Google Ad, allowing you to see the dynamic number swapping in action, without having to click on the ad.

Please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss call tracking or your specific web marketing strategy. We always offer a free consultation. Call 1-855-488-0988 (yes, that is a call tracking number!) to get started or email us using the contact form on the right.

Savvas Kyriakides is a passionate entrepreneur and Digital Marketing Strategist. His ability to quickly grasp and understand many different business models and verticals combined with his passion for digital marketing and strategy, enables him and his team to execute sharp, focused and measurable action plans for Savvy clients.

Savvas is a keen chess player, having played chess at international level as a student and young adult. This included participation in three World Chess Olympiads and a World Chess Junior Championship. Savvas has applied his chess skills involving strategy, focus, concentration and understanding of the competition to digital marketing. Every move is connected and measurable.