What options are available for tracking incoming phone calls back to the PPC ad or online display ads that produce them?
Stevie DeGroff from Google says they are testing call tracking within their interface which can be dynamically inserted on your website. No dates on when this will be released.
Andrew Wheeler from iProspect recommends a simple email solution. User clicks on an ad and chooses to call on a page that plants a cookie. The moment they call, the email goes out to them to click back to the website, which takes them to a confirmation page for tracking.
Call tracking can be a complicated game. Aside from Andrew’s suggestion, here are a couple of ways you can manage tracking calls for PPC campaigns or any other online marketing campaign.
The difficult (and expensive) downfall of using third party programs, such as the ones listed below, is that they do not integrate well with Google Analytics (at least not at a keyword-level) and latch on your websites like a leach, adding another layer of programming to your online marketing. There’s no light-weight or simple solution.
Use Click to Call technology that allows for a redirect after the user clicks “call”. The two solutions I know of for click to call do not yet offer this magic redirect, but I know it’s out there somewhere.
You can also use Promo Codes in your ad copy that correlate to specific keywords. The back end of this technique can get complicated because essentially you’ll have to have your phone system ping your website with the appropriate tracking codes. Advanced Segmentation in Google Analytics will help you sort out and match calls to keywords.
Please share your feedback on the use of call-tracking strategy for PPC or other Internet marketing. Do you use something currently or have you heard of something that you’d like me to test out?
Another question from the recent ClickZ webinar:
When is the Yahoo! and Microsoft transition going to take place and once it happens what technology/interface will marketers be using to manage their PPC campaigns?
Melissa Schnurstein from Yahoo! answered this PPC question. According to Yahoo!, the transition is scheduled to take place before the Holiday season or directly after it (but not during the high volume shopping season).
The platform will Microsoft AdCenter and Panama will be retired after the transition. You can visit SearchAlliance.com to keep up to date with news on the transition.
Here’s a question brought up during a recent ClickZ webinar you might be interested in.
Does it make sense to pay for clicks on search terms so small there is not enough data to get any volume information?
Laura Centore from iProspect points out that data wins in this scenario, and that using these terms in your campaign could work if they are providing revenue. It’s important to make sure that the right measurement tools are in place to see if they keywords are actually working for your campaign.
Andrew Wheeler from iProspect says to “test”, and in most cases you’re covered by having broad match variations of your keywords. Review referral and performance data.
Katherine Shappley from Microsoft says “at the end of the day, chasing the long-tail is really about time-in versus value-out. You really think about how valuable are those long-tail keywords in comparison to the time you are spending managing them? If you’re managing keywords with a very low impression volume, you might want to consider separating them from your high performing ones so that it doesn’t affect your overall Quality Score.
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