Do you use Google adwords and promote your phone number in the ad text, then read on, some interesting changes are coming in place in coming weeks.…
Google Adwords Team are calling this “Click to Call Enhancements”. Basically if you promote your phone number in your Google adwords ad, it will become a clickable call number. So someone clicks on your phone number from their mobile device, you will get a call. If you get a lot of leads through adwords, then this gives you ability to track and get some data on how many call leads do you actually get through your Paid Search Campaign.
Then read on…. This is a official announcement from Google adwords team…
If you currently have a phone number in your ad text or have plans to start adding your phone number in an ad, in coming weeks, Google Adwords will be launching a new enhancement to AdWords ads that will impact charges on clicks to these numbers.
To help our mobile users connect more easily with advertisers, all non-clickable phone numbers displayed in AdWords ad text will be automatically converted into a Click-to-call number. Currently when advertisers enter a phone number directly into their ad text instead of using Call Extensions, the phone number is not clickable and will not generate a call. This can be a frustrating experience for mobile users who attempt to initiate a call to this phone number.
The new Click-to-call enhancement makes sure that all the phone numbers that are displayed in Google ad text will be clickable.. This is particularly useful for users to make calls with their mobile devices. If your ad text includes a phone number, you will begin to receive clicks and calls on this number once the enhancement is enabled in your account. As with phone calls placed via a Call Extension, you will be charged for clicks on your phone number that result in a call.
The adwords policy, does not allow the phone numbers to be inserted into ad headlines. As with all Click-to-call ads, advertisers will be charged when a user either clicks on the headline or the phone number listed in the ad. Please see below for additional information regarding this change.
Which phone number shows?
If you are currently using both Call Extensions and a phone number in your ad creative, only the newly clickable phone number in your ad creative will show. This is done to save the user from seeing two different phone numbers in the same ad. If you would like your Call Extension number to display, simply delete all phone numbers from your existing ad text by following these steps. You’ll also receive an additional line of ad text displaying your phone number if the Call Extension is used.
Measuring results
You’ll be able to review how many calls you receive on the clickable phone number listed in your ad text for each campaign, ad group, keyword and ad on the ‘Campaigns’ tab in your AdWords account. Just select the ‘Click-type’ option under the ‘Segment’ drop down and view your report. Please note that since these are not calls generated from a Call Extension, they will not be reported in the Extensions tab reports.
Recommendations for featuring a phone number
You can simply leave your phone number in your ad text and benefit from this change which will automatically make your phone numbers clickable and enable users to call you. To get most value out of this enhancement, its better to have “Call extensions”. This has several benefits. With a manually created Call Extension your number will appear as an additional line of ad text which frees up space in your ad creative for other promotion. In addition, when you create a Call Extension, your phone number appears on a separate line in the ad, and you’re able to take advantage of other powerful enhancements such as Vanity Numbers, Call-only and Call Metrics reporting.
More information on Call extension can be found here:
http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173346
This post also gives more information on Vanity numbers, Allow only clicks-to-call numbers.
teclan’s take on this:
We think that this will help a lot of small businesses as so far it was very difficult to measure ROI if they were getting call because of the paid clicks. Now because of the available metrics and easy to follow anlaytics data this will become simpler and easier.
Do you want to implement Google adwords campaign for your business, get in touch. Call us on for a chat.