Setting up your business website is, of course, the first and most important step in any kind of Digital Marketing strategy however, establishing an effective online presence for that website can be a little more challenging. Hopefully, there will be a number of customers/clients that are familiar with the business already from their previous dealings and they have a good chance of finding your website simply via searching for your business name. Beyond this, well-implemented Search Engine Optimisation should give your website the best chance at being found ‘organically’ by customers using search engines. SEO will often take a number of months to come into effect, however, and ascending Google’s keyword rankings can require a number of hours work and patience.
This is where Google Ads comes in. Starting a Google Ads account and launching a campaign will see that your website is put front and centre on the screens of potential customers/clients. By selecting the right format, key words and carefully crafting the ad copy, you should start getting completely new customers/clients on your website straight away.
One of the great features of Google Ads is its versatility. Whether you are B2C, B2B, an e-commerce business, or a business that predominantly offers services, there will be a Google Ads campaign and advert format that will work for you. For many serviced based businesses, the end conversion goal will often be a customer/client enquiry. These enquiries may be via contact form, email, social media or telephone.
Which Enquiry Route Do Customers Prefer?
If you are deliberating over which forms of contact to offer your customers, often the best answer is to make all options available. Individual preference varies hugely and there will be a number of people that may have longer-winded or more tentative enquiries that they feel more comfortable inputting into a contact form. However, having a publicly listed business telephone number on your website is becoming increasingly essential in contemporary society. Particularly as the percentage of people using and browsing on smartphones continues to rise. In the competitive, low patience arena of the internet, a phone number that is linked to dial at the touch of a button is far more likely to supersede other more time-consuming forms of contact.
Another advantage to having a publically listed number for your business can be found within other platforms you may use for your business (such as Social Media). These platforms and listings are often optimised to promote telephone numbers to any potential customers or clients and they are adept at doing so. Google Ads is no exception.
How To Set Up a Google Ads Campaign that will Generate Calls
The very first thing you want to do is to ensure you are tracking a conversion for any call that is made through Google ads. To do this, go to “Tools & Settings’, ‘Measurement’, ‘Conversions’. Add a conversion and choose ‘Phone Calls’ and then ‘Calls from ads using call extensions or call-only ads’. The category will be a ‘Lead’ and ensure you label the conversion something that you will understand later e.g “Phone Calls”. At this point, you can choose to assign a currency value to these calls if you so choose. Choose to count one call per interaction, select the minimum length you want to count as a call. After you have selected these details, confirm them and continue.
There are a number of routes you can go down when you are considering what type of campaign to choose. You can run a call-only campaign that will list your number as a link to directly call but will have no link to your website. To do this, choose to run a ‘Leads’ ‘Search’ campaign with a focus on phone calls. This choice is best for those looking to generate only calls and minimal website visits from the campaign.
Realistically most businesses will be happy for users to visit their website and find out a bit more about their services before they are ready to enquire/convert. If this is the case then a traditional website traffic campaign is a good fit. Towards the end of the campaign set up, make sure you opt to include a call extension to the ads and this will mean the telephone number is displayed below the listing and can also generate calls straight from the listing.
Ad Scheduling
An important thing to bear in mind when setting up a Google Ads campaign intended to generate calls is your business phone availability. It is obviously no good to set up an ads campaign, only to have most people calling the business when it’s closed. To rectify this, ensure that the campaign is scheduled to only run during your business office hours. We experienced the difference this small tweak can make recently when we began scheduling one of our client’s traffic ads. With their previous average calls per month from the ads at around 24, we managed to achieve 58 last month alone.
