It doesn’t matter if you are a plumber or you are responsible for a large sales organisation, you want people to call you and do business with you. Google AdWords Call Extensions and Call-Only ads a re a great way to get people calling your business.

Even in the advancement of chatbot services, people are still using telephones to make enquiries. According to recent statistics calling time has increased by 113% from 2016 to 2017. Having your number available and discoverable as well as excellent availability to take calls from the other side is becoming crucial for businesses to achieve success.

            Why are inbound calls so valuable?

1. They are willing to solve a problem immediately

If a person is calling your business, this shows a very high level of buying intent. These are looking typically to solve a problem immediately. The opposite of an outbound cold call, when you are trying to reach them and get them interested in your product, in this case the customer is leading the conversation. Getting people to call you is very likely to turn into a sell, if the person receiving the call is well prepared.

2. They already know you

One of the best parts of getting an inbound call is that the persone already has found some information about you. Maybe they saw your ad, or researched your product, took a business card, etc. There is no need to explain in full detail what you offer, as they already have an idea. However, don’t make the mistake to skip building a rapport about the customer – their needs and requirements, to make sure you direct them to the correct product.

3. You get a new lead

If the caller is not yet in your data base, then this is an opportunity to create a fresh new lead. If you are quick enough to take the customer’s email address and other valuable data, you are filling up your pipeline. An easy way to gather this data is to offer sending a paper catalogue, or an email information, or both.

4. You have their phone number

When you collect leads online, you are not always likely to get a legitimate phone number as people are afraid that you will call them. Make sure the number they are calling from is recorded. If you are using an online calling system like Skype for Business or Dialpad, you can easily have a record of the last call. Still, always ask them to dictate you a call back number. It is likely that the number they are calling from is their own, but if you ask you might get an additional office or cell phone which was not showing on your screen when they called.

            How to get more people to call your business?

There are many ways to generate calls and some of them have been out for a while – giving business cards, sharing your number on your website, brick and mortar store, any brochures and catalogues, newspaper ads, etc.

There is another way which is becoming more and more important – with Google AdWords ads. Because these ads are appearing when people are searching for a solution they are just the right solution to get inbound calls directly from the internet.

There are several ways you can use Google AdWords to generate inbound calls for your business. They are relevant for different types of services and business needs.

Calling extensions

Calling extensions are one of the easiest ways to make people call your business from ads. Like other ad extensions like location, sitelinks, prices and promotions, calling extensions actually help your Ad Rank and improve the click-through rate. Your ad looks bigger and is more likely to be selected to appear on the top of the search.

To create a calling extension, you just must have a phone number. To add the phone number simply go to Ads and Extensions in the new interface, click on Extensio

ns and then the + sign. Select Call extensions and enter the phone number. You can choose if the extension appears only on mobile. Also like all other ad extensions, you can add it to your campaign or ad group. Beware that if you have two different numbers on campaign and ad group level, the ad group number will be selected to show.

Sometimes the system might add a calling extension to your ad without you creating it, by taking the contact number from your Location on Google Maps and adding it to your ad. This can happen only if you are using Location ad extensions tied to your Google My Business Account.

Your calling extension will not always appear on the ad. Generally, every time your ad is selected to show, it is displayed with a different group of extensions. This depends on the position you have won, the device the user is searching on and sometimes the type of search. Google AdWords is using artificial intelligence to determine they type of information people are trying to get to show them the most relevant paid results on top of the search.

When people see your ad with a calling extension on a mobile device they can click directly on the ad and dial the number. If they see it on desktop, click on it and type in the phone number on their mobile device, Google AdWords will still be able to attribute the phone call to this search and count it as a conversion.

Measuring  conversions

If you would like to collect data about the results of your calls you will have to create a special conversion type in your account. Also, when creating a call extension you must tick the box that you want to measure results and track the calls. To make a Calls from ads type of conversion go to the little wrench sign on the top right corner of the screen and select Conversions, from the Measurement section.

Then select new conversion which should be Calls from ads type. In the settings you can decide the conversion window, or how long after the click occurred you want Google to attribute a conversion to the extension. Also, you can decide phone call length minimum you want count as a conversion.

When you want to see how your call extensions are performing, you can go on campaign, ad group, keyword level and add a column called Phone calls. You also get metrics like PTR, or phone-through rate. This is the ration between the time s your ad was displayed with the call extension and the times users clicked on it.

If you are using a Customer Relationship Management system or CRM, you can track the results from the inbound calls in detail. One way to make sure you get accurate conversion number in Google AdWords is to import the conversion which happened by inbound calls. You can do this by creating an Excel file with the telephone numbers of people who called, the phone call starting time and the conversions time, value and currency. Then the system can match how many of these respond to the calls detected from your ads. You can determine also how many of these should be counted as actual conversions. In some cases you might get phone calls which have nothing to do with business.

Call ads

Where call extensions ad just an extra part of your Expanded text ad, there is an ad type which entirely designed for calls.

To create a call ad, go to Ads and Extensions and click the + button. Then choose a Call ad and you can start writing it.  A call ad is typically one headline with the phone number, a business name and two lines of description.

A call ad is typically used by services which require urgency like home repairs, for examples. The ads have no landing page or final URL. They appear only on mobile and a click on such ad is always a call. These are great, if you are offering a service which can solve an urgent problem, like a boiler failure. You can experiment with call ads by creating a promotion hotline, for example.

About me: I am an experienced digital marketing professional who started her career at Google as a digital marketing consultant for over 100 SMEs. Get a FREE e-book . I am a blogger and Udemy teacher with more than 2,700 students enrolled in my online course. Follow on Instagram and Twitter @odolena