How To Track Phone Calls In Google Analytics

What makes phone calls so important?

50 percent of marketers are said to use phone calls to convert website traffic into leads. On the other hand, 62 percent struggle to track phone call conversions.

Just like tracking website visitors and form fills, tracking phone calls is also equally important.

But fact is that most marketing reporting tools do not have solutions for call tracking. However, in Google Analytics, phone calls can be tracked.

Google Analytics as well know, helps to track website visits bounce rates, clicks, and overall visitor visits. Additionally, it also has the ability to track phone calls. This is made possible by its rich collection of features which makes it easy for it to track phone calls.

Aside from this, key data can also be obtained; data that can help to trim unnecessary expenditure and cut back on budget; and drive an increase in marketing strategy efficiency.

NOW, WHAT IS CALL TRACKING?

It is software that’s marketers use to trace, track, and record inbound phone calls to their company’s phone line.

With call tracking, marketers can

Track every call and lead that come from your website. This will help to ascertain what type of devices is used by prospects and from where they are calling.
Understand how many leads the company is generating via phone call. Aside from this, how they are linked to marketing touch-points.
Record important calls, and link calls into customer journeys.

All of these will help marketers to not only make better decisions, but also ascertain how to improve efficiency and earn revenue at a lower marketing budget.

However, Google Analytics can count only those phone calls when they reach a certain call duration figure. This means, you could be counting leads for customer service calls; sales calls; and spam calls, as well. This will make your conversion rates and associated metrics wrong and unreliable. Additionally, your cost for every conversion and return on investment will be erratic and skewed.

These aspects need to be taken into account when you report back your campaign’s effectiveness.

HOW PHONE CALLS CAN BE TRACKED IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS?

This can be done directly from paid advertising using Google’s own phone call conversion tracking tool.

For this to happen, you need to

Click the spanner icon found in the top right-hand corner of your page.
Select ‘CONVERSIONS’ under MEASUREMENT.
Select ‘CALLS FROM ADS’ using CALL EXTENSIONS or CALL-ONLY ADS. Then click ‘CONTINUE’.
Select ‘NEW CONVERSION’. Then choose ‘PHONE CALL’.
Select a conversion action in the GOAL Category Section. This will help you to segment your conversions in reports.
Name your CONVERSION. Then select a value (you can assign a set value to calls) OR select ‘Don’t Assign A Value’.
Select an option next to ‘COUNT’ – count every OR one conversion per ad. Herein, ‘One’ OR ‘Every Is Best For Sales’ is recommended by Google for leads.
Set your Call Length; Conversion Window; and ‘Attribution Model’. While Call Length refers to the minimum length a call needs to last to be counted as a conversion; Conversion Window gives you the liberty to select for how long you want to track conversions after an ad click. The Attribution Model allows you to select a set model type. In case you have enough data, then select data-driven.
Click ‘Create AND Continue’.
Set-up your conversion tracking tag. For this you will need to add code to your website. This will allow your Google Ads and Google Analytics account to talk to each other.

All of the above steps usually take a few hours to take place. The code also needs to start working and filtering calls as well.

Once all of the above steps are followed properly, you will be in a position to track your phone calls in Google Analytics.