Imagine the following scenario… You’re currently out and enjoying your weekend and you feel the sudden need to get a haircut. You aren’t familiar with the barbers in your current location, so you whip out your smart phone and type in Google, ‘Barber’ ‘Brisbane CBD’, and you’re presented with numerous options. You aren’t too fussed on price, but you don’t want to walk too far. You notice that the first listing doesn’t seem to be too far from where you are but before you call you want to check out the website, you know, just to see how ‘trendy’ they are. Their website design convinces you this is the type of barber you’re happy to go to, so you click on the phone number provided on the website and you’re instantly connected and you book an appointment.

In terms of tracking, the scenario above depicts a new and exciting feature that some of you may not have heard of yet. It’s named ‘Call Forwarding Extension’ and it was launched only a few months ago. Now most of you have probably heard of Call Extension, which allows you to see when a consumer calls your business from the phone number supplied in your Google ad by ‘clicking’ on it, or, if they called you from ‘seeing’ it on the ad.

Call Forwarding Extension takes this process one step further, and it’s this addition which makes this a sensational new feature you should be tapping in to. You will no longer just be tracking phone calls from your ads, but you’ll be tracking phone calls from your website! This will not impact on direct calls customers make from openly searching out your website. Instead, when someone visits your site through your google ad, they may not necessarily call you in that instance. The next time they visit your website, say 25 days after they initially visited your site via your Google ad, your website ‘remembers’ this, and will still provide the same phone number from your Google Ad, enabling you to track that conversion when they call. As you’re able to see the phone calls which are coming from people who are directly on your website, it gives you an overall sense of where your business is coming from via your online marketing strategy.

The data and statistics collected by this new feature offer details such as the duration of the call, what time the call started and ended, geographically where the call was made from, and whether or not the call was actually connected. For businesses which rely on consumers phoning in for new leads, the duration of one of these calls can also be a good indication of whether the call was converted into a sale. Therefore, phone calls which last for a specific amount of time can be counted as conversions.

Currently, tracking calls from ads is being severely underutilised. There is an older demographic out there who are mostly focused on using their own phone numbers, however, in doing so these people are missing out on informative tracking information.

Business owners can clearly see how such a tool would be beneficial for those who rely heavily on driving phone calls for business growth. Enabling this feature will allow you to better understand where your leads are coming from. Also, in terms of knowing where calls have been made from in a geographical sense, you can then use this information to target consumers via your online ads in that area. To learn more and to see how your business can benefit, ensure you register for our upcoming Optimise Webinar, which will launch on Wednesday 5th November and sign up today.