Does Call-Tracking Move the Needle?

By: Adam Scott Riff, MediaWhiz GM of Search

Google has decided to move forward with its call tracking strategy making offline metrics available to AdWords advertisers. This is a significant shift from what has been Google’s staple, quantifying ad success by the number of clicks generated. The search engine giant should be commended for reevaluating its long practiced methodology in order to drive better results for advertisers. Tapping into call metrics can generate thousands of dollars in what would otherwise be lost revenue.

However, its implementation into Search campaigns is not new among online performance marketers. Today, most performance search marketers allocate unique tracking phone numbers at the search engine level or, at most, their highest volume keywords.  This is a strong advantage over search marketers or advertisers that don’t track any calls.  Having said that, it still leaves long-tail keywords, which can number in the thousands untracked.   The reason this happens is simple – a technology gap.  Most search marketing firms don’t have the tech to track tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of keywords by call.  The ones that are able to leverage keyword-level call tracking, like our Continuous Improvement Engine (CIE), have a tremendous advantage.  Having access to that degree of technological advancement and being able to track and optimize to that level of granularity allows the search marketer to bid for his client with more data than their client’s competitor.

What this also does is allow search professionals and their bidding technology to make decisions faster.  The system can optimize non-branded keyword bids more precisely and more rapidly creating efficiency, i.e. lowering CPA.  The lower your CPA is the more initiatives you can test and the faster you can grow.

With engine-level call-tracking, search professionals can move the needle.  With keyword-level call tracking, they can change the game.