Determine if driving calls is your most valuable goal

This advanced guide to call ads and call assets will cover all of the ways to drive phone calls to your business and optimize them for success.

Optimizing call ads and call assets

Some people want to talk to a real person when they’re looking for information. That’s why online advertising is about more than just your website, especially with on-the-go consumers. A customer’s interaction with you can be carried out across different channels: online, in your store or over the phone. For many advertisers, calls are the most important channel to use when connecting with customers.

You can use Google Ads to make it easy for your customers to find and call your business. This guide will cover all of the ways to drive phone calls to your business and optimize them for success.

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As you get started driving calls, you'll need to decide what your focus is going to be.

Decide if you want to prioritize driving clicks to your website or calls to your business

Answer this question by thinking about the value of calls in relation to the value of clicks. If a call’s relative value is high enough, you may choose to focus on driving calls. If you’re still working to develop your mobile web experience, call campaigns could be more effective than your landing pages.

Call ads do exactly what their name suggests: get people to call your business. Take advantage of the optional “Visit website” link in your call ad to also give people the chance to learn more about your business from your site. The campaign setup for call ads is quick and straightforward.

Call ad using optional “Visit website” link

Do it now: Create a new call campaign

Alternatively, if you prioritize clicks to your site more than calls, call assets give users the option to call you while your headline takes them to your website as the primary call-to-action.

Text ad using call assets

Here are a few questions that you can ask yourself as you pick the right option for your business:

• Can people transact on your mobile site easily?
• Do you offer anything with a high sense of urgency (or complexity) where users will benefit from getting answers directly from another person as soon as possible?
• Are there significant differences in average order value between a click and a call, including the value of upselling over the phone?
• How about conversion rates? If you get someone on the phone how much more likely are they to become a customer?
• How much does it cost you to answer a phone call compared to handling a conversion on your site?

 

While calls often convert at greater rates and drive higher average order values than clicks, this doesn’t have to be an either-or setup for your account. Call ads are set up at the campaign level, so you can experiment switching from call assets to call ads for certain campaigns to see what works best.

If you opt for call ads, consider setting them up in their own campaigns. Call campaigns might require different campaign settings compared to other online campaigns you’re running, whether it be language, budget, and time of day.

You may end up discovering that you only want calls for certain campaigns, but that you want to drive clicks as well for others. Take what you already know about your business as a starting point, then keep an open mind as you start generating calls. You’ll have the flexibility to change course if you learn anything new.