Phone Numbers in AdWords

[abbottsys]

I'm about to start another test - this time I'm looking at the whole area of using phone numbers in AdWords Ads. But, before I get started I just wondered what kind of experience folks have had. If you've used phone numbers in AdWords ads please share your experience.

[B-Double-U]

I do this all of the time

We have several different ad variants that we create. Some take off like wildfire and have set new directions for our organic SEO foundations. Others, sound good on paper, but end up doing nothing.

I can tell you that the phone numbers do work (for us) to convert the sale very well, unfortunately, they don't get the clickthrough that goog needs to see in order to maintain the placement. So, they tend to have a very finite lifespan.

They tend to have a sporadic footprint from what I have seen.

The ones that hold their ground and keep high placement and don't get dropped are the ones that have one of the following:

1.)Decent call to action

2.)Enticing or truncated message with an ellipse

3.)Have an incentive (coupon code, discount or other offer)

I have made some very specific initiatives, SEO wise, based on my own personal findings from this very same experiment.

[abbottsys]

Thanks, very interesting feedback B-Double-U.
Do you also track your AdWords phone numbers to get stats?

[B-Double-U]

For the most part, no

We did do it for 2 campaigns. One was a lead generation campaign with its own phone number for an outside company where we were paid per conversion, so we thought it would be easy enough to skip the landing page altogether and get them into the very capable hands of the sales staff. It worked to generate calls, unfortunately we could only go off of the number of conversion that they told us, since they were an outside group. The conversion percentage dropped like a rock, but the actual total number rose.

The other one, where we did bring them in directly to our call center, was such a small campaign that it was difficult to gather any meaningful data. It only generated approx. 5 calls a day.

I guess if you do look at the fact that it did generate the calls, then it was worth the run, but the conversions killed it. So the campaign itself was a success, just the outcome was poor.

Does that make sense?

[abbottsys]

Yes, makes sense.

I'll be doing tests for the next few weeks, in preparation for a production campaign that will use phone numbers in AdWords ads.

I plan to use a slew of national toll-free tracking numbers from a tracking company, so I can get "AdWords like" stats on my phone responses.

Of course, my favorite thing about phone numbers so far is on the iPhone, where the OS automatically converts an AdWords phone number into a "click to call" live link.

[B-Double-U]

just got myself the 16Gb last week

[Mel66]

We have done this for a few of our clients whose product / service requires a more consultative sale, and/or is a high-ticket item. It works - sort of. The issues generally are that ads with the phone number get a lower CTR and conversion rate (online) than ads without - obviously, since many conversions take place offline. IMHO, using a unique phone number and somehow tracking phone conversions is imperative in order to gauge the ROI of doing so. Unfortunately, most of our clients for whom we are doing this are not that sophisticated, so it's hard to judge definitively whether it's working, and what the cost/conversion is.

But, it can work in the right situation, and abbotsys, I'm guessing yours is the right situation. If anyone can do it, you can.

[abbottsys]

Originally Posted by Mel66

....But, it can work in the right situation, and abbotsys, I'm guessing yours is the right situation. If anyone can do it, you can.

Thanks Mel.
I've tried it for one of my consulting clients and it worked. I used call tracking from CallSource. However, this client is a local retail outfit, and my day job is a whole other story - a national speciality healthcare company.

So, I plan to run a test campaign using national toll-free telephone numbers that are fully tracked. I'll publish the results here as usual.

[searchengineman]

We use phone numbers all the time. We deal with several limo companies nation wide. It's all about phone numbers period. They are the canary birds of AdWords. Our tracking system is simple, they call us and whine (Tweet-Tweet) about no business, or they don't call us (success!). These guys live by the phone, day to day.

Regarding the iPhone autoconnect feature. You would think ADWORDS would include a phone number option for regular listings. Similar to the Local Business Ads/Google Maps option below the ADS.

It is currently a waste of space for that extra phone number in the banner (MSN won't even allow numbers, yuck). Not to mention the chances of your number being added to some telemarketer list, increases significantly.

The advantage for Google would be a no brainer, being able to track who is actually calling, or wants to make a call, to prevent CTR stagnation, and measure this.

2 cents
Searchengineman

[Discovery]

Create an adgroup.
Create two ads, one with a phone number ad and one without.
Pause the phone number ad.

Work the non phone number ad until it achieves a high CTR
Now unpause the phone number ad and pause the text ad. Monitor performance and when the placement falls below an acceptable rank, change it back to the higher CTR ad. Repeat as necessary.

Or

Target a social network with the same kind of strategy, but since CTR is not relevant on content networks you are playing with the impressions. Again use two ads, one with a poor call to action and one with the phone number.

Use a high CPC bid initially using a poor call to action ad as to reduce clicks at the high CPC rate and as soon as you start achieving high impression rates jerk the table cloth out from under the campaign by switching to a very low cpc and replace the ad with the phone number call to action. Watch impressions until they drop, bid back up.

Of course this is all theory, we would never do this ourselves AWR.

Discovery

[abbottsys]

Great feedback Discovery and searchengineman, especially on the creative ways to avoid CTR stagnation with phone# ads.

Of course, the real solution would be for AdWords to support phone# tracking. Seems to me Google will have to address this soon, since they are losing revenue on phone# ads. And this will become an even bigger issue as more ads show up on 3G mobile devices.