In the world of digital marketing, even small changes can have a profound impact on campaign results. One such change is the introduction of call tracking into Google Ads campaigns. In this case study, we’ll look at how implementing call tracking allowed us to significantly increase our Google Ads account conversion rate by 153% and the steps we took to achieve this impressive result.
1. Who call tracking can be useful for
Calltracking is a powerful tool that can be useful for a variety of businesses and organizations looking to improve the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns and optimize customer interaction.
In simple terms, call tracking helps you find out where calls to your company came from and which advertising sources played a role in bringing them in. This allows you to understand which advertising strategies are working best and make adjustments to get more successful transactions. It is especially valuable for
- Online stores: Online store owners can use call tracking to track conversions related to calls, call sources, and customer service quality. This is especially useful in the e-commerce industry, where every call can be a key step toward a purchase.
2. B2B services: For companies that provide services to other companies, call tracking helps track which channels and keywords are driving calls and inquiries to the website. This allows advertising strategies to be optimized and tailored to the needs of business clients.
3. Local businesses: For restaurants, clinics, beauty salons, and other local businesses, calls can be an important way to attract customers. Call tracking allows them to effectively evaluate the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns and allocate the budget most efficiently.
In the following sections of our case study, we’ll explain exactly how calltracking helped us increase our Google Ads Account conversion rate by 153% and what practical steps we took to achieve this impressive figure.
2. Why Google Ads is important to track conversions
Tracking conversions in Google Ads campaigns is a key element of a successful advertising strategy. It allows you to analyze in detail what actions users take after they see your ad. Here are a few reasons why it’s important:
1. Performance measurement: Without conversion tracking, it’s hard to know which campaigns, keywords, and ads are actually bringing you customers and revenue. Tracking allows you to determine where best to invest your advertising budget.
2. Campaign Optimization: By knowing which specific keywords or ad groups are driving more conversions, you can optimize your campaigns. You’ll be able to focus on the elements that really work and eliminate the ineffective ones.
3. Calculating ROI: Tracking conversions allows you to accurately determine the return on investment (ROI) of your advertising. This is important to know how successful your ad campaigns are in generating revenue versus cost.
4. Informed Decision Making: With conversion data, you can make informed decisions about budget, strategy, and campaign optimization.
In the following sections of our case study, we’ll explain exactly how call tracking helped us increase our Google Ads Account conversion rate by 153% and what practical steps we took to achieve this impressive figure.
3. What was done before the start of calltracking implementation
On the road to successfully implementing calltracking into Google Ads campaigns, we took a number of preparatory steps to ensure accurate and efficient conversion tracking. Here’s how we approached it:
1. Clearly articulate conversion goals: The initial step is to clearly define what actions on the users’ website will be considered conversions. We set goals that best matched our business needs. In our case, it was to increase the number of inbound calls. Such a goal yields the most targeted customers
2. Choosing the best call-tracking system: Depending on our needs, we chose a call tracking provider and integrated its events into Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager as well as the CRM system the customer was using. In this way, we tracked which ad campaign was getting better quality calls.
3. Tracking code development and installation: Based on the chosen system, we developed and successfully implemented the tracking code on the website. This code actively logged user actions and passed conversion information to Google Ads.
4. Synchronization of Google Analytics and Google Ads: We made sure that the Google Analytics account was integrated with the Google Ads account and with the IP Telephony service that provided the call tracking. Also, we imported new conversion events into the Ads account in advance and made them prioritized goals at the account level. This was done to ensure a smooth flow of conversion data between platforms in advance.
But even with this in-depth preparation, implementing call tracking into Google Ads campaigns had a profound impact on our advertising budget and its allocation. We expected that once Google saw an additional conversion event to optimize ad campaigns at the account level, it would lower the cost per conversion.
In practice, however, the results of the first few days of running ad campaigns together with calltracking were not what we expected. We even had to take emergency measures.
4. Results in the first days of implementation
In brief, we expected an increase in the number of conversions, which is natural, because we added an additional event to the optimization, which until now Google Ads did not pay attention to. We also expected slight fluctuations in the advertising budget expenditures, in the upward direction.
On the first day, there was an increase in daily spending within 30% of the previous period. With a simultaneous increase in conversions. The average daily Google Ads budget is 55-70 USD.
Dynamics of changes in advertising costs of the first days after calltracking implementation
We predicted such an increase in costs, up to 85 USD, so we decided not to interfere with the settings of advertising campaigns. But the next day the budget reached 95.7 USD, and our PPC specialist decided to proportionally reduce daily budgets of all Perfofmance Max by 25%.
But in spite of these actions, the next period showed the growth of daily expenses at the level of 123 USD. It was Saturday, a day off. But we understood that to stabilize the daily budget when connecting call tracking is the first priority. Therefore, the manager responsible for this project again reduced the average budgets by campaigns, but this time by 50%.
The next day, Sunday, showed that such tactics yield results. We managed to evenly distribute the budget load across all campaigns in Google Ads at 84.03 USD. However, the beginning of the working week brought a record-breaking 168.28 USD per day for the entire time of running Google Ads.
Dynamics of changes in advertising costs of the first week after call tracking implementation
It is worth noting – while increasing daily costs there was a significant increase in conversions, at a price lower by 26% than before the implementation of calltracking. If for the previous month, the average conversion price was 3.71 USD, then after the starting 4 days the cost decreased to 2.37 USD.
It was decided to reduce the daily budget of advertising campaigns with priority goods to 5.50 USD, and all other campaigns to 2.70 USD. In some campaigns, the reduction of budgets reached 90% compared to when we connected call tracking.
The very next day, it was already yielding results. We managed to reduce the daily budget load to the lowest values. At the same time, the effectiveness of advertising campaigns did not change.
The following conclusions were drawn from the results of the first days after the implementation of calltracking, as to how this tool affects the optimization of Google Ads:
Daily budget at the end of the first week after calltracking implementation
1. High priority: An event such as a call from a website is a priority event for Google Ads. A call from a customer by itself is an indication of interest in the product. This is a powerful trigger to further search for similar audiences.
2. Re-optimization: By importing a new conversion action, we gave Google Ads a new data stream of website visitors. Thus, forcing the algorithms to learn anew.
3. Budget allocation: As Google Ads campaigns started learning in a new way, this led to higher daily budgets. Especially in Performance Max and Google Shopping campaigns.
After lowering the daily limits of ad campaigns, Google started signalling that it was limited in budgets and recommended raising them. What should you do if your ad campaigns get a “Limited by budget” error, but don’t have a goal to raise daily spending?
The decision was made to gradually reduce the target price per conversion (CPA) of all campaigns. Until Google Ads stabilizes daily spending relative to our goals.
For a few more days after a significant decrease in daily budgets, we can see the volatility of the ad campaigns on the graph. However, daily adjustments to the CPA (target price per conversion) metrics helped stabilize both daily spending and the number of conversions.
5. How calltracking affected Google Ads conversions after a few weeks
In general, calltracking has positively influenced the dynamics of Google Ads for this online store. Let’s just compare the monthly results BEFORE and AFTER implementation.
Leading indicators of Google Ads BEFORE the introduction of call tracking:
- Click price: 0.06 USD
- Daily costs: 57.31 USD
- CTR: 2.62%
- Number of clicks: 23.7 thousand
- Number of conversions: 531
- Cost per conversion: 3.71 USD
Leading indicators of Google Ads AFTER implementation of call tracking:
Click price: 0.03 USD
Daily spend: 70.24 USD
CTR: 4.07%
Number of clicks: 53,991
Number of conversions: 1346
Cost per conversion: 1.52 USD
Now a brief analysis.
- Budget: At the very beginning of the implementation, due to the fact that the campaigns started to be re-trained, the costs turned out to be a bit higher than we expected. After stabilization works we reached the requirement from the client of 55-70 USD per day.
- Conversions: We planned to increase conversions. So it happened from an average monthly 530 conversions BEFORE implementation, we got 1300 AFTER. This is a 153% increase in just one month of work. But more interestingly, Google’s algorithms optimized the ads in such a way that the number of non-call-tracking conversion events (form filling, direct payment on the site, messenger, etc.) increased as well.
- Conversion cost: We counted on the decrease of this indicator. For the first month, we got a conversion price of 1.52 USD, which, if compared to 3.71 USD of the previous period is 51.47% less
- CTR and Cost-per-click: Call tracking also affected these critical metrics in Google Ads. CTR value increased more than 1.55 times, from 2.62% to 4.07%. At the same time, the price per click decreased from 0.06 to 0.03 USD. This is because the main part of the advertising budget was taken by Performance Max campaigns, in which a click is always lower than in the search campaign.
Conclusion: As a result, implementing call tracking in Google Ads campaigns allowed us to use our advertising budget more efficiently, achieving a 153% increase in conversions. The implementation process itself was accompanied by an increase in daily costs.
However, Leverage Pro PPC-specialists carried out a number of systematic works to stabilize advertising costs, as well as to evenly distribute the budget load across all advertising activities.
