Sudheer Kiran

Sudheer Kiran

Marketer, Musician, and Philanthropist

AdWords Call-Only Campaigns To Drive More Mobile Calls

According to Google, around 70% of mobile searchers call a business directly from search results. This makes sense to create and target customers using a new type of ads highlighting phone numbers. So, Google has upgraded its AdWords campaign types with a new option called call-only campaigns.

Google AdWords call-only campaigns allows advertisers to reach customers by showing their phone number, business description, and call button. These campaigns are phone call conversion only campaigns. This option is very helpful for advertisers who only seek calls as leads.

Google AdWords call-only campaigns

Call-only Ad Structure: The headline displays as the phone number, while the display URL simply serves as branding and lets users know what business they’re calling. So a click on a cell phone never went to the site, it just went to a call

Who Is This For?

There are many advertisers who seek only phone calls as conversions. For example, businesses like a plumber, a lawyer and a hair stylist seek phone calls as their primary goal for setting appointment. And these call-only ads will be useful for advertisers that value calls over web visits as well as for those that don’t yet have mobile-friendly landing pages.

And let’s not forget about eCommerce businesses that take orders over the phone. Whereas your Google Shopping campaigns push consumers to the site and then they have to call, now they can call directly from your ad and reduce the number of steps.

How-To Set- up?

We have the option of setting up a Call-only campaign or adding call-only ads to existing campaigns in Google AdWords.

1. Call-only Campaign:

You can now create a campaign that completely targets mobile devices wherever the call-to-action or conversion event could be a phone call. Here is what it looks like in the interface if you’re creating a new campaign.

AdWords Call-only Campaigns

2. Call-Only Ad within Existing Search Network Campaign type:

Call-only ads can be added to existing search network campaigns as well. In the ad setup, you can include two description lines of ad copy and the display URL and opt to report calls from ads as phone call conversions.

To create a Call-Only ad you need to submit your Business name, Phone Number, 2 lines of descriptive text, a display URL and an optional verification URL.  This is what Google has to say about the Verification URL.

AdWords Call-Only Campaigns

“Verification URL is the address of a webpage on your domain that contains your phone number.  How this works: This URL is optional, but we can use it to verify that the phone number you enter for your ads matches the one for your business.  The domain for this URL must match the domain of your display URL.”

The options for using your own number or a Google forwarding number are available, as is with call extensions, as well as the option to count calls as conversions.

3. Using Phone Ad Extension by Duplicating the Existing Campaign and Change the campaign type to Call-only campaign:

If you’re currently using call extensions to create call-only ads and want to move them over to a Call-only campaign, you can duplicate a campaign or change the campaign type to Call-only, but you’ll have to remove your existing ads and set up new Call-only ads either way.

Potential Pitfalls

  1. Call extensions will be eliminated by Google in June of this year.
  2. Many advertisers that are now utilizing call-only campaigns and they’re seeing extremely long wait times for the campaigns to clear Google’s editorial approval.
  3. Google will need to “verify” your number. During the ad creation process you provide a verification URL that has to display the phone number that you’re submitting with your ad. This could be a problem if you’re having multiple phone numbers on you website and want to track all phone calls.

Note: As well as displaying a phone number and call button, call-only ads can also be customized with options such as “speak to a specialist today,” or “call to make an appointment.”

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