The current lineup of mobile devices trump their predecessors in every category that counts. The most obvious area would be internet access. Many devices these days are capable of experiencing the web in all its glory, and this factor, coupled with the immense popularity of smartphones has opened up an abundance of opportunities for businesses. Thanks to rapid advances in advertising technology, the potential for profit is greater than ever.
Click to Call Functionality and Mobile Tracking
Google recently rolled out a new mobile metric for its AdWords advertising platform. It is essentially a feature that allows you to track calls made after a user clicks on your ad and arrives on your landing page. Thanks to this new metric, you can track any call a customer made through your website, which is becoming an increasingly popular practice thanks to the introduction of another advertising innovation Google recently gave us.
The new tracking feature in AdWords is a part of Google’s Click to Call program, which hence the name, enables potential customers to connect with businesses in a single click. It has been hugely successful since being introduced back in January of this year. To this date, Click to Call has been used by more than 500,000 marketers, who according to Google, are receiving millions of calls per month from consumers via mobile phone. Considering that these interactions are more direct, it is safe to say that the leads you are able to generate through this program are
more qualified and valuable than clicks.
Very few marketers these days will pay for advertising they can’t measure, but thanks to the new mobile metrics in AdWords, they can track Click to Call performance by campaign, keyword, or ad group. As an added bonus, Google has made the tracking process as simple as can be. Instead of generating an entirely new number, the feature allows you to track individual calls using your own phone number. This is all enabled by adding a snippet of code to the page from which the call can be made. For those invested in mobile advertising, particularly the AdWords Click to Call program, this new metric is equivalent to a marketing godsend.
Greater Opportunities in Mobile
Google’s Click to Call initiative is a sign that mobile is heading in the right direction as far as local businesses and marketers in general are concerned. People are using their smartphones to do just about everything. As AdWords has demonstrated, that also includes making calls from pages on the go. If you can’t invest in an advertising campaign, the very least you can do is create a simple, mobile-friendly website that prominently features your phone number.
For now, the mobile tracking feature in AdWords is completely free to use. Google is banking on it helping to drive more sales for the Click to Call program. Seeing that it is both effective in its own right and can be enhanced by a variety of existing Google advertising tools, there is a good chance the search giant will get its wish.
Rick Kane is an advocate for Benchmark email marketing provider best practices for permission-based email services.
