Using Dynamic Phone Number Display for Conversion Tracking in Google Ads
If you are running Google Ads and aren’t tracking phone conversions well, you might be losing money. Even if you are making money, without proper tracking you won’t know precisely where to increase your ad spend.
Google Ads Conversion Tracking Options
Many people use one of the following options to track conversions.
Google’s Conversion Code. This is effective if you have prospects come to your website and complete a web form. The problem is if they want to call you, and you have just a standard contact phone number, you might not get info about which ad they clicked or what keyword triggered their ad, even if whoever answers the phone is able to extract the fact that they clicked a Google Ad… or was it a Facebook ad?
Google Tracking Phone Numbers. This works great if someone clicks to call from a mobile device or calls the tracking 
number displayed on the screen. The problem comes in if someone makes it to your website and calls the main phone number, similar to the first option.
Custom Phone Numbers on Landing Pages. This works if your prospect clicks the ad and calls the number on the page without doing any more research or checking out your other links on the site. But I know, you are not going to give them the option to click anywhere else, right? This means they will either do a Google search for your business, remove the characters after your domain name in the browser to go to your home page, or simply close the page and move on to the next Google Ad. In my experience, sometimes showing the full navigation on the landing page produces a better conversion rate because it allows people to do their research within the website, so make sure to test that as well.
What if there was a better way to track calls so you knew which campaign or ad group your prospects called from? Well, there is. (I am sure you saw that coming). I worked with a developer to create such a system. I can’t share the site due to confidentiality agreements, however, I can explain how it works.
Dynamic Tracking Phone Number Insertion
We added a tracking parameter for each specific campaign or ad group we wanted to track (i.e. http://www.yourdomain.com/?googlead=LA12) to the final URL in the Google Ad. Next, we added a cookie-based system (on the website) where depending on which parameter is shown in the URL, the site would show a specific tracking phone number in the header. Even better, we used a 365-day cookie so if the person returned to the website they would still see the specific tracking phone number.
Hopefully that makes sense, but if not, the end result is that you can assign a tracking phone number to a campaign or ad group and then use a tracking URL so that the website shows that phone number exclusively regardless of where the person navigates on your website.
If you have any questions or want to discuss setting something like this up for your site, please reach out to me.
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