Websites with prominent ‘Call us’ banners or buttons are able to get a lot more data about their marketing programmes by using call tracking software. The data from these systems integrates with Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and nicely supplements the marketing performance data made available by Google Analytics.

Definition of Call Tracking

Call tracking refers to tracking leads or sales resulting from a phone call, but there is more to it than that. First, there is data from the phone call itself – the duration of the call and the number called from (which also tells you whether this is a first time caller or a repeat call). Then there is data collected by the call taker – in a call centre scenario, the agent might record the outcome of the call. Some call tracking software makes it easy to record a call outcome when the call taker is not sitting at a computer, for example by pressing a phone key at the conclusion of the call.

The part of call tracking that seems a bit like magic is its ability to record the source of the website visit where the caller saw the phone number and made the call. This enables attribution of phone calls to the correct marketing channel, and by extension, attribution of phone call outcomes to marketing channels. This is pretty valuable information to a marketer, especially when phone calls are where sales are made or leads are qualified.

Benefits of Call Tracking

Accurate attribution and conversion tracking

Phone call tracking provides accurate attribution of phone calls to the correct digital marketing channel, traffic source, or keyword.

It helps to track conversions resulting from phone calls and optimise marketing campaigns accordingly. If a particular touchpoint consistently leads to successful phone conversions, you can allocate more resources to that area. Conversely, if certain campaigns or keywords lead to calls that rarely convert, you can adjust your approach to improve efficiency.

Enhanced customer journey insights

Phone call tracking combined with Google Analytics 4 provides insights into the customer journey, including the touchpoints that occurred before and during a conversion. Assume your conversion happens on the call and this is tracked. When the call tracking software is linked to GA4 (more on that later), this conversion will be tracked by GA4. Now, GA4 can report attribution for that phone call conversion, including the multiple touchpoints shown in the Attribution Paths report. For instance, the Attribution Paths report might reveal that a customer first came to your website through a social media ad, then organic search, and finally called your business. By mapping out these interactions, you can identify the most influential touchpoints and refine your strategies to guide more customers down this same path.

Opportunity to improve phone call experience

You can use call tracking data to pinpoint areas for improvement in the phone call experience itself. Are customers facing long hold times? Is the initial interaction with your automated system or call handler leaving a positive impression? By examining call recordings and durations, you can identify pain points and areas where the customer experience can be enhanced. For example, if you discover that many calls drop off during the initial greeting, it may be time to revise your script or invest in additional training for your staff.

How do these solutions track phone calls?

Call tracking software works by dynamically replacing the phone number on your website with one of a series of phone numbers assigned by the call tracking software. The pool of phone numbers is sufficient that a call can be associated with a website visit, even if the call is made later. Hence each call can be associated with detailed session data, including source/medium, campaign and keyword used.

This is not the only mechanism. Some phone call tracking software uses a much one phone number per marketing channel or per campaign. This allows you to attribute phone calls to channels or campaigns, but not down to the granularity of keywords.

Set up call tracking and Google Analytics 4

Creating tracking numbers and adding them to your website

Deploying call tracking on your website involves embedding a small snippet of code. You could add this code in your website builder or you could deploy it with Google Tag Manager (GTM). Using GTM provides flexibility – for example, I have seen call tracking deployed only for visits that come from paid search. If an organisation received calls at multiple locations, the call tracking software can be set up so that each location has its own set of dynamic numbers.

Once the unique tracking numbers are in place, they do more than just route calls to your business. They act as data collection points, recording vital information about each call. This includes the caller’s phone number, phone call duration, and call outcome, among other metrics. For instance, you can see whether a call was answered, missed, or went to voicemail, and even delve into call recordings if your software supports it. This data is then compiled into comprehensive reports, offering a granular view of your call interactions

By analysing this data, you can gain insights into customer behaviour, such as peak calling times, common inquiries, and the effectiveness of your call handling. Importantly, you can attribute calls back to specific marketing efforts, allowing you to assess the performance of your campaigns more accurately. For example, if a particular Google Ads campaign is driving a significant number of high-quality calls, you can allocate more budget to that campaign. Conversely, if another source is underperforming, you can investigate further and make necessary adjustments.

Linking call tracking with GA4

Linking phone call tracking software with Google Analytics 4 is usually pretty simple. It typically involves:

  • Adding your GA4 Measurement ID to your call tracking software. Your Measurement ID can be found in GA4’s Admin area, under Data Streams, then click on your website data stream to reveal the Measurement ID.

  • Creating an API Secret in GA4 and entering this in your call tracking software. The API secret can be generated GA4’s Admin area. Still in Data Streams, scroll down to ‘Measurement Protocol API Secrets’ and create a new one. Name it to reflect the intended use, as you may end up with more than one of these.

  • You might have to choose which events are sent to GA4 (or specify conditions such as call duration or call score) and choose the parameters to be sent with the event.

  • You will need to create custom dimensions and custom metrics in GA4 to receive the new data fields. Your call tracking software documentation will tell you the event names that will be sent to GA4 and the associated fields. Some of these will be dimensions (data that categorises) and some will be metrics (data that counts). You will need to add these as custom dimensions and custom metrics in GA4’s Admin area, under Data Display > Custom Definitions.

Marking phone call events as key events (aka conversions) in GA4

Marking phone call events as key events in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) makes it easier to measure the true effectiveness of your marketing programs. But be aware, not all phone call events should be marked as key events in GA4. You will need to think about what defines a key event resulting from a phone call.

Your call tracking software probably supports categorisation of phone calls and recording of outcomes. It might be that, for you, a conversion is a call where a lead was qualified or a sale was made. This will vary from business to business.

If these come to GA4 as distinct events, you can toggle them on as key events in the Administration area, under Data Display > Events.

If they do not come to GA4 as distinct events, you can use the ‘Create event’ function in GA4 to trigger a new event when an event meets certain conditions. For example, you could create a new event ‘lead_from_call’ with these conditions: ‘event name is call_tracking’ and ‘outcome is qualified_lead’ (in this example, ‘outcome’ is a custom dimension sent with the ‘call_tracking’ event). Then you would mark the event ‘lead_from_call’ as a conversion.

Marking some phone call events as key events allows for better understanding of the marketing channel, traffic source, or campaign that drove them. You will see this in GA4’s Acquisition reports or Attribution Path reports. These reports allow you to select channel group, source, medium or campaign as a dimension, and you can filter ‘key events’ to show just the call tracking-related events.

Once you have set up the end-to-end system, it is a good idea to make a few test phone calls. It is best to do this using a test script, so that you have a record of exactly what you did. The next day, you will be able to check in GA4 to see that the test call data was reported as expected.

Analysing data from phone calls in GA4 reports

My advice is to set up some reports in GA4’s Explore area. Most of the juicy data generated by your call tracking software will be in custom dimensions and custom metrics, and these are not in the standard GA4 reports.

In Explore, you will be able to set up custom reports that provide insights into phone call data. Even better, if you are comfortable using Looker Studio, you could create a GA4 data source in Looker and you will be able to build reports there, as GA4’s custom dimensions and metrics are available there.

Depending on your solution, the data could dive deep into each interaction. You can find out how long each call lasted, giving you a sense of customer engagement and satisfaction. Knowing the outcome of these calls, whether they resulted in a sale, a follow-up appointment, or a lost lead, adds another layer of understanding. This granular level of detail helps you assess the effectiveness of your phone support and sales teams.

This data can be used to optimize marketing campaigns and improve the phone call experience.

Calculating phone call ROI

Phone call ROI can be calculated by dividing the revenue generated from phone calls by the cost of generating those phone calls. Calculating phone call ROI involves inputs and a formula: take the total value generated from phone calls (it could be revenue or it could be an assigned value, if considering a non-revenue conversion) and divide it by the total cost incurred to generate those calls. This cost could include advertising expenses, the salaries of the staff handling the calls, and any technology or infrastructure costs. For example, if your marketing leads to $10,000 in sales from phone calls and the cost to generate those calls is $2,000, your ROI would be 5. This means for every dollar spent, you’re making five dollars back, an of the efficiency of your investment.

This metric helps to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and optimise them accordingly.

By continually monitoring and adjusting based on ROI, you ensure that your marketing is always geared towards maximum profitability.

Creating targeted audiences in GA4 based on call conversions

Setting up targeted audiences in Google Analytics based on call conversions can significantly enhance the precision of your marketing campaigns.

GA4’s Audiences feature allows you to create groups of website visitors that reflect users who have converted through phone calls. These custom audiences can then be used in Google Ads or other platforms to ensure your ads reach people who have demonstrated a genuine interest in your offerings.

GA4 Audiences can also be used as a filter in Looker Studio reports, allowing you to compare specific sets of users with all users.

Advanced call tracking strategies

Tracking phone leads from offline marketing (e.g., billboard, radio)

Unique tracking numbers can be used to track phone leads from offline marketing channels, such as billboard, radio and TV ads.

When you use distinct numbers for your billboards, radio spots, and TV ads, you can easily identify which channel is driving the most phone leads. These unique tracking numbers can be set up through call tracking software, which logs each incoming call along with the associated number.

When you know exactly which channel generated each phone lead, you can make more informed decisions about where to allocate your budget. By attributing phone calls accurately, you ensure that your offline marketing strategies are as data-driven and optimised as your online strategies.

Integrating call tracking with ads platforms

Call tracking can be integrated with ads platforms so that call tracking conversions can be used to optimise advertising campaigns.

We have already seen how call tracking software integrates with GA4. So, one way you can see these same conversions in your Google Ads account is to import them from GA4.

Other ways that integrations are done vary with each vendor:

  • direct integration between call tracking platform and ad platform.

  • download conversions from call tracking platform and upload to ad platforms as offline conversions.

  • call tracking platform integrates with a workflow automation tools, such as Zapier, with which you can transfer data to other platforms.

This type of integration allows you to track which ads, keywords, and campaigns are driving phone calls, providing a comprehensive view of your customer journey. Additionally, the ad platform receives a feedback loop of data, telling it which ad clicks resulted in conversions. With this, the algorithm can continually optimise the delivery of ads.

Don’t confuse call tracking software with Google Ads’ tracking of calls to a phone number on your website

Google Ads has a conversion type that tracks calls made to a phone number on your website, but don’t confuse this with call tracking software.

It still uses dynamic phone number generation, and uses this to associate a click on a Google Ad with a specific phone call. In this case, phone number replacement only happens when someone comes to your website from a click on a Google Ad.

Phone calls from these ads, when they exceed a specified duration, count as a conversion. This feeds the algorithm and helps Google to target ads to the right people. The account owner is also able to see which campaigns performed to achieve these conversions.

In contrast to call tracking software, no data is collected from the phone call – no duration, no outcome. You don’t pay anything for this – it is a feature available with Google Ads.

To set up a Google Ads call conversion, you first create the conversion within the Ads account, choosing ‘Phone calls’ and then ‘Calls to a phone umber on your website’. You will be asked to specify the displayed phone number you want replaced, the termination number, and the call duration threshold. A conversion ID and conversion label will be generated. You then use these to create a conversion tag in Google Tag manager, using the tag type ‘Google Ads Call from Website Conversion’.

Examples of business use cases

In practice, businesses that track phone calls will integrate this into broader business processes in slightly different ways. Here are some examples that I have encountered:

Furniture shop

This furniture store has a shop location and an online store, selling specialty furniture. Shoppers are encouraged to call and discuss their specific needs. People come to the website from Google Ads, social media and organic search, and often they use the displayed phone number to call the business.

Call tracking is used to determine what marketing channels and specifically which ad campaigns are leading to phone calls. It is also used to keep an eye on the percentage of calls that are either not answered or abandoned, which helps with planning staffing levels.

Residential care provider

This residential care provider uses call a tracking solution with IVR both for directing calls and tracking call outcomes. Callers interested in finding out about care options are directed to a call centre. Paid search ads are used extensively to bring traffic for locations with capacity, and then the website encourages people to call. The call centre operators record an outcome of each call, allowing the effectiveness of the ads in driving qualified leads.

Tech vendor

This business uses call tracking to optimise paid advertising. Google’s Performance Max campaigns are particularly dependent on data being fed back to the algorithm, to continually optimise the delivery of ads. Integrating call tracking with Google Ads is part of this set-up.

Challenges of phone call tracking

Surprise – technology alone is never a solution to a business problem! You need to make sure that the technology is a good fit for your business and you need to build processes around it. These are some of the challenges:

  • The most valuable data (outcome of call) is usually dependent on the call taker recording that outcome. For this, you need to plan how outcomes should be recorded when the software is implemented, and provide documentation and training for staff.

  • Staff taking calls need to be trained in the use of the technology.

  • Call tracking software costs money, so organisations need to make a financial commitment before seeing the value. The Google Ads call tracking described above is free, but it exists to serve Google Ads, not the broader goals of call tracking.

  • With respect to Google Analytics and call tracking, standard GA4 reports are not sufficient for reporting (see above, ‘Analysing data from phone calls in GA4 reports’). You will need to invest in additional reporting to get the most out of the data.

  • You can track calls, but the data is only valuable if you act on it.

Call Tracking solution brands

There are dozens of solutions that allow you to track phone calls. Some that are popular in Australia and New Zealand include Delacon, Avanser and Wildjar.

According to Builtwith.com (August 24), Delacon is the second most-used (by installed sites) call tracking solution in Australia, after Google, and the most used in NZ. Avanser is the fourth most used in Australia, and second most used in New Zealand.

Big names like CallRail and CallTrackingMetrics are also popular.

Conclusion

Where inbound calls are part of the business model, businesses should track phone calls.

By analysing this phone call data, marketing teams can identify which campaigns drive high quality phone calls. For instance, if a particular ad leads to longer, more fruitful conversations, it’s a sign that the messaging resonates well with the target audience. This insight allows you to allocate budget more effectively, focusing on strategies that yield the best results. Additionally, understanding call outcomes can highlight areas for improvement in customer service training, ensuring that every call is a positive experience for the customer.

As with any kind of analytics, you will only get business outcomes if you use the data to take action.