We’ve had a difficult time tracking phone calls generated from Adwords campaigns. Google Voice made this a bit easier, because we could simply setup the number & forward it to the main line without having to go through many hoops. Then, we could use this Google Voice number in our Adwords Ads, & count the calls at week’s end. Not ideal, but better than nothing to be sure. We’ve even tried setting up an entirely separate websites, just for Adwords campaigns! Alas, that isn’t much better either…
The problem is, most website visitors aren’t usually going to purchase on their first visit. They just can’t all be expected to hit your landing page & follow your conversion funnel all the way through. They will likely take note of what interest them, & do some more searches to investigate, compare & learn. While the advent of Multi-Channel Tracking in Google Analytics is certainly helpful, what happens when potential buyers click your ad, like what they see, & come back by searching your brand name next week to get your phone number & call?
After some time searching & testing for a solution, we decided to just build exactly what we needed, a WordPress plugin that will display different phone numbers for Adwords visitors (even if they leave & come back)…
The Google Adwords Call Tracking Plugin works by setting a cookie if a visitor has come to your website from an Adwords Campaign. Each time the visitor comes back to your website, your Adwords phone number will still be shown if the cookie has not expired. In addition, you can set the cookie to expire (in seconds) from when the user either first or last visited your website.
Please note, you’re Adwords Campaign MUST have auto tagging enabled for this plugin to work, because it sets the cookie once it detects the gclid parameter in the url of a page being loaded.
To use the plugin, simply enter the shortcode [adwords_phone] (in place of a phone number) anywhere throughout your content in wordpress pages, posts or widgets. (If you want to use shortcode in widgets, you must first enable the use of shortcodes for widgets in functions.php.)
Also, developers can use the custom php function adwords_phone($adwords_number, $regular_number) in theme files. ($adwords_number & $regular_number are the contents to be displayed (or actions to be taken) if the cookie is not expired.) This is especially useful if for example, you display phone numbers with images instead of text.
If you have any questions, suggestions or just have nice things to say… please email us at info@scientificroi.org.
