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One of the questions I hear business executives ask often is “how do I track incoming calls from my online campaigns”?  And, it gets better: “…how can I see a simple dashboard report of those calls that turned into real business (i.e. closed business)”?

Essentially, when a visitor reacts to an ad, and enters a website landing page,  it often requires a keyboard input (form fields). Those are easy to track with conversion code/script.

But, inbound phone call activity from a toll free or local phone number shown in the TITLE tag of a page (shown in natural search engine results pages), inside a (landinge) page, or directly from an ad is tough. It’s “more difficult” to track that incoming call and attribute it to your online campaigns.

And, if you have a larger scale, say a company with a large franchise office network of local shops,  you have a bigger challenge than a solopreneur. Still, they both could benefit from recent innovations in web to call tracking.

There are several companies out there, but what is Google doing about it?

Companies like Mongoose and Liveperson have solutions that can help. You also have Clickpath and ClickToCall as additional technologies that may fit the bill for you. Their implementations are pretty seamless, and most cover a “front-to-back” tracking solution. However, for a small business, it may be too costly.

And, especially in the beginning of a campaign, or a startup – you just need effective tracking that can show if ads/keywords bring phone calls to your office. You may not care about the ‘conversion’ tracking piece and sophistication yet.

In the past, you had few solutions, but recently Google announced a new service, called the “Adwords Call Metrics” program.

“By cross-checking our call metrics reports with our sales records, we saw that half the people who called the toll free number in our ad purchased online but the other half purchased in a store. Before using call metrics, we determined our ROI just by looking at the online sales numbers. Now we have proof that online search ad campaigns drive in-store purchases.”

Google Voice is the technology. Call metrics assigns your adwords campaign a unique phone number which is automatically inserted into your ad on both desktop and high-end mobile devices, where the number is clickable.

Here, you can see an example of the phone number below the TITLE:

When a user calls the phone number in the ad, the call is automatically routed to your business. AdWords then makes a note that this call took place. So, when you look at your AdWords reporting, you’ll see the number of calls generated by each campaign, call duration. In the near future, you’ll also be able to see callers area code.

(This new product is not 100% rolled out yet)

Find more information here.

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Entrepreneur Magazine says Jon Rognerud is one of the most sought-after Digital Marketing Experts. His clients extend from high-end brands and middle-tier businesses in both B2B and B2C. His SEO website optimization book, "The Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Your Website" from Entrepreneur Press is in bookstores now.