Call tracking is the process of determining how callers found your business. Marketing and sales teams can use call tracking data to measure the success of advertising campaigns and optimize future marketing strategies.

Call tracking in some form has existed since telephones were first invented and used for business. While it was rudimentary compared to current methods, businesses have been asking, “How did you hear about us?” to first time callers for a century.

By asking their customers how they discovered the company, business owners could attribute the client to specific actions or campaigns. Fast forward to today, and many businesses still use the “how did you hear about us?” method to determine what is driving the most calls and new customers.

Call tracking has evolved since the telephone was first used for businesses, though, and there are now more precise ways to determine how a lead got your business’s phone number with full featured lead tracking software.

• 12 Common Questions Marketers ask about Call Tracking Answered
• Why is Call Tracking Important?
• What is Call Tracking Software?
• What is CallRail Tracking?
• What Are Call Tracking Metrics?
• How do You Set up Call Tracking Metrics?
• What is Call Tracking System?
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• Free Call Tracking Numbers
• Call Tracking Definition
• Call Tracking Code
• Phone Call Tracking
• Call Tracking Numbers
• 5 Best Call Tracking Services
• Call Tracking Software India
• Global Call Tracking
• Free Call Tracking Software
• Cheapest Call Tracking Software
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12 Common Questions Marketers ask about Call Tracking Answered

Phone calls convert at 10x the rate of clicks, so it makes sense that many marketers spend a considerable portion of their budgets driving calls from paid search and social media.

Read Also: 10 Advantages of Social Media Marketing for Your Business

What doesn’t make sense is that the data available from phone calls are allowed to slip through the attribution and analytics trap that we’ve set up for everything else. This is basically like making a cheeseburger without a bun — while it can be done, it won’t be as good as it could be and it’s basically a waste of money. 

Call tracking and analytics platforms can address this attribution gap for marketers. The problem is that this critical piece of the martech stack is fairly new technology to a lot of marketers. Here are answers to the 12 most common questions marketers ask about call tracking to get you up to speed. 

What problem does call tracking solve? 

If your marketing strategy involves driving potential customers to the phone, you could be missing out on important attribution data as well as the best source of first-party customer data. While you have access to end-to-end customer journey data and attribution from purely digital campaigns, the data trail goes cold when your customer picks up the phone. 

Call tracking and analytics platforms allow you to close that data gap and gain an untapped source of customer and marketing attribution data.

Simply put, call tracking that’s designed for marketers allows you to get all of the same attribution data that you get for online interactions for actions that happen on the phone. This allows you to optimize your digital marketing to drive high-quality phone calls and increase your marketing ROI.

What kind of data does call tracking platforms capture from phone calls?

Call tracking platforms can capture data from both the callers’ digital journey and actions taken once on the phone. Note that the level of data granularity depends on the level of sophistication that your platform provides.

More advanced AI-powered platforms can automatically predict call outcomes (e.g. sale made) and provide attribution at the keyword level. These data include: 

Conversational analytics

• Call outcome (purchase made, application submitted, appointment made, quote given,etc.)
• Spoken keywords

Digital campaign data

• Source campaign
• Marketing channel
• Ad group
• Terms and keywords
• Partner IDs (Google Click ID, Adobe Marketing Cloud Visitor ID, etc.)

Contextual data

• Calling page
• Shopping cart activity

Call data

• Call start time
• Keypresses
• Call duration
• Caller ID
• Call recordings
• Repeat caller

How can a call tracking platform tie phone calls back to marketing efforts that drove them? 

Call tracking software enables marketers to tie customers’ digital journeys to phone calls using online data collection and unique, trackable phone numbers.

Some platforms will use a JavaScript tag that is placed on your website that automatically replaces standard, static phone numbers with trackable, dynamic phone numbers that are unique to each site visitor. These dynamic numbers act as a unique identifier for an individual’s website session.

When a person calls one of these dynamic phone numbers, the call is routed through the call tracking platform to your call center, local agent, or any other destination. This allows the platform to aggregate the digital data and tie the callers’ previous activity to the phone call.

This happens nearly instantaneously with no interruption to the caller experience. With this data, you can understand exactly which marketing tactics are driving your high-value phone calls. 

What can we do with this data?

With the granular call attribution data Invoca provides, you can optimize your marketing campaigns to drive more high-value calls, enhance the entire customer journey, and personalize the caller experience to increase conversion rates. Here’s how it works. 

Optimize your marketing

Call tracking platforms that can predict call outcomes not only give you visibility into the campaigns that are driving your calls, but provide a full picture of the outcome of every call. The result?

You can make smarter campaign optimization decisions — like what keywords you should be spending more money on — to drive more revenue-generating calls and more efficient campaigns. 

Enhance the customer journey

The customer journey doesn’t end after a phone call. You can use outcome data gathered from phone calls to enhance your other marketing tools and expand your reach to likely buyers.

By pushing call analytics into media platforms like Google Ads and Facebook, or DMPs like Adobe Audience Manager, marketers can create targetable audience segments to orchestrate the next action, or build lookalike audiences to reach new customers.

Personalize the caller experience

You can also use call tracking platforms to personalize the caller experience to increase conversion rates, enhance the customer experience, and ensure that call center agents are focusing on revenue-driving calls. Invoca customers have seen 10x increases in conversion rates by qualifying and routing calls based on factors like geolocation, time of call, product interest, shopping cart activity, and more.

Doesn’t showing a unique phone number to every website visitor require an enormous amount of phone numbers? 

No. Dynamic phone numbers are “recycled” in a predetermined amount of time after someone visits your site and does not call. Rather than assigning one number to only one visitor forever, you can create an attribution window that makes sense for your business.

For example, if you know that customers typically call within 30 minutes of visiting your page, you can safely reuse that uncalled number after 30 minutes, exposing it to a new site visitor.

Isn’t call tracking for the call center? Why should marketers care?

The kind of call tracking that marketers need is different than what you will find in the call center. Call centers typically focus on call quality metrics like call duration, hold times, call counts, etc. The data they collect is typically used to reduce call center costs, not to drive additional revenue.

They may track conversion data, but marketing usually has little, if any, access to this data and no way to attribute it to campaigns that may have driven the calls in the first place.

Call tracking that’s designed for marketers allows you to connect phone calls to advertising so you know what ad drove what call and what the results of that call were — AKA call attribution. For example, if you call a business that’s using Invoca’s call tracking platform, they can tell what ads, webpages, or keywords helped drive you to call.

And once you are on the phone, Invoca analyzes the language used in the call to tell if you bought anything, got a quote, made an appointment — or whatever your business considers a conversion. With this data, marketers can make their ads, web pages, social ads, and other advertising media more effective to acquire more high-value customers at a lower cost.

Okay, but the call center won’t want to rip and replace what they’re using for tracking calls.

If your call center has its own solution in place for counting calls, monitoring call quality, and measuring all the KPIs that are important to the department, then they don’t usually have to make any changes when the marketing team adopts a new call tracking solution.

It has no impact on the existing telephony system, and any tracking platforms that they are using can remain in place. If zero disruption to your call center operations is what’s desired, zero disruption is what you get. 

Where do calls placed to dynamic phone numbers go?

When a customer calls a dynamic phone number generated by a call tracking platform, it is routed to the existing destination phone number or call center of your choice. You’ll still use your existing phone system, and inbound calls will still be routed to them in the same way as they are without it.

The dynamic phone numbers are simply a proxy that appears on your website to enable the capture of the rich, session-level data, just like you get for clicks. 

How can I access call tracking data?

When you add a call tracking platform to your martech stack, you shouldn’t be adding yet another dashboard. Look for a call tracking solution that can pass data in real time to whatever platforms you already live in like Google Ads, Google Analytics, Salesforce or Adobe Experience Cloud. You can also access and view call data directly in the platform’s dashboards and reports.

How does call tracking work with paid search? 

Paid search optimization is one of the primary use cases for call tracking in marketing. For marketers who manage paid search strategy in Google Ads, you can get closed-loop attribution for phone calls and conversions driven by your paid search and display spend through integrations with Google and other ad platforms.

This is accomplished by capturing data about the digital journey, like marketing campaign and ad creative, and tying that data to phone calls. When a call is placed, Invoca captures identifiers like the Google Click ID, enabling you to report individual call events and conversions to Google Ads.

Platforms with native integrations offer the most reliable and precise method to get keyword visibility for mobile call extensions and calls from your landing pages.

When you can get keyword-level attribution and conversion reporting in real time, you can attribute calls to paid search and display budgets, and use call conversions to optimize your spend to drive more revenue. 

How does call tracking work with web analytics?

By integrating Invoca call data with web analytics tools like Google Analytics, marketers can get a holistic view of keyword or campaign performance, identify top conversion paths, understand reverse goal paths, and create call-based segments.

Call tracking platforms capture data about the customer journey, like marketing campaign and ad creative, and ties that data to phone calls. By capturing key identifiers like Google Client ID, you can report individual call events and conversions to Google Analytics.

By tying phone calls to website activity, marketers can understand how customers are engaging with their website and use that call activity to help create a seamless customer journey. Some platforms also offer integrations with social media advertising like Facebook click-to-call ads and Instagram.

Does call tracking work with our CRM? 

Call tracking platforms can send call data to CRMs like Salesforce Sales Cloud in real time for automated closed-loop reporting. You can also push opportunity stage information from Salesforce to the call tracking platform for reporting and analysis, or to build out marketing audiences in other martech tools. 

But do you really need a call tracking platform? If you spend any significant portion of your marketing budget driving phone calls to your call center, then yes. Unless, of course, you like wasting money!

Why is Call Tracking Important?

Calls to U.S. businesses from search, social, display, or other paid ad campaigns ads have grown 110 percent since 2014. That represents a total of 162 billion calls in the United States alone each year.

With so many consumers converting by calling businesses, it’s critical that marketers are able to track, attribute and report on calls.

When marketers include offline call conversions alongside web based conversions they can provide a complete picture of the value they bring to advertisers.

It’s no surprise that over the past three years AdWords has expanded its capabilities to track and attribute calls with:

• Call extensions and call only ads.
• Google phone number provisioning and call tracking.
• Offline call conversion importer with revenue attribution.

If you haven’t realized the value that phone calls are bringing to your marketing campaigns, it’s because you aren’t tracking them. If you’re on the fence about using call tracking or getting connected to a call tracking provider, read on to see if any of these signs apply to you.

1. Phone Calls are Important to Your Advertiser

While really anyone running ads that has a number on their website should be tracking calls, inbound calls are particularly important for certain industries.

In the healthcare industry 88 percent of patients book on the phone and similarly 75 percent of people looking for insurance do so by calling.

In a recent e-book (download required), DialogTech identified 25 industries where call tracking is driving revenue. Advertisers in any one of these industries should make sure that they have a website with a phone number helping people connect, get questions answered, and ultimately convert advertising efforts to revenue.

To be able to report on the value of online advertising efforts including calls from ads, marketers need to set up call tracking.

Typically call tracking is set up by adding a JavaScript snippet to the source code of a website. This JavaScript is designed to replace the number on the site based on predefined rules.

Once this is done, the website will show the dynamically replaced call tracking number to the site visitor allowing the marketer to see PPC calls segmented out from the other traffic sources in their call tracking dashboard.

Calls are also particularly important because they can produce higher quality leads. Calls convert 10-15 times more often than web leads. There are many success stories that point advertisers to call tracking.

Whether it’s that irreplaceable human quality or the convenience of instant information, calls are an important source of leads to any business and provide important data to the advertiser.

2. You Want to Segment Calls by Medium

Understanding how paid, organic, and referral traffic are influencing call conversions helps you understand where to focus your efforts. If the call comes from PPC, you will want to get more granular to understand which campaign and keyword are driving more calls.

Google Analytics provides insight as to what’s happening online. But when there is no click event – GA is blind. With a call tracking provider marketers can enable dynamic number insertion (DNI) on their site to dynamically show each site visitor a dedicated number by medium (CPC, organic, referral).

Imagine you are advertising for local brick and mortar computer and electronics store. You can setup the JavaScript to show a different number depending on the way people get to the site. For example:

• People who clicked on a paid search ad would see one number.
• People who clicked on an SEO listing would see a second number.
• Everyone else would see a third (or the actual business #).

This will allow each call to be tagged as ‘paid search’, ‘organic’ or ‘other’ and let you segment calls from paid search in your reports.

Many call tracking providers tie the offline call data back to GA so that marketers can provide a holistic view of web based and offline calls broken out by mediums. These insights can also help you provide recommendations to inform customer acquisition strategy.

3. Your Advertiser Has a Site Serving Multiple Geographic Locations

With call tracking and dynamic number insertion you can even show local numbers to people based on where they are searching. Why is having a local number important?

According to a recent MightyCall article:

• Toll-free numbers indicate to callers a large potentially international business.
• Toll-free numbers make people feel like they will have to talk to a person in a call center, that can leave callers waiting and occassionally frustrated with the service they receive.
• 86 percent of consumers trust their local business quality over national and international companies.

Imagine, you have a client serving consumers in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Having a toll-free number on the site can result in lost opportunities when consumers with strong buyer intent abandon their journey because they’re turned off by the 1-800.

By providing a local number to web searchers in each city, marketers can send positive signals to local searchers and increase call leads and even subsequent conversion rates.

Marketers can set up a geo-targeted campaigns for each city. By assigning a local number to each of the campaigns, the JavaScript on the site will dynamically serve the web searcher a number with a recognizable local area code.

4. You Want to Know Which Keywords Are Generating Calls

There are two basic types of call tracking: 1-to-1 call tracking and session-based call tracking.

With 1-to-1 call tracking, DNI delivers a unique call tracking number for each medium, specific ad platform, campaign, ad group or keyword you want to track.

It is 100 percent accurate, but becomes cost prohibitive if you want to track more granular campaign entities.

Consider an advertiser with 20 campaigns, 500 ad groups and 5,000 keywords. You would need to provision 20 call tracking numbers to have campaign level attribution, 500 campaigns to have ad group level call attribution, and 5,000 numbers for keyword level attribution.

From the thirst for keyword level call attribution, session-based call tracking was born. With this kind of call tracking you assign a pool of call tracking numbers to a site based on the typical number of visits you get to the site for a particular traffic source.

If for example you get a maximum of 16 PPC clicks per hour, you’d buy 16 numbers. These numbers rotate every hour so each paid click will result in a different number shown to each visitor every hour.

The call tracking technology also stores all the web sessions and correlates clicks to calls using advanced heuristic logic. It is less accurate, but provides more granular insights into the keywords driving calls.

Many call tracking companies partner up with bid management platforms to integrate calls to paid search campaigns, to inform optimization strategies and report on calls in unified omni-channel reports for their clients.

5. You Want to Report the Value of Your PPC Campaigns Including Offline Calls

There are two ways to attribute revenue to calls.

Determine a Fixed Value for Each Call with the Client

For example a contractor will probably be able to provide an estimate regarding their average revenue value for each call/lead they get. Then marketers can assign a multiplier to each call so they can report on the revenue from the calls being generating and provide an ROAS metric.

Work with a Call Tracking Provider

Not all call tracking providers are equal. Marketers should look for a provider that has to have the ability to track revenue associated with calls made to call centers and/or stored in CRMs.

There are lots of creative ways to work with clients and call tracking providers to enable this invaluable revenue attribution.

6. You Want Calls to Be Analyzed & Scored for Call Quality

Call scoring has always been important to marketers. In some cases clients want a better understanding of the call quality and challenge marketers on the reported calls. Having call scoring data is really helpful during these conversations.

The first call scoring was reserved for brands and marketers with large budgets and big ticket items.

In the early days of call scoring, some call tracking providers working with automotive companies used crowd-sourced ‘humanatic’ call scoring, paying people to listen to calls and rate them.

However, with advancements in voice recognition and machine learning, several call tracking companies have invested in automated call scoring technologies that are quite effective.

Marketers can arm themselves with call scoring data and help reinforce the results of reporting on campaign performance to clients.

7. You Want to Optimize for Time of Day

Call tracking can teach marketers a lot of things, including when their client’s business is getting calls.

By pulling call detail reports segmented by hour, marketers can understand when people are searching for and calling a business. This can then inform ad scheduling strategies for example.

Based on this data marketers can also allocate budget to peak business hours and maximize return on ad spend.

8. You Want to Understand Average Time on Call

Call detail reports can also provide advertisers information about the average time they spend on a call. As marketers we can help inform businesses with this type of data and its associated implications.

For example, call length can suggest a certain level of call quality, but other conclusions can be made as well.

If the average time on call is more than 10 minutes and you’re a nail salon, you may want to consider adding more information for customers about your business and services online, for example.

Business owners will also find data around average call times valuable to determine how engaging their call representatives are with customers on the phone.

9. You Want to Provide Reports with Call Details, Call Recordings & Detailed Analytics

Call tracking provides marketers with both qualitative and quantitative information. Call recordings give marketers and business owners information about call details and conversations.

This type of information is particularly useful to assess the quality of customer service and employee performance as previously mentioned – typically out of scope for marketers (although data and ideas about how to build customer relationships and improve retention could certainly reveal itself inside call recordings).

Marketers tend to focus more on the quantitative and analytical data that call tracking provides.

Marketers can measure and understand the following using call tracking analytics:

• How calls drive revenue.
• How website traffic responds to call ads, website phone numbers etc.
• Cost of acquisition and how to reduce it.
• The marketing value of call tracking including ROI.
• Which channels generate the highest quality leads.
• What role call tracking plays in attribution, including detailed buyer journey insights through dynamic number insertion (DNI) and going beyond just last-click models.

10. You Want to Report on More Granular Call Metrics

Call tracking allows marketers to get granular on an otherwise low visibility channel. With call tracking enabled you can provide insights on what happened after the consumer made the call.

Using call status as a metric you can inform the advertiser that of the 100 calls generated last month, 65 were answered, 10 went to voicemail, 8 got a busy signal, and a whopping 17 were not even answered, for example.

When segmenting this data hourly, you can start to surface actionable data that your client will likely find really valuable. For example you could show that between 2 and 3 p.m. there were a bunch of unanswered calls or that between noon and 1 p.m. there were a lot of busy calls.

Now you’re adding value to your clients business process and taking your relationship to the next level.

What is Call Tracking Software?

Call tracking software allows marketers to get data from phone conversations with customers that can prove exactly what marketing campaign or tactic drove the phone call and what the result of the call was.

For example, if you call a business that is using call tracking, they can tell what ads, web pages, and even the keywords that helped drive you to call.

And once you’re on the phone, conversational analytics can be used to analyze the language used in the call to tell if you bought anything, got a quote, made an appointment — or what marketers like to call a “conversion.”

You can then use the data to get attribution for marketing campaigns, optimize ads, web pages, social media, and other advertising mediums to get more high-value customers on the phone.

Without call tracking, it’s impossible to prove the ROI of your marketing efforts that drive sales calls because your data trail goes cold when potential customers pick up the phone.

How Does Call Tracking Software Work?

Cloud-based call tracking software like Invoca enables marketers to tie customers’ digital journeys to phone calls using online data collection via unique, trackable phone numbers. Invoca’s call tracking and analytics are made possible with a website tag.

The tag is a snippet of JavaScript code placed on your website that automatically replaces standard, static phone numbers with trackable, dynamic phone numbers that are unique to each site visitor. These dynamic numbers act as a unique identifier for an individual’s website session.

Beyond managing dynamic phone numbers, the Invoca tag also captures other data, such as UTM source, medium, paid search keyword, and Google ClickID. Additional customer journey data like page visitation and unique customer identifiers are captured from the browser cookie.  With this data, you can understand exactly which marketing tactics are driving your high-value phone calls.

When a person calls an Invoca-supplied phone number, the call is routed through the Invoca platform to a call center, local agent, or any other destination. This allows Invoca to aggregate the digital data and tie the callers’ previous activity to the phone call. This happens nearly instantaneously with no interruption to the caller experience.

What is CallRail Tracking?

CallRail is a marketing platform for businesses that rely on quality phone calls, leads, and new customers to grow and succeed. Our software gives customers visibility into their marketing efforts, so they know what’s working and what isn’t.

Call Tracking uses a unique phone number that forwards calls to your main phone number. Your customers dial the new tracking number, we forward the call, and you answer your main phone like you usually do.

CallRail gathers statistics, and you can check them online in real-time. The other products — Lead Center, Conversation Intelligence, and Form Tracking — are built on the foundation of Call Tracking product.

What Are Call Tracking Metrics?

Here’s a brief rundown of metrics that you should be focusing on once you implement a call tracking solution:

• Call Volume – You’ll be able to view attribution and understand what ads drive calls. You can also view detailed reports and get insight into call patterns, giving you insight that will help you fully understand ROI.
• First-time Callers – This metric shows you which callers are reaching out to you for the first time. This is an extremely important metric you’ll want to pay attention to. This KPI also shows you which marketing strategies are bringing in new calls to your business.
• Call Duration – Not all calls are equally valuable. Some calls are likely to yield better leads than others. In general, the longer the call, the more likely it is to turn into a quality lead. After all, why would a prospect waste so much time speaking with your team if they aren’t interested in your product or service? Call tracking metrics provide you with the length of each call, allowing you to determine which campaigns, keywords, PPC landing pages, and ads generate longer, more meaningful conversations .
• Call Time of Day and Location – While PPC campaigns allow you to change bids by time of day and location, call tracking metrics can tell you what time of day and what locations result in the largest percentage of conversions. You can use this information to adjust your bids accordingly, allowing you to make the most of your PPC dollars.
• PPC Landing Page Performance – Prospects typically have two options when visiting your PPC landing page: They can either fill out a contact form or pick up the phone to call you. Without call tracking, you will only be able to gather data about the number of forms filled out. In many instances, this could make it seem like your PPC conversion rate is much lower than it actually is.

How do You Set up Call Tracking Metrics?

Both the Google Analytics & Google AdWords integrations report call data as “Conversions” in AdWords, but they operate differently and work to achieve separate goals.

This integration will track calls from Visitors to your Landing Pages/Website as “Events” in Analytics. This popular integration allows you to view your calls right in Google Analytics and analyze them in conjunction with your website data.

CallTrackingMetrics sends all inbound calls, inbound texts and FormReactor® submissions into Google Analytics as “Events” with the Website Visitor detail attached. Connecting Google Analytics to Google AdWords creates a seamless flow of data, connecting the exact “Paid Click” to the unique caller.

Inside Analytics, “Goals” can be set up around “Call Events” and can be customized in a variety of ways.

For example, you can create a goal for:

• Organic Traffic
• First-time Caller(s)
• Total Talk Time of over 120 Seconds
• Google AdWords Visitors
• Site Visits over 30 Seconds

These Goal Completions can be imported into Google AdWords as a “Clicked Conversion”, helping improve your overall conversion rates.

Connect CallTrackingMetrics and Google Analytics

1. Go to Settings → Integrations.

2. Select Google Analytics.

3. Click the “Link your Analytics Account” button. In a separate browser, log into the Gmail account that has access to the Google Analytics property you’d like to connect to CallTrackingMetrics.

4. Allow CallTrackingMetrics access to the “Users UA Properties” by signing in to your Google Account.

5. Under Site Tracking, select the site that you wish to track from the dropdown menu.

6. Once a selection has been made, click the “Use Selected Profile” button.

7. Under the Google Events section, customize how you want the information to report using the toggle options.

8. Save your changes.

At this point all your inbound call and form data will report as Events inside of Google Analytics. Learn more about the data CTM sends into Analytics.

Key facts to remember:

• Google Analytics & AdWords do not report in real time.
• Google Analytics & AdWords do not report in the same time.
• It typically takes between 5 minutes and 24 hours for paid campaign data to populate in the call log.
• CallTrackingMetrics tracking code must be installed on the page.
• Google Analytics tracking code must be installed on the page.
• Google Analytics must be linked/ communicating with Google AdWords.
• CallTrackingMetrics must be communicating with Google Analytics.

If communication is broken in any of the three areas, the keyword data and conversions will not report.

About Google AdWords Integration for Click to Call

This integration will track calls to your click to call ads and call extensions back to the exact keyword and ad that led to the call. You will see this information in AdWords as phone conversions so you are not just optimizing around those people that clicked on the ads- but also the many mobile and desktop searchers who called right from the click to call ad or extensions.

The following items must be completed prior to setting up your Google AdWords Integration:

• Tracking Number & Tracking Source for Ad extension (must be offline source)
• CTM call extension script from the Google AdWords integration page
• Make sure you have access to Google AdWords.
• Make sure you have the authority to authorize scripts inside of Google AdWords.
• Make sure you are using Google call forwarding numbers

Connect CallTrackingMetrics with Google AdWords

1. Go to Settings → Integrations.

2. Select Google Ads > Google Ads (Google Apps Script).

3. Under “Associated Tracking Source” section, associate any Offsite Tracking Sources that you want us to track.

4. Save your changes.

5. Once the tracking sources are activated, scroll to the “AdWords Script” at the bottom of the page.

6. Copy the script.

7. Log into your Google AdWords account.

8. Go to Bulk Options → Scripts.

9. Select “New Script“.

10. Name your script something easily identifiable.

11. Select All and Paste the CTM Script.

12. Authorize the Script.

13. Select “Run Script Now and Close“.

14. Create a Schedule for the script to run hourly.

15. Set your “Ad Extensions” and “Call Only Ads” to use Google Reporting.

16. Click “Save“.

What is Call Tracking System?

The definition of a call tracking system is a system that allow marketers to measure the value of inbound calls driven by their marketing efforts. The technology enables companies to instantly and cheaply provision local or toll-free phone numbers, then associate those numbers with ads, web pages, search keywords or any effort.

The results are then tracked and measured, typically in a CRM. When call tracking data is captured within a CRM tool, call tracking data can then be shared in real time with inside sales reps taking inbound calls.

That data can be used to communicate the buyers’ intent and help reps have more intelligent conversations. When call tracking data is integrated with a routing system, then caller intent data can be used to route calls to product specialists automatically.

Call tracking Google Ads

Google Ads call tracking is a type of conversion tracking that shows you how many prospective customers called your business after seeing or clicking one of your PPC placements.

How does Google Ads call tracking work?

Google Ads call tracking has two main functions:

1. Tracking calls that are made to a Google forwarding number, which is displayed in a call extension ad
2. Tracking calls through dynamic number insertion on your website, where a unique tracking number is swapped in for each site visitor

How to set up Google Ads call tracking

Setting up Google Ads call tracking for forwarding numbers is simple: You only need to add call extensions to your ad(s), and then enable call reporting in Google Ads and Analytics. During the setup, you’ll have to create a conversion action for a phone call under the ‘Tools > Conversions‘ menu in Ads, which you’ll then select when creating your call extension.

Setting up Google’s dynamic number insertion feature is a little more complicated, and requires a working knowledge of how to change the source code on your website. As part of this process, you’ll have to add a snippet of code to all of your website’s pages, and then edit the code snippet according to the tracking numbers you want to swap in and out.

This can be a complicated task, even for those experienced in JavaScript and coding, so it’s best to be proactive about getting someone on your team with dev experience to assist you.

Free Call Tracking Numbers

Over 75% of owners who refuse to have Dynamic Call Tracking don’t do so because of additional costs. For instance, Google Forwarding Numbers is a free tool. The main concern is that their businesses won’t actually own the additional phone numbers or will depend on them.

Thus, new client generation sources and communication channels with existing clients aren’t insured. Furthermore, many businesses rather won’t track all calls automatically in order to do not optimize traffic for the majority of irrelevant calls they normally keep receiving.

Free Call Tracking is a free and simple tool for semi-automatic dynamic call tracking. You only need your single phone number (no dynamic phone numbers insertion) on your website to track with Google Analytics all the traffic data of those who visit your website and call your office.

1. Users visit your website
   A potential customer visits a product/service page of your business website because of a paid ad, your social media, or an organic search.
2. Site visitors call your office
   Your office/sales manager receives a call from a potential customer. During the conversation – take a 5 seconds look at your Free Call Tracking Google Sheet.
3. Match calls in a single click
   Does the Free Call Tracking GSheet show that there is currently a visitor on your website that matches the caller’s interest and/or source? Ask the caller to browse to another page for double-checking and click Call to match the call traffic.
4. A new client calls for less cost
   Explore the traffic details of callers from your website in your Google Analytics account. There is also a call conversion in your Google Ads. Define Cost per Call, adjust SEO, and analyze your Return of Ad Spent strategy in Google Ads.

Call Tracking Definition

Call tracking is the process of determining how callers found your business. Marketing and sales teams can use call tracking software to attribute phone calls to the specific marketing channels that led callers to ring your business.

By knowing what makes your phone ring, you can measure the success of advertising campaigns and optimize future marketing strategy.

Businesses take and make calls daily, but without call tracking, businesses gain little more than who’s calling and why. While some businesses still ask the classic question of “How did you hear about us?” to see how the caller discovered their company, the caller isn’t likely to give you their first true interaction with the business.

By using call tracking software, businesses benefit by being able to tie inbound calls directly to the marketing channels and campaigns that the caller interacted with before dialing your phone number.

Benefits of call tracking include:

• Attribute inbound phone calls to right marketing campaigns
• Improve customer service
• Measure online & offline marketing campaign performance
• Understand which keywords are leading to phone calls

Call Tracking Code

Ever wondered whether your phone has been hacked, or being tracked? Surely, there have been instances when you thought so. So, even as the rapid spread of mobile telephony has eased people’s lives in many ways, the accompanying rise of cybercrimes has become one of the biggest present-day concerns.

Nowadays, hackers can remotely install a piece of software in your mobile phone to steal personal data, which may include bank account details and private photos. Hackers can do this by sending a text or email posing as a promotional message to lure individuals.

For example, you may receive a text along with an online link asking you to claim awards, easy loans, shopping offers etc. The message may ask you to click on the link to claim the offer. Irrespective of the kind of phone you are using, you should avoid clicking on such links.

You can immediately check if your phone has been compromised, or if your calls, messages etc have been forwarded without your knowledge. All you need to do is dial a few USSD codes – ##002#, *#21#, and *#62# from your phone’s dialer.

Phone Call Tracking

Whether it’s for business or personal use, there are plenty of reasons you may want to know how to track a phone call. But what exactly does this entail?

Call tracking goes beyond the simple capabilities of caller ID. It is a technology that allows you to gain in-depth information about each individual person who calls your business, including how they found your number in the first place.

There are two different types of call tracking: business and personal. For the sake of this blog post, we’ll be focusing on how businesses can use call tracking to improve their sales and marketing strategies.

So, what does call tracking for businesses involve? The main attraction of call tracking is the ability to correlate incoming calls with advertisements and marketing campaigns. Knowing exactly which campaign or ad drove a phone call is huge and can help businesses better tailor their strategies for capturing and converting leads.

In addition to determining the source of a phone call, call tracking also helps businesses get a better grasp of who their customers are. By tracking each caller’s name, location and even which device they used to reach your business, you’ll gain a better understanding of your customers and how they interact with your business.

To track phone calls, you’ll first need to invest in a call tracking service. There are many call tracking service providers out there, so it’s important to know which features you’re looking for before doing business with one.

Once you’ve found a suitable call tracking provider, it’s time to set up call tracking for your business. Like everything else, your provider should make this process quick and easy.

CallRail makes the process very simple. Simply create an account, create your first tracking number, set up call recording and activate your number. You’ll then be able to use this number for specific sources and see the corresponding data. How easy is that? They have thousands of local and toll-free numbers from which you can choose.

How to track a phone call

Once call tracking is set up, your call tracking service will do all the heavy lifting for you. With CallRail, you can see all the vital data about your incoming calls right in your CallRail dashboard to successfully track phone calls.

The dashboard lets you clearly see calls and their corresponding data in real-time. You’ll find vital information such as caller name, tracking number dialed, source of the call, caller phone number and location, and any PPC keywords your caller used to find your business online. You can then download reports straight from your dashboard or sync your call tracking data with Google Analytics and Ads for in-depth insights.

Since the data about your callers is displayed in real-time, you can use it to shorten your lead response time to boost conversions. You’ll also be able to use this information to better optimize your business as a whole.

Call Tracking Numbers

The CallTrackingMetrics platform provides call tracking numbers to track advertising performance in over 30 different countries, offering both local and toll free numbers. True 800 and vanity numbers are available upon request

Tracking numbers route to your business phone number and are activated in minutes

Tracking (phone) numbers are specific phone numbers — they can be either local or toll-free numbers — that route to business phone numbers. The individual tracking numbers allow marketers to gauge the performance of specific marketing channels and/or campaigns as part of the call tracking process.

There’s no long-term commitment and numbers can be added or dropped at any time. You can even port your existing numbers to us to use as tracking numbers (U.S. and Canada only).

Tracking numbers are used to track each of your traditional and online advertising channels so that you always know which ads are performing. The numbers can be placed in your offline ads, or you can use our dynamic number insertion to have your online numbers appear automatically on your website when someone comes through a channel you are tracking.

5 Best Call Tracking Services

The best call tracking software simplifies the process by automatically attributing a lead’s actions to a specific PPC keyword or campaign. In addition, a call tracking service attributes the call to a marketing action, routes it to an agent, and displays customer information.

The following call tracking service providers are the best based on our research:

1. CallTrackingMetrics

CallTrackingMetrics (CTM) is a scalable call tracking service offering dynamic number insertion (DNI) and robust conversation intelligence. DNI automatically attributes a specific number to each ad source so that you can track effectiveness. CallTrackingMetrics stands out because it monitors not only phone calls but also text and chat messages and forms.

All subscriptions include click-to-call ads and ad extensions. It also comes with popular voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) business phone features like call recording and call whisper.

Additionally, the service uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify keywords while your caller talks. From there, the AI tool automates actions. For example, if a caller says “cancel” during a conversation, the system could automatically email an account manager.

2. Invoca Inc

Invoca’s Active Conversation Intelligence platform enables marketing, sales, customer experience, and eCommerce teams to understand and immediately act on the information consumers share via conversations.

Through deep integrations with leading technology platforms, revenue teams can turn conversation data into automated action to enhance every digital touchpoint and human interaction, leading to better experiences, more conversions, and higher revenue. Invoca is trusted by top brands like Dish Network, Mayo Clinic, Mutual of Omaha, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK?.

3. DialogTech Inc

DialogTech has joined Invoca to create the undisputed leader in call tracking and conversation intelligence. If you are looking for a true partner to help you hit your marketing and sales goals, Invoca checks all the boxes.

They offer the most actionable data and insights from calls, the most powerful integrations, and a UI that puts you in complete control of everything. Plus they back their solution with the largest staff of customer support experts to ensure your success today, and the largest R&D budget to drive innovation and ensure your success tomorrow.

4. Marchex

For marketers who need to get the most of their budget, Marchex Marketing Edge delivers an innovative, easy-to-use conversational analytics solution that reveals which marketing campaigns and channels are generating inbound calls and texts, what happened in those conversations, and enables data-driven decisions that improve their digital marketing and maximize their return.

Marketing Edge provides personal onboarding and integrates with Sales Edge Rescue, which can be added to enable their sales team to generate more revenue by recovering lost sales.

5. CallFire

CallFire provides easy-to-use, self-service voice marketing solutions to thousands of businesses across the US & Canada. They specialize in helping local businesses grow and retain their revenue with outreach and engagement services such as IVR, Voice Broadcast, and Call Tracking.

In addition to serving local businesses, CallFire empowers non-profits, religious groups, and other organizations to connect more effectively with their audiences. CallFire is headquartered in Santa Monica, California with affiliated offices in Austin, Texas and Kiev, Ukraine.

Call Tracking Software India

If you’re a contact center or sales organization, you might already know the importance of recording, tracking, and analyzing calls. The best call tracking offers end-to-end call tracking features that enable you to analyze what your customers need and aligning your service as per their requirements.

1. CallHippo

With features like Call logs, VoIP call tracker, and Voice & data integration, Call Hippo does effortless call tracking without spending million of dollars. This call tracking software for iPhone can do call tracking in a blended and inbound call center.

2. Servetel

Servetel is the leading cloud telephony service provider in India that facilitates you with cloud telephony solutions for all your business needs. We spark your business communication with our economical, innovative and handy cloud solutions.

3. MyOperator

With a responsive IVR and detailed call tracking, MyOperator will make your inbound and outbound calls data-driven. By using this incoming call tracking software for PC, you can even track the entire life cycle of voicemails.

4. Knowlarity

Knowlarity is a leading cloud telephony solutions provider in India enabling streamlined business communication on the cloud. Switching to cloud solutions will upgrade the existing traditional contact center to a smarter virtual calling platform.

5. Enthu

Enthu is a Conversation Intelligence Software powered by AI & ML. Suited for B2B SMEs, mid-market companies, and contact centers, Enthu allows sales teams to record, transcribe and audit all the customer conversations without the need to listen to every single call.

Global Call Tracking

Global Call Forwarding allows you to track international phone calls from more than 150 countries around the world. Our international call tracking solutions enable businesses to compare results from their global marketing campaigns side by side.

You can use global call tracking to measure the performance of various international marketing campaigns. This is particularly useful for multinational companies running campaigns in different countries around the world.

Benefits of Global Call Tracking

The ability to track incoming phone calls on a global scale has many benefits. Here are the top benefits that your business can realize through international call tracking:

• Compare multi-country campaigns side-by-side.
• Calculate ROI of various global marketing campaigns.
• Optimize your campaigns to improve performance.
• Compare in-country advertising channels to determine the most effective lead sources.

Free Call Tracking Software

The following inbound and outbound call tracking solutions each have 10 or more reviews on G2 Crowd, wherein users have provided plenty of data to help you determine if a solution is right for you.

The tools included below either have a free version or a free trial, effectively letting you feel a solution out before deciding on one permanently.

1. Callrail

CallRail functions as an analytics platform, which informs which calls are delivered through marketing campaigns.

This tool also allows for form submissions, which helps users develop a contact database of potential leads. It has a leads funnel so contacts retrieved through marketing efforts can be transferred over to sales representatives.

2. CallTrackingMetrics

CallTrackingMetrics offers form submissions, which allows visitors to submit their contact information straight to the site’s administrators or marketing team. These contacts can be connected with agents almost immediately.

Users recommend those considering CallTrackingMetrics take their time in learning the tool and utilize the call listening features, as they’re helpful for sales training and quality assurance.

3. PhoneWagon

PhoneWagon is a call tracking and automation software that claims to not have unnecessary features. It tracks marketing spend and helps you discover which campaigns are developing your quality leads.

Users say PhoneWagon has helped them deliver quicker customer service and remove guessing games from lead generation. It improves understanding of ROI, which, in turn, increases ROI.

4. ActiveDEMAND

ActiveDEMAND has an integrated marketing platform package that provides tools for email, landing pages and social content. Users find this product intuitive with good template development. They are using this product to garner better business intelligence, as well as execute marketing strategies independently.

5. Dialogtech

DialogTech is a voice management platform marketing itself as a solution that helps organizations “generate more phone leads, increase marketing ROI and improve customer experiences.” DialogTech has been around for just over a decade, helping companies with call attribution, conversation analytics and more.

Cheapest Call Tracking Software

1. FreJun

FreJun is a cloud telephony platform that automates your business calls. Users can make outbound and receive inbound business calls using a unique virtual number. The calls made can be logged, recorded and integrated with any workflow tools such as CRM and ATS.

Detailed call analytics and AI insights are generated to improve team performance. FreJun also provides an auto-dialer, where the user can automatically call a list of numbers. The entire contact system can be set up in 5-10 minutes.

2. InfoCision

InfoCision is a provider of traditional call center services to advanced training solutions. InfoCision offers call center tools that shorten calls, blend alternative channels, and increase customer satisfaction.

Working in and enhancing your existing call center atmosphere, tools pre-fill customer data and demographics, score incoming calls, train call center agents with eLearnings and simulations, measure quality, motivate staff, and integrate SMS self-service options.

3. EngageBay

EngageBay is a simple, affordable, all-in-one marketing, sales and service CRM software built for small businesses and startups to acquire, engage, nurture web visitors and convert them to happy customers.

Acquire leads through lead generation forms and popups, engage web visitors through beautiful landing pages, nurture them through engaging emails, and automate your marketing funnel through marketing automation – all from one easy to use platform.

4. Dialpad

Dialpad modernizes communication technology, putting voice, messaging, meetings, and video on any device.

5. Agile CRM

Agile CRM is a complete sales, marketing and service suite designed to let SMBs to sell and market like the Fortune 500.

Best Call Tracking App

1. Hubspot

HubSpot’s call tracking feature is built into their free CRM and Sales suite, and because of that native functionality and integration, it’s one of my favorite options. Not only does it given you call tracking and analytics, but you can place calls from your browser without even picking up a phone.

One click connects you to a prospect through Voice Over IP or your desk phone. Your calls will always come from your number, and an option to record each call gives you reliable records of your conversations.

Of course, calls are automatically logged into the CRM as well, which, combined with HubSpot’s free email tracking, gives your sales team a pretty frictionless experience so they can spend more time with prospects.

2. WhatConverts

WhatConverts is a complete call tracking, lead capture, and reporting platform giving users the power to “See What Marketing Converts!”

WhatConverts users are able to capture phone calls, forms, chats, and transactions, and tie each lead back to the original marketing source. Its phone call tracking service offers a full-featured solution using the latest technology to gather incredible information for each call. Although the platform gathers a lot of data, it also provides reporting so that companies can easily gain insights from their call and marketing data.

3. CallRail

CallRail is a marketing platform that helps businesses accelerate growth.CallRail helps you fine-tune marketing programs drive more quality leads centralize communications and turn more leads into customers.

Call Tracking, Form Tracking, and Conversation Intelligence reveal insights across touchpoints along each customer’s journey. Lead Center helps businesses connect with customers on their terms with a unified inbox and integrated communication tools including softphone text and chat.

Over 175,000 businesses worldwide trust CallRail’s straightforward powerful marketing platform to accelerate and sustain growth.

4. 800response

800response’s suite of real-time call tracking and monitoring tools is the key to boosting new customer acquisitions and optimizing interactions with customers.

With real-time lead tracking reports, lead analytics, and customer interaction analytics, companies can gain precise information on their incoming callers, capturing consumer details to prioritize and rank leads by key demographic attributes in order to gain visibility into 100% of their customer interactions.

5. ActiveDemand

Call tracking is only one piece of ActiveDemand’s larger SMB marketing automation suite, so consider it if you’re in the market for a full martech overhaul. By moving to ActiveDemand, you’ll gain access to call attribution campaigns, robo call campaigns, and automatic lead distribution.

Outbound Call Tracking Software

Outbound call tracking software allows users to call leads directly through the solution and record call and prospect data. These solutions are used to quickly contact prospective customers to get a jump on a sales opportunity. Outbound call tracking products provide click-to-call features for fast dialing, generate local numbers for more likely responses, and automate voicemails and follow-up emails.

In addition, products can record calls for training purposes and sort prospects based on the probability of a successful sale. Outbound call tracking solutions are most commonly used for inside sales representatives and telemarketers interested in converting new customers.

CRM integrations are very common, particularly when being used to store prospect information and notes regarding past phone calls.

To qualify as an outbound call tracking solution, a product must: Allow users to place calls directly from the platform Track call interaction data

1. Salesloft

Salesloft is the provider of the leading sales engagement platform that helps sellers and sales teams drive more revenue. The Modern Revenue Workspace™ by Salesloft is the one place for sellers to execute all of their digital selling tasks, communicate with buyers, understand what to do next, and get the coaching and insights they need to win.

Thousands of the world’s most successful sales teams, like those at IBM, Shopify, Square, and Cisco, drive more revenue with Salesloft.

2. Dialpad Talk

Built entirely from the ground up on Google Cloud Platform, Dialpad Talk is a business phone system that provides unmatched mobility, flexibility, and security to more than 62,000+ of the world’s most innovative businesses.

Dialpad Talk includes native Voice Intelligence features like real-time transcription and post-call summaries with highlighted action items. Dialpad directly integrates with other business-critical cloud applications such as G Suite, Salesforce, and Zendesk for maximum productivity and end-user efficiency.

3. Outreach

Outreach, the system of action for sales teams, delivers performance and insights that result in higher velocity and more efficient selling. By automating and prioritizing all customer touch points throughout the sales process, Outreach triples the productivity of sales teams, and empowers them to drive more pipeline, book more meetings and exceed revenue goals.

Outreach places actionable data intelligence at the fingertips of sales reps through a single, integrated view of all prospect-related information. Thousands of customers rely on Outreach to transform the sales process, drive collaboration between sales and marketing, and deliver higher revenue per sales rep.

4. XANT Playbooks

Accelerate your company’s revenue with XANT Playbooks, the smartest sales engagement platform. With Playbooks, sales professionals increase productivity, optimize customer interactions, and connect to the right buyers. Playbooks goes beyond a traditional sales auto dialer or sequencer. It doesn’t just help your team do more, it helps them do more of the right things.

Reps are provided with additional contacts and recommendations of who, when, and how to reach out—making their efforts more effective. Leadership is provided with valuable insight into their remote sales team to see what’s working and what isn’t.

5. Groove

Groove is the leading sales engagement platform for enterprises using Salesforce. Built for the needs of relationship-based sellers, Groove increases rep productivity, drives Salesforce adoption, and provides revenue leaders with key insights to know what’s driving their business.

Read Also: Role of Social Media in Digital Marketing to generate leads

Because Groove is Salesforce native, it has the most advanced activity capture in the industry, ensuring that revenue teams can rely on accurate reporting and forecasting, lowered compliance risk, and streamlined administration.

Whether it’s automating CRM data entry or empowering reps to generate pipeline and close more deals, Groove gives reps 20% of their week back to focus on high-value activities.

Final Words

Marketers most frequently use call tracking to optimize paid search and other digital marketing performance, personalize the caller experience, and enhance the end-to-end customer journey by unifying online and offline data sources.

The big benefits that many call tracking users see are reduced cost-per-click (CPC) on paid search, reduced cost-per-acquisition (CPA), and increases in return on ad spend (ROAS).