How To Run Pay-Per-Call Campaigns with Google Call-Only Ads

It’s no secret phone calls convert more customers than any other form of interaction, but you might still be surprised by the power of good old sales calls. The numbers don’t lie: only around 2% of web leads convert, whereas phone calls easily convert 10 times more.

But what if you take it even further, triggering inbound calls immediately without sending users to your website (you might not even have one, for that matter)? There’s a great tool up your sleeve for this type of conversion: call-only ads.

Google call-only ads encourage users to make a call right from Google search. You still can display your business name, phone number, and website address, but the gist remains the same: initiate a call right here and now.

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Read on to learn how to grow your pay-per-call campaigns with Google call-only ads.

How Do Call-Only Ads Work in Pay-Per-Call Campaigns?

Call-only ads appear in Google when someone searches for a query for which the ad is optimized. If you’ve configured your ads to show to New Yorkers aged 18-25 who search for “health insurance New York,” when such a user enters the query, the ad displays among search results, and the user can make a call immediately by pressing the call button.

You can launch your call-only ads campaign in three strategic steps:

1. Research your target audience. Displaying ads costs money, so you must know whom you target in the first place: demographics and psychographics. Remember, you pay for every call, so you only need calls that convert.
2. Set up your call-only ads in Google Ads. Once you know your audience, you can target them in Google Ads (the detailed guide is below the page).
3. Optimize your pay-per-call campaigns. By integrating call tracking software like Phonexa, you can track, distribute, and analyze your callers to improve your pay-per-call campaigns on the fly and strategically. Likewise, you can buy or sell qualified phone calls at the best price.

Long story short, call-only ads allow you to make online sales without a website. Also, you can target your most profitable clients because phone calls are likelier to convert.

What Industries Are the Best for Call-Only Ads?

There are two criteria to determine whether your industry is a good fit for pay-per-call marketing:

• The average check in the industry. Pay-per-call lead generation is more effective in high-ticket industries with higher average checks, such as finance, insurance, real estate, and home services.
• The immediate nature of the industry. People tend to prioritize phone calls when they need a solution here and now and don’t want to delay communication. In this regard, industries like health, legal, travel, and emergency services are a perfect fit.

At the same time, there are industries where pay-per-call lead generation is rare: online retail, subscription-based services, high-end retail items, and other industries where customers can make purchases online or need in-person verification before the purchase.

How To Set Up Call-Only Ad Campaigns in Google Ads [Step-by-Step Instructions]

If you’ve never set up call campaigns in Google Ads, you’ve landed right. Follow the guide below step-by-step to launch your first pay-per-call Call-Only campaign.

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First, sign in to your Google Ads account:

In your Google Ads account, navigate to Goals->Summary->New Conversion Action:

Select what conversions you want to track – in our case, phone calls – and the source of the phone calls you’d like to track (in our case, “Calls from ads using call extensions or call-only ads”).

Here’s how different call sourcing options can affect pay-per-call campaigns:

Calls from ads using call extensions or call-only ads	Tracks calls made directly from your ads, while call extensions allow you to add a pay-per-call number to your ads so users can make a call directly from the search results.
Calls to a phone number on your website	Sends the clicker to your website first, from where they make a call. The advantage of this method is that you can accurately attribute calls with Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI), displaying different phone numbers to users of different demographics while redirecting them on the fly to the same destination (on the user’s side, nothing happens).
Clicks on your number on your mobile website	Tracks phone calls on mobile websites by the provided number. Works the same as “Calls to a phone number on your website,” except that it focuses on mobile users.

Specify your conversion name – for example, “call-only ads and call extensions” – and select “Use the same value for each conversion” in the Value tab:

In “Count,” choose “One” if you want to count several calls from the same customer as one conversion. For pay-per-call ads, this model is the best; however, if you were to count sales, then it would be reasonable to count every sale.

In “Call length,” specify the duration of a call that will count as a conversion. For example, if you set the call length to 30 seconds, you won’t have to pay for shorter calls. The optimal “Call length” is within 30 to 120 seconds, depending on how much time you typically need to convert callers.

In the “Click-through conversion window,” set for how long you want to count a call as a conversion after the user clicks on your ads. This feature works similarly to “Call Length” – only the calls made within the specified deadline will count as a conversion, and you will not have to pay for other calls.

Choose your attribution model between data-driven and last-click attribution:

• Data-driven attribution calculates the contribution of each ad based on your account data
• Last-click attribution attributes the conversion to the last-clicked advertisement

Click “Create and continue->Done:”

Now, you are ready to create a new Call-Only campaign.

To start, navigate to “Campaigns->New Campaign:”

Choose the objective for your campaign: Leads or Sales.

Make sure “Phone call leads” is your conversion goal, and click Continue:

Select “Search” as your campaign type:

Mark “Phone calls” as your conversion goal, and type in your website phone number:

Give a name to your campaign and click “Continue.”

Choose “Conversions” as your bidding type and set a target cost per action to specify how much you want to pay for each conversion. It would be reasonable to put your CTA value at a significantly lower value than your profit per call.

After choosing “Conversions,” click “Next.”

Mark “Include Google search partners” if you want your ads to appear on Google partner websites.

Now, the targeting kicks in. Choose locations for which you want your ads to display.

• If you drive traffic globally, go with “All countries and territories.”
• If you generate phone calls nationwide, choose “United States.”

Likewise, you can use “Enter another location” to cherry-pick the locations and radiuses you want to target.

In “Languages,” select your target languages. English is the default one:

In “Audience Segments,” you can check the statistics for your target audiences. In the search box, type in your target keyword to see the engagement for this market:

Choose whether you want to target broad keywords or matching keywords with your ads. Broad keywords will drive more traffic, while matching keywords will generate high-intent phone calls.

In “More settings,” you can set brand restrictions and – more importantly – choose the convenient ads schedule so your ads display when you can process the calls. For example, you can choose ads to display Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Once done, click “Next”

Now, you can start creating your ad groups.

Type in your target keyword – for example, “auto insurance” – and click “Get keyword suggestions” to get popular keywords for which you can optimize your ads. Among these keywords, select the most relevant ones.

If you want to show ads to people who are searching for related keywords, you can upgrade your keywords to a broad match. However, it might be risky, depending on how much you pay for a phone call (for expensive calls, you might only be interested in high-intent, relevant callers).

Likewise, you can add more keywords from the keywords suggested by Google Ads based on the analysis of your current keywords, search trends, user behavior, and more. But then again, when increasing the number of keywords for your ads, you must ensure these keywords are relevant.

In “Final URL” and “Verification URL,” enter the landing page or website where you want your callers to go as an alternative to making a call. Ensure the phone number on this landing page or website is the same as in your ad.

Set your ad’s display path, headlines, business name, and description lines (you can choose two separate keywords for Headline 1 and Headline 2).

Overall, there are no hard rules regarding how the ad must look – the main criteria is that the ad clearly explains your offer and entices the viewer to make a call.

In “Conversion Action,” you can choose a standard “Call from ads” or your own conversion action.

Click “Done” to finish creating an ad and create more if needed. If you’re launching the campaign for the first time, it makes sense to create several small-budget ads to see what format drives more traffic. You may need at least two or three ads for effective testing.

Once you’ve created all your ads, click “Next.”

Set the average daily budget for your campaign and click “Next”

In the left column, you will see your campaign optimization score and weekly estimates for your ads: conversions, CPA, and campaign cost. Note that these are estimates, not real figures. That said, if you don’t like what you see, get back and reconfigure your ads.

Once done, click “Publish campaign.”

Congratulations! Your campaign is now live.

If you need more ad groups for different keywords, get back to the “Ad groups” menu.

Last but not least, if you want to fully control your budget, go to “Tools->Bid strategies” to see your minimum and maximum bid limits:

The Advantages of Call-Only Ads for Pay-Per-Call Marketing

Immediate Connection	Call-only ads are great for impulse purchases. For example, a user searching for a restaurant on Google Maps is likely to convert when seeing a relevant ad. You can strike while the iron is hot, especially local businesses.
Customer Tracking	Call-only ads provide some call tracking features – call type, location, duration, conversions, etc. – that you can expand by integrating advanced call tracking software.
Control Over the Process	By choosing the keywords, display time, and budget for your call-only ads, you are always in the driver’s seat of your campaigns. You can test various ad groups or change campaign parameters whenever needed.
100% Call Answer Rate	You cannot control web leads (for example, you can’t predict when a lead fills out a form), but it’s different for phone calls. You can choose call-only ads to display only during working hours, guaranteeing you can answer all inbound calls.
High Conversion Rates	Callers usually have more purchase intent than web leads, making them easier to convert. Likewise, a direct conversation allows a sales rep to influence the caller, increase the check, cross-sell, etc.

But then again, you must use call-only ads smartly to overcome their limited visibility and higher cost. For this reason, it might be best to kick things off with a minimal budget and several ad formats so you can track ad performance and choose the most cost-effective ads.

The Tech Stack You Need to Make Your Call-Only Ads Effective

You cannot unroll your pay-per-call advertising campaigns manually. Even though Google Ads provides some basic tracking features, you can only realize your full pay-per-call business potential if you employ an advanced affiliate tech stack like Phonexa.

Here are the call management products that will improve your pay-per-call marketing:

• Call Logic – call management software
• LMS Sync – web lead management software
• Lynx – click tracking software
• Cloud PBX – cloud-based phone system

All these products work in sync at Phonexa, but let’s review them separately in detail.

Call Logic – The Core Product for Pay-Per-Call Management

Whether you’re buying or selling phone calls, you need to know your clients well to consistently choose the best partners and deals on the market. With Call Logic, you can track your phone calls from A to Z while distributing them to the optimal internal or external buyer. Moreover, you can transfer call insights in real-time to the live operator who handles the call.

Here are the main features you get with Call Logic:

• Accurate call attribution
• Custom call routing
• Tracking call, caller, and agent performance insights
• Predictive modeling

Call Logic allows you to configure the call routing tree of any complexity, factoring in parameters like the price per lead, location, language, age, purchase history, and agent availability and performance. For example, you can route the most profitable callers to the best-performing sales representatives.

 

Finally, you don’t have to commit to testing your campaigns in the real market – instead, you can simulate outcomes with predictive modeling and pick the winners. This way, you can safely expand into related niches without premature actions.

LMS Sync – The Core Product for Web Leads

LMS Sync processes web leads, but it’s no less valuable to call-reliant businesses that also convert users on their websites. It’s no secret that many callers convert on a website and vice versa, and LMS Sync helps get the most out of these switches.

 

LMS Sync processes web leads the way Call Logic processes phone calls, unlocking the customer journey from top to bottom while collecting marketable data and allowing advertisers and affiliates to secure the best deal that is currently on the market.

Lynx – Tracking Click, Impressions, and Conversion Rates

As your users click on your ads, you’d like to know who these users are, where they come from, and how their journey evolves before, during, and after the phone call. With Lynx, you are in full control of the caller journey, which means you can generate the right calls for your advertisers or select the right affiliates to buy the traffic you need.

 

Cloud PBX – Dedicated Cloud-Based Phone System for Pay-Per-Call Campaigns

While Call Logic is the foundational technology for pay-per-call campaigns, Cloud PBX takes it one step further by enabling a dedicated cloud phone system for your business so you can feel safe and secure while ensuring 100% availability for your customers.

Cloud PBX comes with inbound and outbound calling and – most importantly – call scoring to track agent performance and conversation on the keyword level. At the same time, you get the same smooth call routing, tracking, and analytics that you get with Call Logic.

 

Grow Your Pay-Per-Call Marketing with Phonexa

The four mentioned pay-per-call products are great on their own, but they’re even greater when combined with the other four Phonexa products for call and web lead management. For example, adding HitMetrix into the mix will allow you to reveal complex on-site interaction patterns that might have gone unnoticed.

And so on. The best result is usually achieved when all eight products work together for your pay-per-call success. This is why they are coming together as one bundle.

 

Here are the eight proprietary solutions you get at a single price starting at $100 a month (online price calculator):

 

Get your all-in-one pay-per-call software suite now, or book a demo to learn more about Phonexa.

Frequently Asked Questions

When should I launch a Call-Only advertising campaign?

Google Ads Call-Only campaigns are advantageous for businesses that want to drive phone calls directly without sending customers to their website: local restaurants, repair shops, real estate agents, emergency services, home service providers, and appointment-based businesses.

Where will my Call-Only ads display?

Your call-only ads will display primarily in Google Search results on mobile and desktop devices that allow making a call. Likewise, call-only ads can be displayed on Google Maps (users searching for local services can instantly make a call), Google Display Network, Google My Business, YouTube (during video ads), and in-app campaigns.

How do I get more calls from Call-Only Ads?

To drive more calls with pay-per-call Google ads, you can use three features in Google Ads: “Broad match keywords,” “Upgrade your keywords to broad match,” and “Add more keywords.” All these features allow you to display ads for similar keywords that, however, do not exactly match your target keywords.

Are Call-Only ads and click-to-call ads the same?

Google call-only ads and Google click-to-call ads are not the same, although they serve similar purposes. The difference is that call-only ads primarily trigger a phone call, while click-to-call Google ads offer other interactions like, for example, navigating to a website.