How to Set Up Website Phone Call Tracking in Google Ads Using Google Tag Manager – Main Street ROI

Watch our latest video and learn how to set up website phone call tracking in Google Ads using Google Tag Manager.

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Video Transcription

0:04
hi everyone it’s Phil Frost from Main
0:06
Street ROI in today’s video our ad
0:09
analyst Riley is going to walk through
0:10
how to set up website phone call
0:12
tracking and Google ads using Google’s
0:14
tag manager tool
0:16
this is absolutely critical to set up
0:18
correctly so that you’re able to see how
0:20
many phone calls you receive from your
0:21
ad campaigns
0:23
and not only that you want to know which
0:25
keywords in your account are driving
0:26
phone calls and which keywords are just
0:28
wasting your ad budget
0:30
if you haven’t set this up yet or you’re
0:33
not confident it’s set up correctly then
0:34
watch this video right now
0:37
hey this is Riley with Main Street ROI
0:40
and today’s tip is going to be on how to
0:42
set up phone call tracking on your
0:44
website so this is really really
0:46
important especially for lead-based
0:49
businesses because obviously you want to
0:51
know you know are your Google ads
0:53
driving phone calls from the website so
0:56
in order to do that we are going to use
0:58
we’re going to set up a conversion goal
1:00
in Google ads and then we’re going to
1:02
use Google tag manager in order to
1:04
install that tracking code onto the
1:06
website so in order to do this you do
1:08
need to have Google tag manager
1:10
installed on your website that is
1:12
something that will typically require a
1:14
developer because it requires installing
1:16
that script on the site as long as
1:18
that’s installed then you should be good
1:21
so first of all I’m going to go to the
1:23
the account view here and select all
1:26
campaigns and go down to settings
1:28
to account settings and then make sure
1:32
that call reporting is turned on
1:34
so that’s an important setting and then
1:36
we will go to tools and settings
1:38
conversions
1:41
and we’re going to create a new
1:43
conversion action so this is going to be
1:45
phone calls and we’re going to select
1:47
calls to a number on your website
1:51
we will just call it calls
1:56
um website
1:59
now going to select a conversion value
2:01
here but you could put that in so if you
2:03
did want to if a phone call for your
2:06
business was worth a certain dollar
2:08
value then you could put that in here
2:10
I only want to count one in case they
2:13
call back multiple times
2:15
and then here is um
2:19
two things so
2:21
in order for website call tracking to
2:23
work Google is going to apply what’s
2:25
called a Google forwarding number or gfn
2:28
to the number on your site so basically
2:30
what’s going to happen
2:32
for this display number here we’re going
2:35
to put in the number that’s actually on
2:36
the site so this is just an example
2:40
but let’s say that was the this was my
2:42
business number that’s actually on the
2:43
website that’s telling Google find this
2:45
number and replace it with a Google
2:47
forwarding number that’s going to allow
2:49
Google to track that phone call and then
2:53
what what the destination number is one
2:56
once Google does that and applies a
2:58
Google forwarding number what’s the
2:59
number that we would like it forwarded
3:01
to
3:02
so this is where if you have a tracking
3:05
number this is where that would go so
3:07
let’s say we do have a tracking number
3:09
and it’s
3:11
555
3:14
okay
3:15
so in this case uh this is our actual
3:18
business number that’s on the website
3:20
Google is going to find this number
3:21
replace it with a Google forwarding
3:23
number that Google forwarding number
3:25
will then forward the call to our
3:27
tracking number
3:28
which will then forward the call to our
3:30
actual business number where someone
3:31
will pick up the phone
3:34
uh call length threshold so this is this
3:36
is how long you want the phone call to
3:38
last in order for it to count as a
3:40
conversion so I typically will recommend
3:43
starting lower like maybe 10 to 15
3:46
seconds
3:47
just to give the Google ads campaign
3:50
kind of some some data to get some early
3:52
conversions to uh to kind of know what
3:54
to optimize for and then later on you
3:57
can increase this to 30 seconds or 60
3:59
seconds whatever threshold indicates
4:02
that it’s a quality lead
4:04
uh 30 days that’s good and then
4:06
attribution just you know how much
4:08
credit goes to the Google ads data
4:10
driven is the new attribution model so
4:12
I’d recommend going with that
4:15
click create continue oh it’s it’s going
4:17
to require that I put in an actual
4:20
number okay
4:24
um let’s try this one
4:34
okay and we’re going to use Google tag
4:36
manager okay so this is where we’ll
4:38
switch over to tag manager
4:40
and we are going to select so I’m in the
4:44
tags view here
4:45
we’re going to select tag configuration
4:48
and I just do a search for Paul
4:52
so specifically this tag is called
4:54
Google ads calls from website conversion
4:56
so we’ll select that
4:58
this is that display number
5:02
that we are going to have Google
5:04
replaced with a Google forwarding number
5:07
which was that and then conversion ID
5:09
and then this is just copy and paste
5:13
pretty straightforward
5:16
conversion label
5:22
cool and the trigger is real easy we’re
5:24
just going to select all pages page view
5:30
and hit save
5:35
and
5:36
that is our calls from website goal and
5:40
then last thing we have to do is just
5:41
publish the changes and we are good to
5:43
go so that is how to set up website call
5:46
tracking using uh Google tag manager for
5:49
your Google ads if you have any
5:50
questions about this please reach out to
5:52
us we specialize in helping small
5:54
businesses with their with their
5:55
advertising so this is what we do and we
5:57
want to help so please reach out if you
5:59
have any questions