Transcript
Joe Troyer: What’s the best way to calculate ROI for Google Local Search? And to be frank, this is really a continuation of the last question. The last question was, “Would you use GMB insights over a paid service such as Bright Local?” And the resounding answer was hell no, but I dropped the F-bomb, right? You’ve got to track everything.
Joe Troyer: So what’s the best way to calculate ROI for Google Local Search? First and foremost is you’ve got to make sure that you’re using call tracking. Use call tracking in your Google My Business listing, and that’s going to help you guys understand the call volume that’s coming from Google My Business.
Joe Troyer: But then you’ve still got Google Organic, so what you’re going to want to do is you’re going to want to run a tracking number, specifically when a referral comes to your site from Google, you’re going to want to show them a tracking number just for Google Local, right? Or Google Organic. So that’s secondary.
Joe Troyer: And then third, if you’re running any type of pay-per-click advertising, you want to have a third tracking medium or way to track the calls that are coming in from pay-per-click, for example through Google Ads, which used to be Google AdWords.
Joe Troyer: So there are two different ways, just so you guys know, so we get the elephant out of the room, there are two different ways that you can run call tracking specifically for Google PPC. You could just have a phone number, one phone number for Google Ads, for Google PPC, that all the calls get forwarded to, and then you’re just tracking it that way. If you’re doing that, and you’re spending any real amount of money on Google pay-per-click advertising, I’ve got to tell you that you’re missing the boat. You’re missing it completely.
Joe Troyer: The crazy thing about Google PPC advertising, paid advertising with Google Ads, and an effective call tracking setup and the proper call tracking setup, is you’re going to be able to dial down your conversions and your tracking to what campaign, what ad, and what keyword phrase ultimately brought you the call.
Joe Troyer: That type of granular detail for tracking calls doesn’t really exist anywhere but Google pay-per-click. Can you track Facebook ads if you put a tracking phone number in it? Yes, but you’re not going to be able to track which audience, which landing page, which ad brought that. Does that make sense? So, at the end of the day, if you’re spending money on Google pay-per-click, you better be using all the tracking that you can so you can figure out what’s working and what’s not.
Joe Troyer: There’s a famous quote by the godfather of marketing and advertising that basically states he would be a very wealthy man if he only knew which part of his marketing was working. There’s no way to get a more granular level then than Google pay-per-click and Google Ads, specifically using call tracking and making use of a pool of phone numbers. So that’s kind of like the little keyword phrase you’ve got to know. Or you could do keyword-level call tracking with Google Ads, and now actually they’re rolling out the same thing, most of the major players out there are rolling out the same thing for Bing.
Joe Troyer: So let’s step through this one by one. Definitely, if you’re doing Google Maps, we’ll just say GMB for Google My Business, we’re going to do a dedicated phone number. We’re going to say a dedicated, instead of phone number, call tracking number. Then we’re also going to track Google Organic, dedicated refer tracking. And this is just … Let’s say call tracking number … And basically guys, the way that this one works is this is just looking at did the visitor come from Google Organic? That’s it, there’s no keyword level here.
Joe Troyer: Then, if you’re tracking Google, or if you’re using Bing for example, you would want to use call tracking for Bing. Most people … I don’t even think it’s probably worth tracking Bing Organic, but if you’re doing Bing paid, and you’re spending money on the clicks, I would suggest using call tracking for that. And again, all the big, major players have rolled out what they call like the keyword-level call tracking. And again, that is just that super, super granular level call tracking that you can’t really get anywhere else besides Bing and Google pay-per-click. So let’s say Bing PPC, and let’s say Google Ads PPC. And again here, we would do the same thing.
Joe Troyer: This is all assuming, though, that we want to track phone calls, and for local businesses, at the end of the day there’s probably a 99% chance that their primary way of doing business is going to be via the phone. So this is going to make sense for all of them, and we should set this up.
Joe Troyer: The other thing, though, that we should set up is, is web form tracking, just a conversion web form. We all have them on our website, even if we try not to advertise them or show them, because they don’t work as well as a phone number, and our clients don’t do as well following up with them, all those reasons. But you should definitely have web form tracking done. And your web form tracking should be set up so that you can see your conversions for web forms inside of Google Ads, that you can see the tracking inside of Bing, that you can see the tracking for Google Organic, and this would happen inside of Google Analytics.
Joe Troyer: So this is the best way, and it’s not a perfect way, folks, it’s far from perfect, but this is the best way to really make sure that you’re tracking everything, so that you have the best data set possible, so that you can calculate an ROI for Google Local Search.
