Click-to-call campaigns are everywhere. Your dealership is likely running several now. As such, you’re familiar with Google reports that show your click-to-call rate and cost-per-click. You likely base some of your future ad spend on these metrics. But what if I told you this is flawed data that doesn’t accurately reflect what makes your phones ring?

The fact is, there is a discrepancy between the “clicks” Google reports and actual real-life phone calls. The discrepancy is due to the mechanics of how click-to-call works. When you tap a click-to-call button, you are not instantly making a call. The number will show up on your mobile phone screen, but you have to tap again to connect the call. Between those two steps is where the discrepancy in reporting comes into play. 

Take an example from the online advertising agency StubGroup. Over a three-month period, the agency compared the number of clicks from campaigns for a wide range of client accounts to the number of phone calls Google tracked from each campaign.

It found there were 18% more clicks than calls from click-to-call campaigns. That's a significant discrepancy! Not only does that throw off conversion rates by 18%, but it also means the clients' actual average cost-per-call was 18% higher than Google metrics reported.

It’s also important to note that just because the phone rang, it doesn’t mean it was in response to that advertisement. Ads placed for variable ops still generate as much as 80% call rate for fixed ops. That means if the dealer is using click-to-call in calculating ad ROI, this data becomes unreliable, and each of those calls needs to be listened to in order to see the actual return.  

Of course, I’m not suggesting you abandon click-to-call campaigns. Far from it. What needs to change is how you measure the effectiveness of those campaigns. Instead of focusing on the number of clicks and cost-per-click, the metric that matters are real-live phone calls.

How do you measure this metric? The most effective way is with Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI). A DNI solution assigns every individual accessing your webpage a unique phone number, so you know the exact online path the consumer followed to find you. The best part is that DNI can be funneled through Google Analytics, so it's easy to track and review the results.

DNI reports actual phone calls and where they originated so you know which campaigns are delivering real phone-calls, not just clicks. This information is invaluable when it comes to planning. You can confidently shift ad spend to campaigns that trigger phone calls, and away from those that don’t.

Budget decisions should be made on sound metrics. You should set up tracking numbers and consider implementing a DNI solution so you can attribute every phone call to its original lead source. If you don’t, you may be throwing money away on campaigns that look good in Google Analytics but rarely make your phones ring.

The shift from traditional advertising to digital advertising continues to grow. Today, it’s common for 90 percent of a dealer’s budget to be spent on digital channels. Yet, it’s very difficult for most dealers to directly attribute phone calls, appointments, and sales to that ad spend. Instead, you get metrics that don’t directly correlate to customer action like cost-per-click, bounce rate, and pages per session. As a result, you don’t know which campaigns and keywords are actually working to convert customers, and which are simply sucking money like a black hole.

It’s time to think about implementing Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) so you can attribute every phone call, appointment, and sale to its original lead source. Only this level of transparency will separate the high-performing campaigns from the weak, and ensure you’re maximizing your ad spend.

DNI is not a new solution. It’s been around for a while as a way to track phone calls from online referral sources and keywords. What is new are advanced capabilities that make DNI even more powerful. Today’s solutions assign every individual consumer accessing your webpage a unique number, so you know exactly the online route they took to find you. This information is funneled through Google Analytics for easy review and follow-up action. The phone tracking capabilities even record calls and capture how a call was handled for training opportunities.

This complete campaign visibility cuts through those metrics that don’t directly correlate to customer action so you can understand what’s truly going on and spend your money where it matters most. For example, I know of a dealership that was spending $10,000 per month on Google campaigns. Over that entire ad spend, Google Analytics showed the dealership received over 5,000 clicks, three pages per session, and a total cost-per-click of under $2. Sounds pretty good, right?

A deeper analysis using DNI unveiled that the metrics that really matter. It turned out that over 86 percent of all conversions happened in the Google Ads Campaign, centered around dealership general terms, like its name and location. This tells us that consumers were already planning to contact the dealership and essentially using Google as a phonebook. Spending on the campaign represented less than 14 percent of that $10,000 total ad spend.

The remaining $8,400 was spent on Google campaigns that ended up returning one phone call, 10 chats, and three completed lead forms. That’s over $600 per conversion! And that doesn’t even include agency fees. With this insight, the dealer shifted its ad spend away from campaigns that were eating money with little return and toward what was working.

Adopting new advertising processes can help you do the same. First, set up goals for all the different ways consumers can convert on your website. Second, set up tracking tools such as DNI through Google Analytics. Finally, regularly review and refine your plan.

I recommend reviewing campaigns at a minimum on a weekly basis. With DNI tied into your Google Analytics, its relatively simple to attribute the numbers that matter – phone calls, appointments, and sales – to specific keywords and campaigns. Then you can drop the campaigns and keywords that aren’t working and re-allocate that money to your top performers. Continual review also opens up opportunities to expand your reach with new keywords that can put your dealership in front of a whole new target market.

In our digital world it makes sense to funnel the majority of advertising dollars to digital channels. But don’t get caught up in the cost-per-click and bounce rate metrics that don’t directly correlate to customer action. Set a goal of attributing every phone call, appointment, and sale to its original lead source, because if you don’t, you may be throwing money away every day.