11 ‘Cons’ of Google Call Tracking

As you know, Google recently announced that they will launch AdWords call tracking.

Here’s the gist: Google will provide a call tracking number that will appear on the landing page of every AdWords campaign. There will be one phone number per click, or session. This allows marketers to marry specific clicks to phone calls. And it allows Google to get credit for driving those phone call conversions.

This service is free and it is only available for AdWords.

11 Things Google Call Tracking Doesn’t Do

In other words, if you drive phone calls via organic search, Google display network, Bing, direct mail, LinkedIn, referrals, affiliates, etc., you can’t use Google call tracking. 

1) Call lead scoring

What happened on the call? How high quality was the lead? Advanced call tracking solutions provide a lead score for every inbound call.

2) Conversion rate tracking

Did the caller convert to an appointment, a sale, or a reservation? Our research found that 29% of all the calls we analyzed in Q2 resulted in a conversion. Without a deep call analytics tool, you won’t know your call conversion rate.

3) Sales skills

How well did the agent perform on the phone. Stuff like this matters.

4) Missed opportunity data

We have agency partners that send reports to clients—or automate alerts—whenever there is a missed sales opportunity at their business. These are good leads that didn’t convert.

5) Other deep call analytics

Third party call tracking solutions can tell you what happened on call conversations. Google can tell you a call was made.

6) Webhooks and marketing automation

Webhooks and marketing automation based on data from phone call conversations is not available with Google. 

7) Google’s call tracking is ONLY for AdWords.

If someone is doing ANY other marketing, they can’t use Google’s call tracking

– The numbers don’t work for calls generated from Bing, Yahoo, or ANY other source including Google’s display network or Google organic search. AdWords only. AdWords only.

– This means that if a company wants call tracking from Google for AdWords AND call tracking from for organic search, direct mail, or ANYTHING else, they will have to manage two different call tracking platforms. Not good.

8) Call recording

Many marketers and agency clients rely on call recording.

9) Routing, IVR, whisper tone etc.

These are sophisticated telephony features on which marketers rely. Google’s call tracking doesn’t offer them.

10) Swap out more than one number on a page at a time.

This is useful on a page that has various locations of a business.

11) It can’t pass conversion data to other bid management platforms (Acquisio, Kenshoo, etc.)

It only passes conversion data to AdWords. Which means that you can’t use other tools to set up your AdWords campaigns (which most medium and large companies do).