Mobile Marketing Question: Are Click-to-Call Ads Effective?

In today’s mobile era, anytime-anywhere device searching is the norm. So top of every marketer’s mind is — do click-to-call ads work?

Mobile search is more popular than ever.

Novices, experts, young, and old: millions of people use smartphones to find what they are looking for online. Let’s say you want to book a flight and you started searching on your smartphone. This search leads you to a link with a little phone icon and you clicked on it. You reached directly to a representative. You could book your ticket instantly – much easier than booking online.

This is called click-to-call.

Doesn’t it sound like a quick and easy way solution? How effective are click-to-call ads anyway? Here are some answers.

The Time on Mobile Devices Is Increasing

People are spending more time on their mobile devices every year, be it local business search, apps, music or movies. Data shows that 95% of smartphone users search for local business. That means every company needs to focus on engaging with customers via smartphones.

If the ultimate goal is drive possible sales and leads, click-to-call is likely the answer.

Click-to-call advertisements work miracles. To get a prompt solution, people still want to call. Click-to-call ads drive an average of ten million calls every week for Google advertisers. That number is rising.

Mobile Calls to Businesses Are On The Rise Mainly Because of Click-to-Call Ads

According to BIA/Kelsey, calls to businesses from smartphones will reach 162 billion by 2019.

New ad formats are across a variety of channels are being designed to drive calls from mobile calls.

Calls Results in More Conversions (A Lot More)

A study by Convirza shows that leads generated from inbound phone calls are 12 to 15 times more likely to convert then leads from web-based forms.

So the more phone calls you can generate through mobile marketing, the more business your company will win. We’ve mentioned this statistic elsewhere, but 70% of mobile searches lead to action within one hour.

Calls Are Better Than Clicks

We have multiple resources that explain exactly why calls are more valuable than clicks.

Smartphone users are more likely to use click-to-call after a search than clicking on a website link.

Because people are comfortable with phones, they are more likely to click on phone numbers to initiate a call than to click on an unknown link.

With gigantic increases in mobile ad spend, mobile is here to stay. Going forward, for many businesses, click-to-call will definitely be the most effective way of advertising. There is very little room for content on smartphone screens, thus standard forms won’t work. Placing a call using smartphone search could be an easy and quick solution.