Here’s a question worth asking if you run ads for your Denver business: when the phone rings, do you know which calls came from those ads?
For a lot of service businesses, the phone is where the money is. Roofers, plumbers, HVAC companies, dentists and auto shops get far more phone calls than form fills. But most ad dashboards are great at counting clicks and not so great at telling you whether a click turned into a conversation. So you end up looking at a number of clicks, a dollar amount spent, and a gut feeling about whether it’s working.
Call tracking closes that gap.
What call tracking actually is
It’s simpler than it sounds. A call tracking service gives you a separate phone number to use in a specific place, like your Google Ads or your Facebook ads. When someone calls that number, it rings straight through to your main business line. Your team answers the same way they always do. The caller doesn’t notice anything different.
The difference is on your end. Because that call came in on the tracking number, you know it came from the ad. You can see when it happened, how long the call lasted, and, depending on the setup, which campaign or keyword led to it.
How we set one up for a roofing client
We set this up for a roofing client who was running ads and wanted to know what they were getting for the money. The setup was straightforward:
- We got a local tracking number from a call tracking provider.
- We set it to forward to the roofer’s existing main line, so nothing changed for the office.
- We used that number in the ads only, and left the main number everywhere else.
- We turned on call reporting so the calls showed up alongside the ad results.
Now when the owner looks at the ads, he isn’t guessing. He can see the calls the ads produced and decide where to spend from there.
A few things to get right
- Consider a local number. For a local service, a regular local number often feels more personal to callers than a toll-free one.
- Don’t swap your main number everywhere. Your Google Business Profile and your website should keep your main number as the primary one. Your name, address and phone number should match across the web, and scattering tracking numbers around can muddy that. Keep tracking numbers in the ads, where they belong.
- One number per source if you can. If you run Google Ads and Facebook ads, a separate number for each tells you which one is pulling its weight.
- Let your team know. If the system can play a quick whisper message before connecting (“Call from Google Ads”), your staff knows where the caller found you before they say hello.
- Check call recording rules. If you plan to record calls, make sure you’re following the consent rules that apply to you, and add a short notice at the start of the call.
What to do with the information
Once you have a few weeks of calls, patterns show up. Maybe one campaign brings lots of calls that are really price shoppers or wrong numbers. Maybe another brings fewer calls but they’re the jobs you actually want. Maybe calls cluster at certain times of day, which tells you when your phones need to be covered.
You don’t need fancy reports to get value here. Even a simple monthly look at “how many calls came from the ads, and how many turned into booked jobs” is far better than not knowing.
Is it worth it for a small business?
If you spend any real money on ads, it usually is. Call tracking services are generally inexpensive compared to an ad budget, and the information helps you stop paying for what isn’t working. If you don’t run ads at all, it’s less urgent. Focus on your Google Business Profile and your website first.