Over the past few years, we’ve developed a love affair with CallRail and tracking customer calls in particular. It is one of those tools that no matter what the cost, we never complain about paying the bill. At this point, I would say it is one of the top 3 tools in our arsenal of online marketing tools.

CallRail is what you make it. You can slap it on a website and just watch it, or really take advantage of it by integrating it into all online and offline platforms.

In an optimal scenario, CallRail (or call tracking) should be integrated into:

  • your website
  • social profiles
  • Google My Business
  • online advertising
  • offline advertising
  • business cards
  • online properties

Wouldn’t it be nice to look at your company at the end of the year and look at a dashboard that tells you where your best calls come from?

How Can I Track My Google My Business / Google Maps Phone Calls

Believe it or not, this is a question that we get almost every day from many different people. It is a very simple question, with an easy solution.

Today we are going to look at one piece of the pie: Google My Business or “GMB” for short. GMB can be a bit tricky at times. People will search for your business and sometimes click to call right on their mobile device, other times copy the number down for later, or just punch the number right into their office line.

When this happens, it introduces a problem: Google My Business Insights / Analytics won’t pick up on the phone call. GMB really only registers a call (or click) if you click directly click to call on the mobile app. With call tracking, you can guarantee that you will accurately track your caller regardless of how, or when they call you.

Setting Up Call Tracking

Before you go any further, you need a way to track your calls. There are a lot of solutions out there for this, we recommend CallRail. CallRail has been around forever, has excellent customer support, and works flawlessly. Go to CallRail, grab a new account, and make a tracking number.

This is now your magic tracking number. Anytime anyone calls this number it will be tracked along with a ton of other meta information such as:

  • caller ID
  • phone number
  • duration
  • location
  • much more

Most businesses setup a tracking number for each different marketing channel. Examples include:

  • Google My Business
  • Website header
  • Website footer
  • PPC
  • Social Media
  • Business Card

Some businesses have dozens or even hundreds of tracking numbers depending on the size and number of locations.

Integrating Call Tracking With Google My Business

Let’s take a look at an average Google My Business snippet:

Now let’s peek “under the hood” at this Google My Business dashboard. For most businesses, they simply add their primary phone number to their Google My Business dashboard. While there isn’t anything inherently wrong with this, it is impossible to differentiate what marketing source (SEO, ads, offline) your calls came from.

 

Analyzing the Data

After some time elapses, your CallRail dashboard will generally start to propagate and populate with information. In this case, this was a client we inherited 1-2 months ago so this was already done. Business owners love to see what marketing channels are working, what isn’t working, and expanded details. This is also great for agencies so you can say, “see look, it is working!.” ?

Analyzing the data is quite straightforward. If you have multiple tracking numbers, simple change the “source” to your GMB number to see all of your calls. This is particularly useful since we can’t always count on the accuracy of Google My Business’s reporting. It is good, not great and the numbers don’t always add up.

 

If you are interested in working with us, please reach out to us on our contact page and we’ll get in touch with you right away.