the PPC Book|Pay Per Click Blog | Long Tail Thoughts in a Short Tail World

Call Tracking has become a very important part of PPC campaign strategy with many of my clients over the last year or two. This is especially true among the most chronically underserved business segment in the SEM industry - the successful small to mid sized regional business. This business often relies on the phone as the main booking mechanism for revenue/appointments, etc. Yet they are too small to pay high end SEM management fees, but large enough to spend a fair amount on paid search.

To date I have employed Voicestar with the majority of these clients. The ability to report phone calls, numbers, and length of call are critical to demonstrating the value of this advertising medium to companies that otherwise don’t have the resources to implement an effective website, robust analytics, and some of the other luxuries afforded to larger or more web-based businesses.

Voicestar does the trick and I’ve been pleased with the service. The interface is somewhat underwhelming, but it gets the job done. I have yet to try the Adwords solution, but have noticed this teaser from Google lately. It mysteriously pops in and out of my client accounts and I can never find it to go back and reference it. Either way, for those who haven’t seen it here’s what it looks like.

I’m interested to hear from those of you have have given it a run. Let me know what you’re finding. I’m also interested in what this means to the Voicestar folks. Yet another web analytics niche that Google is trying to offer for free?