hi, i have a real estate office. i've been running ads for three months, spending a serious amount each month, but i don't know if the calls i get are from the ads or organic.
when i ask the agency, they send me click counts. they say clicks increased but my phone rings the same amount.
how do i figure this out? thanks in advance.
Your problem is very common and the solution is simpler than you think: use a separate phone number for ads.
Make the number in the ads different from the regular number on your site. Every call to that number is from the ad. After a month you'll have exact figures, no more guessing.
Second step: ask the agency for call and form counts, not clicks. Clicks are an intermediate metric, not your business metric. If the first line of the report doesn't say "X calls came in," the report is incomplete.
Measurement method: use a separate number with the same budget for three months, record monthly call counts. In the fourth month, pause ads for two weeks and see the difference.
Doki · Incident response support · 2024
We did the same thing, the separate number really works, i recommend it.
We also kept a simple log of calls in the first month, asking where people heard about us, which taught us a lot.
Doki · Infrastructure migration · 2023
The agency sending clicks might not be malicious, most agencies report their own dashboard metrics instead of the client's business metrics.
Tell them what you want to measure, if they can't measure it, then there's a problem.
I went through the same thing. If rankings stay the same but clicks drop, the issue isn't your page, but the search result appearance.
If I were you, I'd go this route.
We've heard this a lot but it never happened like that for us. The harder it is to reverse a decision the slower you should make it.
This question comes up often on the forum, so I'll leave a consolidated answer: start with an inventory — what you have, where it's located, and who has access. Every measure taken without an inventory leaves an unseen door open.
This is exactly what we experienced. tbh everyone rushing into advertising gets stuck at the same point.
Thats all, sorry if I went on too long.
I don't think this advice fits everyone. Map listings bring more business than blog posts for most local businesses.
When you try to change everything at once nothing settles. This is my opinion, I'm not claiming it's absolute truth.
I've been dealing with this for a long time. Discussing numbers without verifying the measurement setup is a waste of time.
A page that answers one question works better than one touching on five topics. If I were you, I'd go this route.
I didn't know that. Ranking is the result, search intent is the input. Look at intent first.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
I think it's hard to be that definitive about advertising. Updating an existing page yields faster results than creating a new one.
Most time waste accumulates in tasks waiting for approval. If you post the result here, it will help others too.
I agree with this. Mistakes made on the advertising side are usually reversible but expensive.
I'm also curious if anyone does it differently.
Thanks a lot, I'll try it today. Merge instead of deleting; deleted content doesn't come back.
Just leaving this note it might be useful.
If I understood correctly you're saying: If you get three different answers on a topic, the question was asked wrong.
A page that answers one question works better than one touching on five topics. Proven by experience.