How to Improve Your Facebook Click-to-Call Ad Results

Rapid growth in online marketing tactics and technologies has given consumers more opportunities than ever for getting in touch with your business, from email and social media to live chat and user forums.

But for some would-be customers, nothing beats a phone call. Complex, multi-part questions, for example, are often best worked out person-to-person in conversation. Even quick queries benefit from the immediate answers a call can provide (versus the hours that may be spent waiting to hear back through other channels).

Facebook’s “Click-to-Call” ads can serve as the bridge that connects you with these highly-engaged consumers, but the program isn’t as intuitive as some of the platform’s other offerings. Keep the following tips in mind in order to improve your campaign results.

Pay Special Attention to Your Targeting Options

One notable challenge with Click-to-Call ads is that Facebook will automatically optimize your campaigns for reach, rather than by targeting consumers who are highly likely to click your ad’s CTA. That means you’ve got to do the heavy lifting when it comes to selecting the right targeting options for your campaign.

Here are a few to consider:

• Limit your ads to only appear to Facebook users on mobile devices. After all, most people can’t Click-to-Call from a desktop computer.
• If you have a brick-and-mortar business, target customers in your specific geographic area, using past transaction data to understand how likely consumers are to travel to your location.
• Set up the Facebook pixel so that you can target your campaign to Facebook users who have visited your website. This increases the likelihood that they’ll be sufficiently engaged to reach out to your business.
• Limit your campaign display times according to your business’s opening hours or the times at which it tends to have the highest call volume. If you’re only open from 9-5, for instance, don’t run Click-to-Call ads at 8pm.

Test Your Campaign Creatives

As with any other type of Facebook Ads campaign, ongoing testing is critical to producing profitable results. And although you won’t be able to test calls-to-action (CTAs) beyond “Call Now,” you can still try different variations of:

• Your ad copy
• Your image (including whether or not you choose to use one)
• Whether or not your ad includes a website URL (as well as the URL you choose to display)
• A separate display link
• The headline text that appears next to your CTA
• The news feed link description text that appears below the CTA headline

Begin with educated guesses on what’s most likely to resonate with your target customers, based on what you know about them from other marketing campaigns. But keep a careful eye on your results. Have multiple ad variations at the ready so that you can begin a new test as soon as you’ve concluded each one.

Track Your Call Performance

That said, as you’re watching your results for testing purposes, keep in mind that, although Facebook will record each Click-to-Call produced by your ads as a conversion, not all calls are created equal. If you’re receiving calls from prospects who aren’t a good fit for your products or services, you’ve effectively paid to receive spam calls.

To really improve your Click-to-Call ad results, you need to look beyond Facebook’s reporting features and tie your call performance to any revenue they produced. The easiest way to do this is typically through your CRM, using an integration with a VoIP solution that allows you to identify which calls that were produced from Facebook went on to result in closed deals.

Not all companies will have the infrastructure needed for this level of analysis. If yours doesn’t, it’ll be up to you to decide whether or not you’re generating sufficient performance data within your Facebook Ads account to tell if your campaigns are meeting expectations. If you’re seeing increased call volume, but not increased revenue, this could be a sign that you need to invest in additional tracking technology.

Account for Rogue Callers

Finally, even if you do go all-out on your Click-to-Call tracking setup, bear in mind that you may have some ad viewers who go rogue and call your business without clicking on your ad.

Imagine that you see a Click-to-Call ad for a business you’re interested in contacting, but you aren’t able to call at that very moment. Instead, you jot down their company name, and plan to look them up online and call later when you’re free.

Although your Facebook Ads campaign technically produced this call, it won’t get credit for it unless you make a point to ask new callers how they found you. This is a good best practice to follow in general, but it’s also an important way to further improve your Facebook Click-to-Call Ad results.