Mobile search is different in a lot of ways, but there’s one major factor that is overlooked by a lot of marketers: users searching from their mobile devices are, quite literally, holding a phone in their hand. This means that when your page is delivered as a search result, and you have a click to call function prominently featured, you have a very high chance of a receiving a phone call from that prospective customer. It also means that if you don’t have a click to call featured on your page, you are more than likely losing traffic to someone that does. You don’t have to take our word for it though, Google/Ipsos has just completed a study that backs up the value of click to call with some hard facts.
According to the study of 3,000 mobile search users, more than 70% of the participants clicked to call a business directly once given the option in Google’s search results. The experiment was conducted across seven verticles: food, travel, auto, local services, retail, finance, and technology. Here is how the numbers break down individually across all of those verticles:
As you can see, the numbers are high across all verticals, and local is especially important. Of course, this also applies to paid ads through Google’s AdWords program, as emphasized by Adam Grunwald:
“It’s clear from our findings that driving phone calls should still be a priority for businesses in every industry,” according to Adam Grunewald, Google’s mobile marketing manager. “Businesses can easily help mobile searchers get in touch by attaching call extensions to their mobile search ads. While the presence of the call button in organic results depends on a number of factors, you can schedule your mobile search ads and call extensions to show only at relevant times or only in specific searches.”
Are you using click to call on your AdWords ads and organic results? If you’re not sure, check with your developer today.