Here’s another way you can track the effectiveness of local Google ad campaigns for your retailers. Google is starting to add phone tracking numbers for AdWord campaigns.
When a retailer setups their AdWords campaign (or you do it for them) Google now offers a phone number (free) that can be added to the text. The phone number is unique to the campaign and rings to the retailers store but Google counts the call and provides other metrics, like call duration, in the Google analytics reporting.
We’ve been using call tracking for sometime in our local campaigns (including recording the call) and it’s made a big difference in the ROI measurement for every campaign we’ve run.
Google Local just gets better and better.