Many family law practices dabble in Google AdWords. Doing a Google search for “family law” will bring up a bunch of ads down the right-hand column for family law practices in your local area, along with some national document preparation services.

If you’re running the ads, you know why I say “dabble.” We run the ads, we wonder whether they’re working, and then we stop running the ads. Then we start again when some new salesperson comes along and gives us a pitch. On and off and on and off. All the while, we’re wondering whether it’s working.

The salespeople all claim that the ads are measurable. They say we can tell exactly how well they’re working because we get reports about how many clicks the ad generated.

Who cares about clicks?

Clicks are nice. They make me feel good. It seems like something good must be happening when we see lots of clicks on the reports.

The problem is that clicks aren’t clients. We can’t deposit clicks into our checking account. Clicks won’t pay the rent.

When I expressed that anxiety to one of the salespeople, I was told not to worry. I could track the phone calls. The service I tried routed the calls to a special website and gave out a special number. The calls were then counted and recorded. I could listen to the calls and rank and rate them by listening to the conversation. We coded the calls based on whether the caller scheduled an appointment, showed up, and retained. It was all very scientific. Unfortunately, it was pretty expensive. It was also incredibly tedious and boring.

At the time of my experiment, the vendor I was using was one of the few players in the game and could charge a premium for this service.

Now Google has entered the phone call tracking business. Google isn’t recording the calls. It is, however, tracking the calls coming from your ads. Google doesn’t need to do the special website thing.

Google provides a unique number for your ad and displays it right in the ad copy. When someone dials that number, Google keeps a record of the call and notes the duration of the call. I’ve found that longer calls are what you’re seeking. A longer call tends to indicate that a meeting was scheduled. The really good news is that Google isn’t charging extra for the service.

I’ve provided a short Google Video below that explains the service (click through if you aren’t seeing the video).