CallRails is a really popular tool businesses like to use to track calls coming from various marketing campaigns. It allows them to set up a unique phone number for each marketing campaign and record the phone calls so they can listen to the quality of calls they're getting from each channel.

I come across it being used a lot for Google Ad Campaigns and I have to say, I'm not a fan. I do think it has a place, mostly in the offline world and It's fine if it's being used on the website, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm mostly referring to the CallRails Google Ad Integration which imports call conversions and form submission conversions. Disregarding the fact that CallRails has shown to have issues with accuracy when tracking Google Ad Conversions, which is bad enough, the fact that you can't track Google Ad offline conversions from calls unless they're coming from Google Ad's native call conversion tracking using Google's Dynamic Call Forwarding Numbers is the main deal breaker. If the call doesn't come through Google's Dynamic Call Forwarding Number you can't track offline conversions from that call.

Listening to recorded phone calls coming from Google Ads to determine lead quality, like one does with CallRails, is not scalable. It may work for a few calls but not if you're receiving a lot. You also aren't able to push offline conversion data, whether it's an offline sale or marketing qualified lead, back into Google Ads like you can with Google Ad's offline conversion tracking. This means you can't optimize a campaign to maximize your return on ad spend nor can you use bid strategies like Target ROAS.

The bottom line is if you're mostly doing advertising online save the money and just set up Google Ad's offline conversion tracking instead of getting CallRails. Even if you're doing a lot of offline advertising, it may not even be that great since it requires somebody to make a call from your offline advert. If they instead go to your website then it's not going to track that. You're probably better off just using a QR code that has unique UTM parameters to identify which offline advert a lead came from.