Though text-based platforms have increased, calls still dominate when it comes to reaching a business. That is why in 2015, Google began implementing call-only campaigns. With call-only campaigns, advertisers can focus solely on attracting calls to your business.

Call-only ads are especially useful for mobile campaigns, which is why call-only ads only appear on devices that can make phone calls. People are always on the go, and many times while potential customers are shopping around for the right product, they would rather call first and ask questions to a live person rather than spend time looking and reading content throughout a website. Instead of blocks of text advertisements on your phone, call-only ads typically show your brand name, website link, and a large click-based phone number.

However, recently Google has expanded call-only ads in the way that they have expanded text ads. Instead of a single headline with a character limit of 25, call-only ads have been expanded to two headlines with a 30-character limit. Call-only ads also received a description increase from 80 to 90 characters. Finally, the name of the business was moved to the description line.

According to Google, these changes were put in place because of the difficulty advertisers had with fitting both the business name and a compelling call to action all within the headline. Now that the business name has been moved to the beginning of the ad description, this opens up some prime real estate in the headline for creative and meaningful calls to action.

As with any ad, testing is key. Call-only ads are still a lot smaller than expanded text ads, so you want highly targeted and concise ad copy. Continuous ad testing is important in order to develop an attention-grabbing call to action that encourages the most quality leads to call you.

I encourage you to fully take advantage of Google’s new changes to call-only ads. You have the opportunity to give viewers an even more compelling reason to call your business, but you have to be strategic. You don’t want to drive all these new leads straight to voicemail, so make sure you schedule your call-only ads to run when your customer service team is actually available to answer the phones. Additionally, it is important to have a customer service team that is big enough and trained to deal with a high volume of calls. Ultimately, anything that encourages more creativity and better ads is good in our book.