31st January 2019 | PPC
How Can Advert Extensions Help You Generate More Business?
Getting your business noticed on Google is pretty much every business owner’s goal – or at least, it should be. With the digital age getting bigger, faster, and more competitive every day, you must be pulling out all the stops to ensure that you’re top of your game – and getting to the top of those Google searches wouldn’t go amiss, either!
However, to get the most out of being in the prime top spot on Google, it’s important to know what works best to get people to click on your ads and drive traffic and potential business leads. One of the most successful ways to catch the eye of potential customers is to utilise advert extensions.
What are Ad Extensions?
Advert Extensions are a feature of Google Ads that allows you to implement additional information into your adverts and extend the amount of information you can use to influence a prospect’s decision.
Basic Search Network adverts can be quite linear, adverts convey a simple message, directing users to one page on your website. This limits the performance of your adverts as one message doesn’t suit all, and what one prospect may find appealing, another may not.
According to Google, for every ad extension within your adverts, Click Through Rates can see an uplift of between 10% and 15%, highlighting their significance.
Furthermore, most advert extensions increase the actual size of your adverts, especially on mobile devices. Increasing the real estate of your adverts limits the number of competitor adverts visible before scrolling down the Search page, making your advert a more likely option to be clicked and therefore increases the likelihood of quality traffic being directed to the website.
For this post, we will focus on 7 advert extensions that will help your business generate more enquiries, these extensions are;
- Sitelink Extensions
- Callout Extensions
- Structured Snippet Extensions
- Call Extensions
- Location Extensions
- Price Extensions
- Seller Ratings
All the above advert extensions, when implemented properly, can help take your Google Ads campaign to the next level. With each having a specific goal in mind, it makes it easier for prospects to call your business or give more information to a prospect before they click on your advert to promote yourself as knowledgeable in the industry.
How Can Advert Extensions Benefit Your Campaign & Business?
Advert extensions can influence a prospect on their path to purchase. You shouldn’t dismiss the importance of relaying your intended message when it comes to PPC advertising, as this is your “Shop Window” to a potential customer.
Sitelink Extensions
Utilising Sitelinks will enable you to show all this information in the same advert, along with a link to a relevant page on your website. This makes it easier for prospects to look for information, pre-qualifying the traffic before they click on your advert and saving you money.
In the above example, a prospect may initially search for “Holidays in France” however they may also be looking to book a holiday home for their stay. The Luxury Holiday Homes sitelink extension tells the prospect that holiday homes are also offered, making the overall advert more relevant to the individual. This relevance may increase the chances that the prospect turns into a customer.
Callout Extensions
Callout extensions allow you to “Callout” services or unique selling points, which is vital when setting your business apart from competitor advertisers. The below example shows the type of information that this extension is perfect for.
Conveying important information before a prospect clicks on your adverts is pivotal to running an efficient PPC campaign. Before clicking on the above advert, you know that you can use the website to search by make and model whilst also searching for a dealer near you. Pointing out these user experience points helps set the prospect’s expectations before they click on your advert, increasing the likelihood of them turning into a customer.
Structured Snippets
Similar to Callout Extensions, Structured Snippets allow you to list more information about your products or services. There are many types of Structured Snippets that you can choose from; such as Brands, Courses, Destinations, Amenities, and Neighbourhoods.
As you can see in the above advert, before we click on the advert we know that Siblu offer holidays to Les Charmettes, Domaine de Soulac and many more destinations. This improves the relevancy of the advert to the prospect, and allows you to filter out, pre-cost, users who are actively searching for a service/destination you are not looking to promote.
Call Extensions
Call extensions allow advertisers to display a phone number in their advert, enabling prospects to easily call a business.
Call extensions are vital, especially if you conduct most of your business over the phone.
Making it as easy as possible for prospects to get in touch with you will increase the chance of them making that step to purchase, especially when call extensions show as a “Click to Call” function on mobile devices. It is important to note that you can schedule call extensions, meaning that they only show on adverts when your phones are operational.
Thanks to Google’s ‘forewarding numbers’, we can not only measure how many times a user has clicked the extension, but we can also track the call as a conversion, including the number called from and the time spent on the call.
Location Extensions
Location extensions are perfect for online businesses that also have physical stores. Linking your Google My Business and Google Ads accounts will allow you to show the location of your physical store, with an option to get directions to your store.
Even in this digital age people like human interaction and, depending on your business, it may be easier for people to come and see you, rather than buy online.
Using location extensions blends both digital and physical marketing.
With the introduction of Google’s ‘Signals’ Beta, eligible Google Ads customers using Location Extensions and Google My Business listings for 2 or more stores can record ‘Store Visits’, giving more data and insight into how a user interacts with your brand post-click which was not previously available.
Price Extensions
Price Extensions are a must-have for advertisers, as these extensions allow you to display a product/service price within your advert. As clicks cost, it is important to pre-qualify traffic based on their expectations and budget levels.
Displaying the cost of your offerings can save you money, as you are not paying to send people to your website, only to find out that you are out of their price range. Therefore, it’s important to ensure you have the budget available for users who are in a position to pay for your services.
Seller Ratings
Seller Ratings allow you to show a Star Rating against your advert and offer subliminal trust to a prospect as your advert is verifying your integrity as a business.
To run seller ratings, you need to have over 150 unique reviews and a composite rating of 3.5 stars or more. However, the work will pay off as these ratings are invaluable in terms of the subconscious trust given to users. In the world of advertising, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd. Seller Rating extensions will allow you to do this, especially compared to any competition not using them.
Conclusions
It’s fair to say that advert extensions are a brilliant way to make the most of your advertising space. They allow you to add extra, vital information to adverts that would otherwise be quite plain and linear. They also allow you to build subliminal trust between your business and a potential customer.
However, just adding extensions to your adverts will not make your business an overnight success. This is where PPC management comes into play, being able to interpret data and optimise accounts to perform at their best – driving quality leads and sales into your business.
Talk to a member of the SQ Digital team to find out if advert extensions and PPC management could work for your business.