Nailing mobile PPC through Ad Extensions

Take your mobile ads to the next level: utilize Ad Extensions and optimize your PPC campaign.

In our last blog post we went over Ad Copy’s significance and shared ways of making it work to improve your conversion rates. In today’s post, we will be reviewing Ad Extensions as another quick and easy method of improving campaign performance, taking your mobile ads to the next level.

Why use Ad Extensions?

• Improved visibility: Ad extensions usually improve your ad’s visibility.
• More value: Ad extensions usually increase your total number of clicks by improving the click through rate (CTR) of your ads. They provide valuable ways for users to learn more about your business or interact directly with your ad, by making a phone call to your business or providing more links to your website.

In short, Ad Extensions enable you to provide your mobile customers with:

• links to additional pages within your site
• a click-to-call phone number
• your business location
• customer reviews
• additional info

When used properly, Ad Extensions can be the perfect complement to your text ads. But to really get the best from them it’s essential to recognise the differences between specific Ad Extensions and their functions.

Here’s a guide illustrative guide to what certain Ad Extensions do and why you should start applying them to your mobile ads today!

Sitelinks allow you to promote additional landing pages below your standard ad text. Applying a few more lines to your ad gives you more real estate on the search engine results page, helping your ad stand out against your competition. Sitelinks also give the mobile searcher an opportunity to go to a more specific page on your site, given the fact that they are usually on-the-go and have no time to waste searching for specific info on your site. For example, while on the net searching for the Google Play Store, the landing page goes to a fairly generic page. If I know in advance I’m only interested in Books, I can head straight to the Books sitelink and go to that specific page for that purpose.

Google has shown that adding sitelinks to your ads increases your CTR, even if people aren’t clicking the sitelink links! Nearly every advertiser’s CTRs can benefit from sitelinks. If you’re still not sure, try applying them for only one campaign or ad group to measure their impact and take it from there. Keep in mind, Google will only show your sitelink extensions if you are in a top position, so you may not always see them.

Call extensions allow you to incorporate your phone number in your text ads, making it easier for customers to contact you directly; a must have I think for mobile ads especially. Depending on the device, the extensions will be displayed differently. On desktops and tablets, your phone number is applied alongside your text, whereas on high-end mobile devices, your ad will include a “call” button, as illustrated below. With Enhanced Campaigns, Call extensions have become increasingly sophisticated by allowing you to measure phone call conversions and view more extensive call reporting metrics. If you want to encourage users to call your business, because that’s the main way you generate leads or sales, make it easy for them to do so by utilizing Call extensions.

Location extensions for mobile ads allow you to incorporate your business address into your ad. Don’t worry, you don’t have to waste any of your precious ad copy space! When customers tap on the location they can automatically get more detailed information like maps to, and even photos of your business. If you have a brick and mortar business and your clients are likely to value their proximity to your physical location, you should be taking advantage of location extensions. Research has shown that location extensions result in a 10% boost in CTR.

Review extensions give you the opportunity to share positive reviews, testimonials or awards below your standard text ads. As with all AdWords extensions, enabling review extensions makes your ads larger and more visible, giving you more chances to convince a search engine user to click. You can enter your own quoted or paraphrased review, as long as it’s attributed and linked to the published source.

Call out extensions add more text to your ad to highlight things like free shipping, discounts, price matching and more. Callout extensions are similar to sitelinks, but without the links. Google recommends that advertisers use callout extensions to draw attention to unique selling points and important product details and benefits. You can feature up to four callouts in your ad, each limited to 25 characters each, and must have at least two callouts for them to display. You can add callouts at the account, campaign or ad group level, allowing you to use general information at the account or campaign level and specific callouts for each ad group.

Always keep in mind that if there are two competing ads with the same bid, quality score, and keyword, the ad using extensions will generally appear in a higher position! It might take a little bit of time to figure out how to maximize each Ad Extension, but they definitely provide a great opportunity for PPC campaigns to improve.

If you have any questions about how to use Ad Extensions, be sure to drop as a line at [email protected] .