Google AdWords: 6 Ad Extensions To Improve Your ROI Today

Google AdWords: 6 Ad Extensions To Improve Your ROI Today

What Are Ad Extensions?

Ad extensions are clever add-ons from Google to help your text ads stand out from the rest of the other ads displaying on the first page of Google. I mean it’s all text right? It is a no-brainer to utilise these extensions every time you create an ad based on your campaign’s objectives, yet, advertisers sometimes underestimate their usefulness.

If you’re achieving top 3 positions within your keyword auctions, you want to enable Ad Extensions to ensure you capitalise on this premium space.

There are two groups of Ad Extensions currently offered by Google:

1. Manual Extensions
2. Automated Extensions

Automated Extensions will be automatically generated and inserted into your ads by Google and we have no control over how it will be shown except for Dynamic Structured Snippet Extensions, which we will cover in another post.

The other extension type is Manual Extensions, where you can take charge of their features such as: how the extensions will appear, when are they going to appear, text format you’d like them to appear in, and which landing pages you want to redirect your audiences to?

The effectiveness of including ad extensions into your ads can not be overstated. Let me walk you through how adding a few tweaks to your campaigns or ad groups will dramatically improve your Return On Investment (ROI) and overall advertising performance.

Why Should We Use Them?

In the ideal world of digital advertising, the holy grail of all metrics that defines campaign performance is (or should be) a “Conversion.” Your odds of getting conversions are significantly improved as your clicks and click-through-rate (CTR) are higher and that’s where ad extensions come in. Each extension is engineered for a specific purpose, each to make your ads distinctive and useful to visitors. Including well-refined ad extensions will increase your CTR and increase the possibility to generate more conversions and maximise your ROI.

Here are all of the Manual Extensions currently available at your disposal.

What Are They?

Sitelink Extensions

Sitelink extensions could be the most widely used of all extensions as it is easy to setup, straight-forward, and trackable. Most Google AdWords advertisers favour the extension mainly because it gives their ads extra text space and the ability to redirect audiences to designated landing pages. The extra text space will increase CTR by showing sub-messages visitors might be looking for. Since you can include up to four sitelinks, the chances that the visitor will click at either your ads or one of your four extensions increase fourfold depending on if visitors like what they see in your ads or not. Sitelink extensions also improve the consistency between the ad and the landing page, since you can customise the URL you want to take visitors from the sitelink extension to.

Call-out Extension

Another extension that will give you another 25 descriptive characters to be included into your ads. I find them useful when used in conjunction with statistic and number. The extension is also useful for temporary promotions as it can be scheduled to turn on and off automatically. This will be shown three extensions at a time and will entice visitors to click on your ads when they see that ongoing promotion you included in your ads.

Call Extension

This extension is exactly what its name implies. Visitors click on a phone button and the extension will automatically call the provided phone number. This extension will only shown on devices capable of making calls and each call click will be charged the same as a standard text ad. This is useful for busy visitors who instead of clicking to learn more about your products, call you and get the information they need. You can schedule this extension to show only on a certain time (only shown during your business hours) to make sure every call you receive will be answered. According to Google, “call extensions have typically increased clickthrough rate by 6-8%” and you can also count those calls as conversions.

Location Extension

Location extension can be linked to your Google My Business account or you can add new addresses manually. This is designed for physical businesses that want to encourage visitors to visit their stores and even better, target your ads around your business area for people who are in the immediate presence of your shops. Google also claims that ads those adopt the extension see a “10% boost in clickthrough rate” on average.

Review Extension

The extension let you use reviews from credible sources to be included in your ads to establish your credibility. There are some restrictions in review extensions making it a bit difficult to manoeuvre, but the core principles are to use the same tone and content of the review as the original source page and the review must be less than 12 months old. By creating your ad’s credibility, users are more likely to click on your ads, spend more time on your website and lead to more conversions.

App Extension

This extension lets visitors either click on ad headline and be sent to your website or click on app extension to be sent to either Google Play or the Apple App Store to download your app. It will automatically show apps for detected devices. For an example, if an app extension is for mobile devices, people who are using tablet will not see the extension. The extension also gives you a better customisation by specify which device you want to target and schedule start and end dates.