Ad Extensions Hacks You Should Know to Improve Conversion

You have a great tool in ad extensions and you can use it to increase the effectiveness of your marketing once you master how to make them as relevant as possible.

Ad Extensions are additional relevant information about your business that can be added to your AdWords text ads.

The information could include your phone number, links to other sources of your content, business location, and rating etc.

What’s more, your cost per click isn’t changed by implementing them. Google reports that using ad extensions can increase CTR by 30%.

When optimized fully, these extensions can be used to increase CTR, boost conversion rates and decreasing CPA.

You can add Ad extensions to your ad at no extra cost apart from the usual charges per click. Including them improves your overall visibility which can improve your ROI.

Automatic and Manual Ad Extensions

Automatic Ad Extensions automatically collect data from different sources to create your Ad extension. Manual extensions are the opposite of course; you input your data yourself.

Since you cannot control what the automatic ad extension will pull, we advice using manually creating an extension ad for yourself so that you can have more control of your messaging.

Automatic ad Extensions

There are six types of automatic extensions, mainly:

 Consumer Rating Extensions – These are generated from Google sources that are certified and Google consumer surveys. They are usually shown in multiple categories.

Seller Rating Extensions – These extensions use your businesses’ rating out of 5 stars from trusted review sources on Google.

Previous Visit Extension - They include a short description telling the user if they have visited the shown site recently.

Dynamic Sitelink Extensions –They link to a link to content on your site or a great offer you may have on your website.

Social Extensions – These show the information on your Google page. This could be the number of followers you have, people who like your company e.t.c.

Dynamic Structured Snippets – They show additional information about diverse sections of your site or any other information Google considers relevant.

Google’s intention is to make your ad performance better through the automated ad extensions but overall it may not be what works best for you and you may choose to opt out.

To pause automated ad extensions, you can use two ways:

You can opt-out of the ads by submitting the linked op-out forms.

You can choose to use manual ad extensions.

Why Your Ad Extensions May Not Serve

At times you may find that an eligible ad extension is not serving. The thing you should know is that they are not always guaranteed to serve.

It all depends on the following factors:

1. The relevance and quality of your ad- Google focuses on the searcher’s experience, so it will show the most relevant and useful content. If Google deems that yours is not, the ad extension will not serve.

2. The relevance and quality of the data provided for the extension

3. Availability of Ad space on your page - Ads with extensions take up a lot of space in the search engine results page, this will, therefore, determine whether your ad extension will serve or not.

4. User signals like location, the device used etc.

5. Any other extensions enabled for your ad

6. Availability of extension data of competing ads

Manual Ad Extensions in AdWords

These are add-ons to your search ads that give users additional information about your product or service.

They can be custom tailored to suit your needs. They can also show a specific call to action buttons.

Setting up Ad Extensions in AdWords:

Step 1: Start with your AdWords Dashboard.

Step 2: Select campaign or the ad group you would like to add your location to.

Note that: ad extensions are only available for Search Network only and Search with Display Select Text Ads.

Step 4: Select the Ad Extensions tab

Step 5: Click the View:  drop-down menu & select your preferred extension

Step 6: Click the “extension” button

Step 7: Follow the Extension-Specific Tutorials

Step 8: Select done

Your extension should be ready to roll within 24 hours.

Adding Ad Extensions to New Campaigns

You now want to add ad extensions to a new ad campaign. The process is quite simple. Still on the dashboard;

1. Click on “new campaign”

2. Next “Select campaign settings”. You can then name your campaign and choose the settings to go along with it.

3. Click on the “Bidding and budget” tab where you will see a list of ad extensions.

4. Select or check off the boxes of all the options you’d like to use. Google will prompt you as you move along. Note that any fields you select here will be applied to all the ad groups within that specific campaign.

Enabling Ad Extensions for Existing Campaigns

You can also enable ad extensions for an existing campaign. To do that, follow the following steps:

1. Click over to the “Ad extensions” tab.

2. Next, click on the drop-down menu to select the type of extensions you’re looking for.

3. The third step is to click on “New extension” and fill out the information as Google prompts you.

What we noted for adding ad extensions to new campaigns applies here as well, everything you select at this campaign level will apply to all your ad groups within that campaign.

Implementation Stage

How do you know which ad extensions are the best to use? Test and more testing. You create a campaign utilizing all applicable ad extensions, be very versatile about it because your aim is to try out different campaigns and find out which one works best for your business.

By the time you are done testing, you should be able to know which ad extension has had the best performance for your campaign.

Monitor the performance at the keyword and ad levels in all your test runs too; you will notice that for some keywords, location extensions will be great, while for others, you might get better results through product extensions.

Lander is a great advisor and reservoir for information on how you can run and test your campaigns for maximum optimization.

Advantages of Using Ad Extensions

Show your business location- Using ad extensions, you can easily display a map with your business location for users to find you easily if they wish to visit you physically.

Link pages from your site – Ad extensions enable you to link pages you may find relevant t because they have additional information about the product or service.

List a phone number – It always comes in handy to have a number of potential customers can call.

Show your business seller rating – Let’s face it, makes the potential customer tryst your product more if they can see your seller ratings.

Show product images and prices from your Google Merchant account

An update for 2018: Review Extensions Discontinued

From January 2018, review extensions will not show for advertisers and performances for previous reviews will also be deleted.

Download your extensions report on Google AdWords by clicking “Ads and Extensions” to save your data.

Conclusion

You have a great tool in ad extensions and you can use it to increase the effectiveness of your marketing once you master how to make them as relevant as possible. And the super thing is that there is no extra cost associated them, so why not give it a try?