extensions

Advertisers often spend lots of time pulling together their ad copy for their Google Ads campaigns. With so much focus on phrasing the ad correctly (and within the small character lengths Google provides), Google Ad Extensions after usually an afterthought – and this can be a big trick missed.

Google Ad Extensions can provide important additional information about your business to potential customers, help your ad standout, and drive increased clicks. In this article, we’ll look at what ad extensions are, how they can save you money, and which ones retailers should be using to drive more sales.

What are Google Ad Extensions?

Ad Extensions allow you to include additional information in your text ads on Google. Serving alongside the ad copy they display info including; store locations, brands stocked, promotional information, prices, and seller ratings. Ad extensions not only help you share more of your business with potential customers, but also boost your Quality Score ‘ranking’, which can ultimately save you money on your cost-per-click (CPC).

Extensions can be added to campaigns via the ‘Extensions’ tab, found via the ‘Ads & Extensions’ item in the menu on the left-hand side of Google Ads.

What are the benefits of Ad Extensions?

  • More Info & larger ads
    • Imagine being given an extra 10 seconds on the end of your TV ad, or being asked to double the size of your print ad. You’d snap their hand off. Ad extensions should be viewed in the same way. They are free and increase the prominence of your ad in the search results page – giving your text ad the best chance to catch a user’s eye.
  • More Clicks
    • Due to expanding the size of your ad on Google’s search results page and sharing more information about your business with users – ad extensions help to drive improved click-through-rate, a metric used by Google to rank ads.
  • Cheaper Clicks
    • In Google Ads, the amount you pay for a click is influenced by your Quality Score – a score out of 10 that Google gives your keywords. Quality Score is essentially based on how likely people are to click your ad and how relevant your content is to the search term a user is searching. Since ad extensions improve your click-through-rate, as a direct result they improve your quality score and reduce cost-per-click.
  • Link to Specific Pages
    • Ad extensions, such as sitelinks, allow you to drive users to multiple different pages. Let’s imagine you sell bikes. If a user searches for ‘mountain bike to buy’, your ad will likely drive them to the full range of mountain bikes you offer. In this instance you could also run an ad extension driving users to a mountain bike sale page – giving them as much chance to convert in as few clicks as possible.

Top 10 Ad Extensions for Retailers

  1. Promotion Extension

Promotion Extensions allow you to show sale and offer information as part of your ad. This will serve as a separate link that can be clicked, taking users directly to the sales page on your website. Furthermore, you can add sale end dates to your Promotion Extension – making them perfect for weekly promotions or fire sales.

  1. Price Extension

Price Extensions are a scrollable carousel that sit below your ad, allowing you to display information, a link to your website and prices for up to 8 products. This extension dramatically increases the prominence of your ads on desktop and mobile devices – making your ad stand out versus competitors.

Price Extensions work great for promoting sale product, or alternatively showcasing top sellers or new season products that will attract consumer attention.

  1. Location Extension

Location extensions are perfect for retailers with bricks & mortar stores. You can display an address, phone number and a map marker on Google Maps – helping to drive potential customers in store. Perfect if you offer click & collect to consumers.

In order to run Location Extensions, you need to have Google My Business setup.

  1. Seller Star Rating

Trustpilot and other customer review platforms are important in allowing SME businesses to display the quality and reputability of their service. Often businesses include these ratings across their print and digital marketing materials.

Thankfully, Google recognise this, and have partnered with reputable customer review platforms, including Trustpilot & eKomi, to show seller stars in the search ads.

The Google Seller Rating pulls your rating from Trustpilot (and any other partners) automatically providing you’re using the same domain in your Google Ads and seller rating, you have 100+ reviews, and a 3.5 out of 5 star rating.

  1. Image Extension (Coming 2020 – fingers crossed!)

In true, ‘a picture tells a thousand words’ fashion, Google has launched a new ad extension that will incorporate an image into your PPC text ad.

The new Google Ad extension will serve on mobile devices, pulling an image directly from your landing page into your ad. This will be an automated extension for all advertisers when rolled out, so ensure you have images on key pages that you are driving your paid search ads to.

This will work great if the product you’re selling is very visual and better justified through an image.

  1. Call Extensions

Call extensions allow users to call your business direct from the ad. They can serve on mobile, where a user clicks to call, or desktop where your telephone number is displayed. You can schedule these to only serve in business hours too.

A nice freebie of call extensions is that because your phone number is displayed in your ad on desktop, some users will see this and call from their phone, meaning you get a free enquiry without having to pay for a click to your website.

These work really well for businesses selling more premium products that potential customers may want to discuss before purchasing.

  1. Structured Snippets

Structured Snippets are a non-clickable extension, that allow you to display specialised information about your service in text form below your ad copy. You choose a header (e.g. Brands/ Types/Styles) and then a list of at least 4 items for each.

This works well to quickly showcase your range of products, brands or services to potential customers.

  1. Sitelinks

Sitelinks are clickable headlines that sit below your ad. Up to 4 can serve at once.

These work really well for driving users to specific pages that may also be of interest based on their search term, such as: sale page, product sub-lines, complimentary products or other helpful content.

  1. Callout Extensions

Callout Extensions allow you to add additional 25 character ‘callouts’ about your business. Up to 10 callouts show, and they usually serve alongside sitelinks in your text ads.

Some good ideas for callouts include opening days/hours, payment info, delivery info – basically anything worth calling out to potential customers.

  1. Affiliate Location Extensions

For any retailer selling products through big retail chains, affiliate location extensions help to show customers nearby stores that sell your products.

Over 300 affiliate stores are available for the extension including big brands such as: Argos, Halfords, Lidl & O2.

So, there’s our top 10 most important Ad Extensions for retailers – play around with them to find what drives the best click-through-rates. Performance metrics will be found on the ‘Extensions’ tab of Google Ads.

Interested in getting more Google Ads tips specific to SME retailers? Visit the eCom PPC Blog. We aim to simplify the latest paid search news, remove the jargon, & add actionable insight.

Michael David is a paid search specialist, and founder of the eCom PPC Blog (www.ecomppcblog.com). Mike loves all things Google and Amazon advertising, and is passionate about supporting small businesses selling online. @ecomppcblog

Google extensions stock photo by Mehaniq/Shutterstock