Google extensions are a fantastic way to add extra information to your Google Ads, and encourage customers to give you their details.
One of the extensions you can utilize is a lead form. In this article, we’ll look at the advantages of setting a lead form extension up, and how you can customize it to your specific needs.
What is a lead form extension?
A lead form extension is a specific type of extension offered by Google Ads. Prospective customers can click on the lead form’s call to action to automatically provide their details.
You can use them not only across search campaigns, but video, discovery and display campaigns too.
The advantage of lead form extensions is that they are pre-filled, meaning that customers can send their details to you with just one click.
Why implement a lead form extension?
It can be challenging to get leads for your product or service. A lead form extension allows people to give you their details, without them having to click through to your website.
When a customer completes your lead form, Google will save their details in a table that you can download.
You can also integrate your lead form extension with selected CRMs, meaning that you don’t have to manually input your prospective customer’s information.
How to create a Google Ads lead form extension
Creating an extension is easy. Just go to the Extensions menu and click on ‘lead form extension.’
You can then choose a headline and description to describe your form, and select the questions you want to ask.
You can ask up to ten questions, including:
· Name
· Job title
· Company name
· Phone number
· Town/city
· Zipcode
· State
· Country
You can also ask questions relating to a specific industry. For example, if you work in the auto industry, you can ask customers what type of vehicle they own and what vehicle they are interested in buying.
Finally, choose a call to action that will encourage customers to complete your form. The more persuasive, the better!
Things to bear in mind when creating lead form extensions
There are some things you need to consider when building a lead form extension. Here is what you need to bear in mind.
· You can only use lead forms at campaign level, and you can only have one lead form extension per campaign
· You need to have a good history of compliance in Google Ads in order to use lead form extensions
· When you create a lead form extension, you need to include a link to your privacy policy. This is a mandatory requirement, so if you don’t have a policy in place, you will need to create one
· Lead forms aren’t available in all countries. For example, they currently can’t be used in Russia
In conclusion
Lead form extensions are a great way to encourage search engine users to provide you with their details.
We definitely recommend giving them a go alongside your other extensions.
Find out more about using and creating lead form extensions.
One of the great things about Google Ads is that you can use automation and machine learning to help run your campaigns.
What does this mean? If you don’t have experience with PPC, or don’t have the time to continuously monitor your ad campaigns, you can still create effective ads that people want to click on.
Here are five of our favorite ways that you can incorporate automation into your campaign.
1. Smart Bidding
Google has a range of smart bidding strategies that you can use in your campaigns. Google looks at past data and identifies when a web user is likely to convert. If it thinks you’ll get a lead, it’ll place a bid on your behalf.
Depending on your goals, you can implement different strategies, from maximizing conversions to appearing at the top of the page as frequently as possible.
Find out more about Smart Bidding
2. Dynamic Search Ads
Creating ad copy can be challenging. If you don’t have the time to write lots of ads, you can use Dynamic Search Ads to your advantage.
Dynamic Search automatically generates ad copy by pulling content from your website. When someone searches for terms that Google thinks is a match, it will serve an ad that it believes they will click on.
Find out more about Dynamic Search Ads
3. Responsive Search Ads
Responsive Search Ads take a little more work than Dynamic Search Ads, but they can be just as effective.
To create a Responsive Search Ad, you create a collection of headlines and descriptions. Google then serves a combination of assets that it thinks will appeal to a prospective customer.
Find out more about Responsive Search Ads
4. Google Rules
If you can’t check out your Google Ads account every day, it can be easy to miss out on potential changes. If this is the case, you can create rules in your dashboard
For example, you can set a rule where you can temporarily pause a campaign if the cost per acquisition gets too high. Then, when it goes back down, you can restart the campaign again.
Take the opportunity to check out the rules section and see what you can utilize in each of your campaigns to save time and money.
Find out more about setting up rules in Google Ads
5. Smart Shopping
If you want to sell your wares on Google Ads, Google Smart Shopping can simplify the process.
All you need to do is create a Merchant Centre Account and add your product data. Google will then combine image and text assets to create engaging ads that will encourage people to buy.
You can create up to 100 campaigns, giving you endless possibilities when it comes to selling your products!
Find out more about Smart Shopping Campaigns
Google Ad’s approach to automation is growing and evolving all of the time. We’ll keep you up to date with all of the latest changes and how you can apply them to your PPC account.
Writing good copy for your ads, whether on Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising, can be challenging.
You have to write compelling copy to encourage prospective customers to take action, all in a very small amount of space!
If you’re not sure how to create PPC ad copy, here are our top tips for writing like an absolute professional!
1. Consider your unique selling point
When you create a PPC ad, you are often in competition with many businesses selling the exact same product or service. Sometimes there can be six or seven competing ads on the same page!
This means that you have to mention the thing that sets you apart from your rivals. Do you offer free delivery? 24-hour support? A wider range of products? Mention it in your copy.
2. Make every word count
You only have limited space in an ad. For example, in an Expanded Text Ad in Google, you only have three headlines of thirty characters each – ninety characters in total!
Here are our top tips.
· Get rid of any superfluous words that don’t add anything – words like ‘very’, ‘nice’ and ‘some’ waste space and can make your ad feel less punchy
· Remove any words like ‘we’ and ‘us’; the ad should be about your customer, not your business!
· Use numbers instead of spelling them out, for example ‘9’ instead of ‘nine’. This saves space and draws attention to your ad
· A pipe (|) can be an effective way of listing information without having to resort to connecting words
· Consider using special characters like an ampersand (&) instead of ‘and’
A handy tip for expanding the amount of space you have to play with is to use extensions. Ad extensions let you add extra information to your ad to give web users additional details about your product or service.
3. Include a call to action
When you write your ad, you want to include a call to action to tell prospective customers what they need to do next.
Action words like ‘buy’, ‘get’ ‘order’ and ‘register’ will inspire ad viewers to act, so be sure to include them in your copy.
4. Proof your ad copy
We’ve all done it before… we create a great ad, leave it to run and realize that there is a massive typo in it!
Before you hit the ‘save’ button, check
your ad for spelling and grammar. If in doubt, get a friend or colleague to
double-check it for you, or at least use Grammarly.
5. Check the stats
Creating good ad copy takes time. It may take weeks, even months, to fine-tune your content until your conversion rates skyrocket.
Check your ads regularly and see what your clickthrough rate for each one is. This metric shows how effective your ads are in enticing people to visit your website, buy your products or download your app. If your clickthrough rate is low, tweak your ad copy and see how it fares.
Sometimes the ad you think will be an enormous success doesn’t do well, and the ad you spend two minutes writing wins out. PPC can be unpredictable sometimes!
At the end of August, Google Ads announced that it was planning to remove Expanded Text Ads on 30 June 2022.
Expanded Text Ads have been a significant part of Google Ads since 2016, but Google will now be encouraging users to use Responsive Search Ads instead.
Here’s what you should know about the upcoming changes, and how they may affect your Google Ads account.
A summary of the Expanded Text Ad changes
· After 30 June, you will no longer be able to create or edit Expanded Text Ads. Google has confirmed that any existing Expanded Text Ads you have will continue to be served, and you’ll still be able to receive performance statistics
· Before 30 June, you will still be able to create Expanded Text Ads, but the option will not be as obvious as it was before. You have to click to create a Responsive Search Ad, and then click the blue text at the top of the page to convert to an Expanded Text Ad
· Dynamic Ads and Call Ads are not affected by the changes; you will be able to create and amend them as normal
· Responsive Search Ads will now be the default ad type for all search campaigns
Google has always recommended that all ad groups have at least one Responsive Search Ad. They now advise that all Google Ad users repurpose their best-performing Expanded Text Ads content into brand new responsive ads.
Why is Google making the changes?
Google says that the way that people search for things online is changing. The rise of mobile technology and voice search means that ads need to evolve in order to keep up with customers.
Google claims that responsive ads let customers compete in a broader range of auctions and show ads that are more appealing to customers. Google also claims that responsive ads see an average of 7% more conversions than Expanded Text Ads.
Is there a way around the changes?
Many Google Ads users have expressed concern about the removal of Expanded Text Ads.
Responsive Search Ads take longer to set up as they have more assets attached to them than Expanded Text Ads. There is also the risk that the assets that Google selects do not make sense when combined together, leading to a lower clickthrough rate.
If you want to replicate Expanded Text Ads in responsive text ads, you can pin assets in a specific order, so you have more control. Google doesn’t like advertisers doing this though, so time will tell if Google removes or limits this functionality.
In conclusion
Google Ads has made many changes recently. Broad Match Modified keywords were retired earlier this year, and even though the removal of third party cookies from Chrome has been pushed back, the issue of how it will affect retargeting ads remains.
As always, we’ll keep you up to date with all of the latest Google Ads developments and how they may affect you.
In July 2021, Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) introduced a new feature to users – video extensions.
With this extension, users can upload a short video to run alongside their ad. When they click on your video, they will be taken to the landing page of choice on your website.
Videos are a fantastic way to grab people’s attention. According to HubSpot, eight out of ten people say that they have been convinced to buy a piece of software or mobile app because of a video.
Does this sound like something that will be of benefit to your business? Here’s how to set up video ads in Microsoft Advertising.
Video ads are now available across all markets. Mobile ads are only currently available in the US, but will soon be rolled out to all countries.
How to add a video ad
Videos can be added as an extension to your account. Just go to the ads & extensions tab and select extensions. You can then select a video extension.
You can associate your video ad at account, campaign or ad group level. Our top tip is to customize your video as closely to your keywords as possible. That way, users will be more likely to engage with it.
When you add a video extension, you will have a few different options available.
· Name. Give your video a name. This won’t be available outside of your account, but will help you organize your video extensions more efficiently
· Video source. You can either upload a video or provide an URL. Your video must be between 6 and 120 seconds and must have a maximum file size of 10GB. Microsoft Advertising will accept most video formats, but we recommend MP4 or MOV
· Thumbnail source. This is an image that will appear in your ad. When a user clicks on the thumbnail, your ad will play. You can either upload a thumbnail or provide an URL to one
· Display text. This is the ad copy that will accompany your ad. Like all search ads, make sure it is short, snappy and compelling!
· Alternate text. This is the text that will appear if your video doesn’t load. A descriptive description of your video will help people who can’t see your video, whether they are visually impaired or do not have the bandwidth to view it
· Action text. This is the text that will appear in a button below the video when it is playing. This will be your call to action, so make sure it appeals to your target audience!
· Action final URL. This is the URL that your action text will point to. You can set separate links to both desktops and mobile if you like
Video extensions can be shown alongside other ad extensions – try different combinations of extensions to see what results in the most conversions for your account.
Have you tried video ads in Microsoft Advertising? We’d love to hear what you think about them!