Common PPC Shortcomings | Part 2 - WSI-eMarketing Blog

This is the second part of a 2 part post. You can access Part 1 here.

Common PPC Shortcomings 4-6

If you haven’t read part 1 of our Common PPC Shortcomings series you can find it here. In our day to day work we find a large amount of PPC ads have similar faults. Often they are the kind of thing someone setting up their own ads wouldn’t think of. This also means these things aren’t asked of an agency so even if you’ve outsourced to a professional you may unfortunately still have these problems present in your PPC campaigns.

Part 2 focuses on extensions. Call Extensions, Sitelink Extensions and Location Extensions. If you’re not sure what any of those are then you need to read on! There’s a good chance you might be losing out because you haven’t asked for these things. The right extensions can have a huge effect on Click Through Rates across the board.

Call extensions Not present or incorrect

How important are calls to your business? Would you prefer to have someone click through to your landing page to read information, or would you rather have them call your business so that you can handle the sale directly? If calls are beneficial to your business then it’s essential that you use call extensions with your Google AdWords Text Ads!

Call Extensions allow potential customers to call you from the ad itself if they’re using a smartphone, while desktop users will be presented with a phone number in the ad, meaning that they can pick up the phone and call your business without even clicking through to your website. You can even measure the impact of Call Extensions on your campaigns by using either a forwarding number provided by Google or a third-party proxy number if you’d like more detailed insights.

In addition to all of this, studies have reported that simply including Call Extensions in your campaign can boost average CTRs across the board. Do yourself a favour and include Call Extensions to give your marketing campaign an overall boost!

Location Extensions not fully utilised

Did you know that over 20% of Google searches are for local products, services or places? If you aren’t utilising Location Extensions then there’s a good chance you’re missing out on the full potential of this traffic.

Location Extensions give you the ability to extend the ads you show in Google Search results dynamically by attaching your business name, address and phone number to the ad copy. This is an effective way of attracting customers who might just be around the corner of your storefront, or even those who are planning to visit your area in the near future.

The practicality of this ad extension doesn’t stop there however. If you are opted in with AdWords search network partners (found in your campaign settings), then your ads with Location Extensions can appear on Google Maps; while a customer viewing your ad from a mobile device will even have the opportunity to get directions to your storefront.

If all the above wasn’t enough to convince you, Google’s studies report that adding Location Extensions can increase your average CTR by 10%. With the combination of all these benefits, it’s evident that your campaigns might be losing out significantly if you aren’t already using Location Extensions.

Sitelink Extensions not fully used

Every successful business understands that they need to provide a great online experience for their customers. One where users and visitors can navigate to exactly what they’re looking for with as few clicks and as little effort as possible. While this isn’t a hard task for a web developer working on a website, it might seem significantly tricky on AdWords due to the limited nature of ads. You can make these limitations more flexible however, all thanks to Sitelink Extensions.

Sitelink Extensions show links to specific pages on your website beneath the text of your Google search ads, in addition to the main landing page that you have set as your ad’s headline.

Let’s say you are promoting a special offer on a plumbing service for example, and someone has triggered that ad with a relative search term but they are in fact in desperate need of a plumber due to a serious issue in their house. They then notice one of your Sitelink Extensions reads “24/7 Emergency Plumber” with a link that will take them straight to an emergency contact page. Instead of having to read through your general website pages, they have now clicked on the Sitelink which is most relevant to their needs and in turn have been able to contact you as quickly as possible.

Being creative with Sitelink Extensions will not only provide potential customers with an excellent experience, but also help to boost CTR averages which in turn will help the overall performance of your AdWords campaigns.

If you’d like a PPC expert to assess your PPC efforts and let you know if there are any areas you can improve please don’t hesitate to get in contact. Book a 100% free account audit with us today to find out what other areas of your account might require attention to improve your PPC ROI!