Adwords Extensions

Simple tips to optimise your pay-per-click campaign

With Google announcing preferential positioning for Adwords campaigns which utilise “extensions” correctly, it’s worthwhile a quick review about Ad. extensions generally and how they can benefit your PPC campaign.

What are Ad. extensions?

Google allows advertisers to extend their Adwords ads. with additional features (extensions) which give better opportunities to showcase your businesses and services and hopefully, drive more traffic.

There are a number of extensions which can be used (11 at the last time of counting, including beta versions) but in this particular article I will only cover the five which would be most useful for dentists .

Site links

This is a particularly useful feature and basically consists of links to pages within your website which show below your advert. You can configure these links within your Adwords control panel. Well configured site links can significantly improve click-through-rate (CTR) which in turn helps quality score and lowers click prices. There are also a number of parameters which can be used to control how and when your site links are displayed.

Call extensions

This type of extension allows you to set a number in your advert which users can click on directly from their mobile to get in touch. You can select a Google forwarding number which gives access to call metrics or select to use your own number. Call extensions can be scheduled to just show in business hours as needed and can be optimised to show a “call button” if you use the mobile optimised variant.

Location extensions

These can be used to show the physical address of a property associated with the advert. They can be added/edited either manually or linked via a Google Places for business account.

Offers

Google now offers the facility to showcase practice offers within an ad. Whilst this may not be relevant for all, if you do have an offer which you want to push out there, then give offer extensions a try. Offer ads also have various configuration options and are quite flexible in their use.

Social extensions

Google is rolling out increasingly tighter integration with its Google+ properties. If you have an active Google+ page, you can now integrate it with your dental PPC campaign via social extensions. We don’t have much feedback on this feature yet but certain users report that it can increase G+ following as well as enhancing brand credibility.

Other extensions

Google adds new functionality to its properties all of the time and Adwords is no exception. Other new extensions include image addition, inclusion of third party reviews and mobile app. extensions. We are particularly keen to see how the reviews extension rolls out and what benefits it brings.

Summary

Selective use of Adwords can be a powerful tool in the dental marketing tool-kit. However, as we’ve explored in earlier posts, it’s not a trivial exercise to set-up and optimise. In fact when done poorly, lots of money can be wasted very quickly. Ad extensions do add to the complexity of an Adwords campaign but used wisely and in the hands of an experienced practitioner, they can make a demonstrable difference to a dental pay-per-click campaign.

If you would like assistance with your PPC set up and management, please call our team on 01332 672548.