Maximize Your Google Grant Potential with Ad Extensions

by Lauren Kade, May 28, 2012, 3:44 PM

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Do you have a Google Grant?  Are you having trouble hitting the spend levels to apply for Grantspro?  Enter stage left: Google ad extensions.  Ad extensions help attract attention to your ads and can help improve click-through-rates.  And if you're trying to increase your daily spend to reach the Grantspro levels, you need enticing ads that users will click on!  Here are some additional great benefits to adding an ad extension to your ad:

• provide additional information about your organization without using valuable character space in your ad copy
• take up more space above the fold on the search engine results page (which is great if you're trying to own as much "real estate" on the search engine results page as possible)

There are several different types of ad extensions, so let me jump right in:

Ad Sitelinks

Ad Sitelinks are additional links underneath your ad. You can have up to ten different links, and Google is currently showing six links on average. These links provide users with additional places to go on your site other than your ad's landing page.  You can use these additional links to highlight other key areas of your site, like a new marketing campaign or a fundraising page.  Ad Sitelinks only show when your ad appears above the organic search results (usually spots 1-3 but not always) and you need to have a quality score of at least 7 out of 10.

Call Extensions with Call Metrics

Call extensions allow you to add a phone number on your ad. If users see your ad while on their mobile phone, using the click-to-call feature they will be able to click your phone number and call you directly.  Adding a phone number to your PPC ads will help put potential donors or volunteers directly in contact with your organization.  For example, if your organization is accepting donations over the phone for disaster relief, you could be one step closer to the person connecting with your organization and donating.

Call metrics assigns your organization with a Google Voice number, which enables them to track more information about who actually calls the phone number that is on your ad.  Since call metrics uses a Google Voice number, you won't actually see your organization's specific phone number on your ads, but the Google Voice number will redirect to your chosen number.  Using call metrics, you can see when users called, whether the call was missed or received, call duration, and the caller's area code. When users call the phone number on your ad, you are normally "charged" $1 per call.  Assuming you have a Google Grant, the $1 per call will just add to your daily spend that is taken out of the $10,000 per month credit within your account.  However, if the calls are missed or if the duration was only a few seconds, Google will often not charge you for the call at all.

Location Extensions

Location extensions add location information to your PPC ads about your organization. You can have one location or several locations, and you can include both your phone number and your address.  This could be a great tool if you want to help people find your organization's local chapters or offices. Location extensions in action actually look quite fancy since they are in the family of "plus box extensions" as you can see in the example below. Once the user expands the plus box extension, they can see exactly where your organization is located on a Google Map, get directions, and more.

Social Extensions

Social extensions are a relatively new extension that allows you to link your organization's Google+ page with your PPC ads.  Not only will social extensions add a link directly to your Google+ page, but they will also show the total number of +1's that your company has received. The total +1's includes not only +1's on your Google+ page, but +1's from your AdWords ads, your website, and organic search. Adding social extensions can draw attention to your ad and also lets users see how many people have recommended your site via +1s, building trust.  Additionally, you can draw more traffic to your Google+ page, which provides another avenue to interactively engage with donors and users.  Don't have a Google+ page yet?  Set one up here.

So there you have it!  Go forth and add Google ad extensions.  Have a question?  Leave a comment below.

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