When you run as many substantial internet marketing and paid search programs as we do, you realize how many new features occur over time, whether it is within Google Adwords, Bing Ad Center, Facebook Ads, or YouTube ads. Every week we review the blogs and releases from the platforms we use, and test new features on ourselves first before recommending them to clients. We love the fact that these platforms continually to update features for more efficiency and better functionality. Sometimes we get reminded of features we haven’t used in awhile, but then might be appropriate for a client.
So then, below is a hodgepodge of newer features and unique opportunities within Google Adwords that you should be taking advantage of if it’s right for your business.
1. You have seen some ads with a small form for email address submissions? This is called Communications extensions, and is still in beta.
NuSpark Marketing is approved to test these with clients. Your ads can have 5 options for lead generation:
- Get offers
- Subscribe to newsletter
- Subscribe
- Get updates
- Get alerts
These are certainly unique ways to build a customer list.
2. You’ve seen those Site links at the bottom of Google ads that appear within the top 3 positions? Well, if you have a special offer just for mobile users, you can now set up a site link just for mobile.
3. With the new enhanced Adwords, you can now promote offers within your ads if you are a brick and mortar store. Create and promote your offer, Google creates a landing page coupon, for audiences to redeem in-store, and viola; you can measure in-store offer conversions from Google!
4. You’ve seen seller ratings in ads, and wonder how they got there?
Ratings come from Google Shopping, which aggregates reviews from sources throughout the web. When you reach a certain minimum, ratings appear. Here’s link with more info on seller ratings.
5. Have you seen some e-commerce ads with detailed listings on some of their products like below?
That’s called Product Extensions, but you need to have a Google Merchant account set up with a Google Shopping Feed. By adding specific brand, or other product attributes as a filtered target, you can create increased engagement with your product pay-per-click ads.
6. I’m sure you know about retargeting; where Google (and other platforms) target ads to you, typically within 30 days, of you visiting a website or landing page, and not converting. Retargeting campaigns bring you back to a website and has proven very effective for my clients.
Well, here’s something new, called Similar Audiences. With enough data, Google looks at the browsing history of your retargeted audiences, and attempts to find similar audiences who best match those browsing habits of your website visitors being retargeted. What this means is, the reach of your message can grow significantly, if you utilize this retargeting option.
7. Finally, there is a column within the Adwords management platform called Conversion Value. This is the value of a conversion.
If you’re a lead generation site, you can enter in the set-up (below) what the value of a conversion is, so that you can track ROI. If you’re a simple e-commerce site, you can enter the average cost-per-sale. However, if you are e-commerce, you know your products have various values, so a generic conversion value just won’t do. See below is where I add conversion value.
In this case, if you want to measure dynamically generated conversion values, you’re going to need your developer to add some custom code to your site, depending on the language of your e-commerce platform. Google explains how to set up conversions on a dynamically-generated website here. Platforms like Magento have Adwords conversion integration so that specific conversion values CAN be tracked with Google Adwords.
So this is just a sample of what is available on the Google Adwords platform, covering search and display. The options keep us on our toes as we continually look to optimize campaign performance. What new or unique features do you like, or have questions on?
