Drive Super-High CTR with Google Adwords Promotion Extensions

Imagine increasing your ad Click Through Rate by over 200%, what do you think would happen to your conversion?

You will certainly be amazed at the result, you may even start feeling like your on top of the world with such a huge result. To understand how to how increase your CTR, you need to know that for years now, online marketers have been using different formats to promote products and attract new buyers.

Nowadays, your customers are becoming more demanding, more expectant and even more curious to see what you have for them, the sucking thing is that they even becoming more impatient than ever.  So today, I want to show you an Adwords Product that some advertisers are using to increase CTR, conversion rate and return on ad spend when applying these innovations to their campaigns.

If you can add more value to your Adwords Search Network Ads, having a higher click through rate and quality score will be easy to achieve. Give your search customers what they want to see and increase your CTR.

Have you been using Adwords for long now? If YES! You may have probably heard of it and may have not tried it. Nut, if you' new to Adwords, am talking about the Adwords Promotion Extensions that Google has created to easy product promotion during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Before now there was no better way to Highlight your promotion in the Search Network, Now, you can highlight your top deals with promotion extensions.

Some Brands have already seen great results after using promotion extensions

I just discovered brand like TORRID, in the fashion space that sells cloths for plus-size women. They have already seen tremendous increase after using the promotion extension. According to David Chau, Senior Digital Marketing Analyst at Torrid Brands

“Promotion extensions effectively communicate our promotions without sacrificing our core message of quality and fit, giving us a conversion rate lift of 30%. After winning over so many new customers, we plan to apply and optimize these extensions across every one of our campaigns going forward.”  

After using Promotion Extension, they where able to see great results with a 25% increase in ROAS, 100% Increase in CTR and 30% increase in conversion rate.

You know what? They are not the now brand using the Promotion Extension.

Another brand, SHOE CARNIVAL have also seen increase after using Promotion Extension. Shoe Carnival’s large product line made it difficult for the brand to update its ever-changing sales and promotions. To better showcase its sales and stand out on the search results page, Shoe Carnival turned to promotion extensions and the result was awesome.

They saw an increase in CTR up to 10%, 20% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS) and 20% decrease in cost per acquisition.

“Promotion extensions allowed us to include an additional offer into our overall ad messaging, giving people more reason to visit our site. This new feature should be in every ecommerce advertiser’s toolbox.” says Michael Nuss, Director of Digital Marketing at Shoe Carnival

Again, they are not the only brands using Promotion Extension, even the image below shows the latest footware promotion offer from Achilles using Promotion Extension.

Credit: Google Adword

Brands have been using this model and have seen increase in almost all angles from CTR to ROAS, Conversion Rate and decrease in CPA. If you've you've not tried it, Christmas and Holiday period is the time to try it out or if you have some discounted products why not Highlight them using Adwords Promotion Extension.

About Google Adwords Promotion Extensions

AdWords promotion extensions show a noticeable price tag icon beneath your ad and highlight a sale on your website. Additionally, you can specify details around your promotion, such as whether it’s for a special occasion or holiday, any minimum order values, if it requires any promo code at checkout, as well as when the sales ends.

They can add more value to your Search Network text ads by highlighting your sales and promotions for people that are searching for the best deals your business has to offer. They show below your ad in an easy to read format that catches the eye of your potential customers.

The special occasion you select, for example, "Black Friday”, ”Christmas” or “Cyber Monday” appears as a bold label next to your promotional text as show in the ads image above. The extension also displays up to 2 lines of text that includes details of your promotion. Potential customers can easily spot the sale in your promotion extensions as they stand out from the main ad text.

When someone clicks or taps on the extension, they go directly to the special offer that interests them on your site. Promotion extensions can show your offers in various formats like mobile and desktop on the Search Network and they appear just like other ads at the top and bottom of Google search results.

Setting Up Adwords Promotion Extension Step by Step

Before setting up the Promotion Extension, its important to know that you can set their promotion as a holiday promotion by selecting one of the 12 occasions listed and the ads can run during those holidays. To create a promotion extension, first login to your Adwords account and follow this steps

• Go to the Ad & extensions page menu and click Extensions on the top.
• Click on the plus button and choose Promotion extension.
• In the Add to, choose to add the promotion extension to your account, campaign, or ad group.
• Choose the Occasion for your promotion (optional), the name of the occasion will appear in your ad extension. The dates for each occasion is when your extension may be eligible to show, in case you want to makes some changes, use the Advanced options.
• Select the language and currency of your promotion.
• Choose Promotion type.
• Monetary discount: A static dollar amount that your product will be discounted, that is "$X off"
• Percent discount: A set percent that all orders will be discounted, that is “X% off….”
• Up to monetary discount: A maximum static dollar amount that your orders may be discounted. It’s possible that not all orders may receive this maximum discount though. Your promotion will read “Up to $X off…”
• Up to percent discount: A maximum percent that your orders may be discounted. It’s possible that not all orders may receive this maximum discount though. Your promotion will read “Up to X% off…”
• Enter the Item’s name (20 Characters Limit) of the product or service you want to promote.
• Enter the Final URL that will show in your ad.
• Select the Promotion details (optional), select the  type of offer and enter any requirements for your promotion such as a Promo code or spending limit like On orders over.
• On orders over: Your promotion will read “ On orders over $X.”
• Promo code (15 Character Limit): If your promotion requires your visitors to use a promotional code at checkout, you can specify that here.
• In Promotion dates (optional), enter the dates you would like to show on your ad.
• Expand Advanced options, to change the dates and times of when your promotion extension should start to show and end.

Occasions for your promotions

Here are occasions that are currently available for promotion extensions:

Been able to add promotion extensions at the account, campaign, or ad group level is one thing that makes is awesome. If you create promotion extensions at different levels (account, campaign, or ad group), the most specific will be used. So when you add promotion extensions to an ad group, those extensions show instead of your campaign- or account-level call extensions. Likewise, campaign-level extensions override account-level extensions.

Brands have been benefiting from the extension and if you've been using to product your product or services then you are really missing, that is just the truth. Remember, the brands I listed above is the only once using this Adwords strategy. So, you to can tap into it and start seeing drastic increase in CTR and high conversion.

If you have any thing to add or say, please you the comment box.
Thanks for reading!!!  

Google Adwords Quality Score - What it is and 5 Ways to Improve it

When it comes to paid search (PPC campaign's), the Quality Score is a a key influence over the cost and effectiveness of your paid search campaigns. It is intended to give you the idea or sense of the quality of your ads and it is also a key factor to Google Ad Rank. Google Quality Score affects how your PPC ads perform and how much you pay for each click.

Quality Score is Google's rating of the quality and relevance of both your keywords and PPC ads. It is used to determine your cost per click (CPC) and multiplied by your maximum bid to determine your ad rank in the ad auction process. Google uses three main factor to determine the quality of you ads, these factors includes

• Expected click through rate
• Ad relevance
• Landing page experience

The Expected click through rate is one of the major factor to getting a high quality score. Although, know one outside of Google knows exactly how much each factor “weighs” in the Quality Score algorithm. But, when the people who see's your ad click on it, it gives Google a strong indication that your ads are relevant and helpful to users. Accordingly, Google rewards you with Higher ad rankings Lower costs

Credit: wordstream

How Adwords Quality Score Works

Having a high Quality Score means that the Google systems think your ad and landing page are relevant and useful to the person looking at your ad. The ad is valuable to the searcher.

Apart from the three factors listed above, the Adwords Quality Score also works with;

Past Performance Data

Quality Score is an aggregated estimate of how well a keyword has performed overall in past ad auctions. Based on this data, each of your keywords gets a Quality Score on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest score and 10 is the highest and a Null Quality Scores is designated with a "—" (dash) in the table, it appears when there are not enough impressions or clicks to accurately determine a keyword’s Quality Score.

On the Ads Quality Scores, New keywords initially get a null Quality Score, designated by “—" (read: dash) in the table. But, as the ads runs, the keywords accumulate performance data and your Quality Score will gradually change depending on the ad relevance, click through rate and landing page experience.

You begin to see changes in your Quality Score once the ads starts having enough impressions. In some situations, you may see keywords getting a lot of impressions, but still has a null (dash) Quality Score. This happens when your keywords don’t have enough exact match impressions.

Exact match impressions refers to ads showing on searches for terms that are an exact match of your keyword. So if there haven’t been enough times that the ad showed for searches that were an exact match of your keywords, you could see a null Quality Score. Also,  to maintain a Quality Scores, the keywords need a recent exact match impressions. So, if a keyword doesn’t have enough recent traffic, its Quality Score may also turn back to null.

How to Improve Ad Quality Score in 5 Steps

Since Quality Score determines where and how often your ads appear, it’s important to boost your ratings by working consistently on the ad account. In AdWords, the best performing ads are usually the ones that people find the most relevant to what they are looking for.

For instance, when you search and surf the web: You tend to ignore things that you aren't interested in and focus on those that are related (read: relevant) to what you are looking for or interested in. Same way searchers tend to ignore ads that are not relevant to then. If you know what your customers are actually searching for, by focusing on making your campaigns, keywords, ads, and landing page relevant to them,  makes them more likely to click your ads.

Here are the top 5 things you can do to make your ads more relevant to your customers and improve your Quality Score;

1. Create very specific ad groups
When creating an ad group, each ad group within your campaign should focus on a single product or service so that your ads appear more relevant to the searcher. For instance, a soft-drink loving customer is more likely to click an ad about soft drinks other than a generic ad about drinks.

Relevance tends to lead to higher quality ads, and being very specific when creating an ad group is a way of been more relevant. A cool way of creating a very specific and relevant ads is, let say you own a baked goods shop that sells different types of cookie packages, think about creating ad groups for each of those different cookie packages, like one ad group for your holiday cookie package, and another ad group for your birthday cookie package.

2. Use a Powerful call-to-action
Your ad text should have a very strong call-to-action. These call-to-action's encourages users to click on your ad and helps them understand what they can do once they reach your landing page. Some sample of strong call-to-action words you can use to improve conversion are: Buy, Sell, Order, Browse, Find, Sign up, Try, Get a Quote.

3. Optimizing Landing Pages
You can optimize landing pages to match you ads text. Follow landing page best practices to create pages that connect directly with your ad groups and provide a cohesive experience for visitors, from keyword to conversion. If your ad are speaking differently from your landing page and the searcher clicks the back button (bounce), Google reduces you Quality Score and Ad Rank.

4. Include Keywords in your Ad Text
Including your keywords in your ad text (especially in your ad's headline) to show searchers that your ad is directly relevant to what they are looking for. When people see their search terms in your ad text, it shows them that your ad is relevant to them. Like, If you're trying to sell a soft drinks, and you have a keyword that says "cheap soft drinks near you" your ad text should also say "cheap soft drinks near you."

You can discover new, highly relevant keywords to add to your campaigns, including long-tail opportunities that can contribute to the bulk of your overall traffic. Need help thinking of more keywords? Try using Keyword Planner to help you think of additional keywords that you might want to add to your list.

5. Regularly Review Your Campaign Performance
Always test and tweak your campaigns to get the results you want. Regulate your ad performance to help figure out the best ways to achieve your goals. Over time, as you watch your ads you might notice changes to your clickthrough rate or conversion rate.

For example, if you notice a particular ad is not performing well as expected, you may edit the ad text, remove or add some keywords or if you find that customers aren't responding to a particular call-to-action in your ad text, remove that ad and try something else. It's all about experimenting!

Conclusion
Quality Score is primarily a measure of relevance, and improving keyword Quality Score is a matter of structuring your PPC campaigns into small, well-organized, tightly knit groups of keywords and better keyword research and organization can also naturally improve the quality and specificity of your ads and website content, allowing you to target the exact audience most likely to be searching for your offerings.

Low AdWords Quality Scores are primarily the result of disconnect between keywords, ad groups, ad text, and landing page content. A high Quality Score comes naturally when an AdWords account contains organized keywords in appropriate keyword groups, ad text that corresponds with certain ad groups, and landing pages that connect with the ad text's offer.

In Summary - 5 Ways to Improve Quality Scores

• 1. Create very specific ad groups
• 2. Use a Powerful call-to-action
• 3. Optimizing Landing Pages
• 4. Include Keywords in your Ad Text
• 5. Regularly Review Your Campaign Performance

To be candid, there is no easy, foolproof answer to improving your Quality Score formula, paying careful attention to relevance will greatly improve your scores.