4 Free Features You Should Be Using In Your Google Ads Campaigns

62% of searches that occur in the United states happen on Google. Think about how many times you pull your phone out to search.. Maybe trying to find that new restaurant you saw, you might be ready to pull that trigger on those cool socks but you can’t remember the name of the website, or maybe you need to find the definition of that weird word you heard earlier “equanimity” (it’s ok you can look it up).?

The point is that it's no wonder more than half of searches occur on Google, but I’m not writing this to just point out some cool stats. This is a call to advertisers using Google Ads to create awareness, generate leads, or those that just want to be on top of the search results. A call to please use the tools in your account because you're underutilizing the potential of your account.?

We do audits of accounts every week and it is surprising how underutilized accounts are from agencies to direct advertisers. So I felt the need to go over 4 free features you should be using in your Google Ads campaigns right now.?

Let’s jump into it…

1. Ad Extensions

First, these have been around for quite some time. There are quite a few types of ad extensions you can utilize and some have been “sunset” as google likes to say. There are some new ones to add to the mix now too. Let me list them here and we can go into them.?

Types of Ad Extensions:

• Sitelinks
• Callout
• Structured Snippets
• Image (this one is new)
• Call Extension
• Lead Form
• Location
• Affiliate Location
• Price
• App
• Promotion

Sitelinks

A staple in the Google Ads extension toolbox. Sitelinks allow you to add extra “links” to your website or parts of your landing page. So you can list additional relevant services, locations, or really anything you want a user to see and potentially click on.?

Callouts

Callouts are a great way to add to your ad spot. They are literally as they sound “callouts”. They are smaller worded sayings Google can pick and choose from to include with your ads at the bottom of your description area. Typical things you can include are “fast shipping, 30 Years In Business, Emergency Service, etc.” Feel free to add any other relevant benefits of your service or product here.?

Structured Snippets

These are similar to callouts but they are themed. For Example let's say you are a mechanic that does lifts on trucks. You may work with certain brands of lift kits and you can create a structured snippet of “brands” and list out all the brands you use for lifts. There are many theme options to choose from. I recommend you explore them and see how they can work for your business.?

Image

Image is a new one that has been rolling out to accounts, but again its as described. You can add a relevant image of your business to take up ad space. It can be a great attention grabber especially if other advertisers are not utilizing this. You will want to adhere to Google’s image specifications and guidelines on this.?

Call Extension

This is a must have if you are generating leads. The call extension is when your phone number appears on the actual ad on the search engine results page. This is also a trackable conversion if you set that up properly in your account.?

Lead Form

This can be a good extension but does require some additional setup. Lead quality can be hit or miss depending on your industry,? but it works similar to Facebook’s lead form. Essentially it will keep users on Google so they don’t need to go to your website and fill out a form. You will also have to set up some kind of webhook or integration to get these leads emailed to you or inputted into your CRM tool. As when a form is filled there is no real notification that this occurred. You can always download the excel file of user submissions from Google, but it can be easy to forget that. I would suggest looking into zapier if you are looking to do this.?

Location

This is a connection to your Google My Business account. If you don’t have a Google my business account please stop reading this and go make one. It’s super fast and easy. It can help generate local traffic for you and gives legitimacy to your business. What this extension does though is if Google determines that it wants to show this extension and a user is close to you it will show your address in the ad.?

Affiliate Location

If you are selling a product that is sold at other stores this is a good option to show users where they can get your products.?

Price?

You have fixed pricing for a product or even a service. You can list what that is and display them on your ads. They are a great option to control more ad space when they show up and can help you be competitive.?

App

This is a good option if you have a published app. You put a link to the app store on your ad so users can directly download it on their phones.?

Promotion

This is another staple of ad extensions. You can display different promotions you may be running for your business or different seasonal sales you may be doing. Google makes it easy to run all the different promotions your business may run on your ads.

One thing to remember is these ad extensions are not guaranteed to show every time or at all. Google picks and chooses what and when to use these additions to your ads. This is also affected by your bids and budget. If you have a super low budget. You should still create these but don’t expect to see your ad display all these all the time.?

2. RSA’s (Responsive Search Ads)

Responsive Search Ads are now in full force. This was a test in a few accounts a while back, but they are here full force. This isn’t any big news as everyone saw this coming. I know the community of paid search can have a hard time with the changes Google implements and sometimes they have every right to be. In the case of RSAs they are a great tool that is going to be the standard of creating ads going forward. They haven’t announced it yet, but I am sure ETA (expanded text ads) will be phased out soon.?

So why are RSAs so great? Well, there is the ability to create up to 20 different headlines for Google to rotate around and us. You can create up to 4 different descriptions as well. Then Google helps you by measuring your ad quality to let you know if what you have written is on track for the keywords you are targeting. Sounds pretty nice, but being creative with ads can be hard.?

One of the great things about RSAs that I see A LOT of people not utilize is the “pinning” feature for headlines and descriptions. So typically if you write a headline and don’t “pin” it to a position Google will determine what the best position for it is. What do I mean by position?

In your ad you have 3 headlines that can fit...most of the time you get 2. So with RSAs you can tell Google which position you want your allotment of headlines to be in. So you can do a couple of headlines that should be in position 1 as it makes sense for searches to see that first. Then do some headlines that are more call to actions that you put as position 2. Now you have more control and can tell Google where it should display your ad content.?

I underutilized this for a while once RSAs launched, but now I have a whole flow that is around pinning headlines to appropriate positions.?

Bottom line here is make sure you are switching your ads to RSAs if you have the old style of ads and if you are starting fresh make sure to just go full force with RSAs unless you have a coherent strategy as to why you shouldn’t.?

3. Audience Observations

Adding audiences to your campaigns isn’t anything new, but what again this is another underutilized feature. You can create audiences that are just in “observation” which means you tell Google you want to look at these segments of users and google will start giving you data on those segments from the clicks you receive. They aren’t adjusting your ads in any way to be geared towards that audience, but just “observing”. Great right.

So that’s all good, but what do you do with that information??

Once you have a good amount of data you can now start layering. You can either add certain audiences as targeted audiences or better yet you can now do bid adjustments on audiences you identify are driving actionable conversions for you. This is what we call layering. It may take time, but setting this up when you launch a campaign gives you invaluable data you can use later on.?

4. Search Term Reports

I don't know if this is really a “feature”, but I always have to throw the importance of search terms in everything. I see so many advertisers' accounts that clearly have never even looked at this report. People have way too much trust in Google it seems.?

This is one of the most important things you can do as this is a look into how Google is spending your advertising dollars. Really.?

You may be advertising a service but when you check your search term report there is something someone searches that is completely unrelated. For example let’s say you buy land and you have a bunch of keywords about people wanting to sell their land. Google takes this and then shows your ad for “can you sell land on the moon”.... If you never check your search terms report you would never know you are showing up for ridiculous searches like that. So doing this every couple of days if not every day will help you save money and hone in on the right search terms people are doing.?

With the information from your search term reports you will want to create negative keywords to start to exclude those terms that are triggering your ads. It can get out of control very easily so it’s good to keep a close eye on this. This is one of the first things I look at in every account I work on.?

We can all always improve our ad game so take some time to figure out what of these free features you aren’t using yet and make a plan to implement them into your paid search strategy. You won’t regret it!