Adding extensions to your search advertising can help to optimize your marketing investment and facilitate sales conversions for your local business.
What are Search Extensions?
Search extensions are simply additional information that can be added to Google search ads. They appear before potential customers click on the ad and can include things like:
- Site links
- Product prices
- Contact details
- Call to click buttons (mobile)
- Location information
- Customer reviews
Including this information may increase your business’ click-through rate by several percentage points.
Search extensions come in a variety of forms including:
Location Assets: Can include a stores address, phone number, hours, and a location map.
Structured Snippet Extensions: Can include information about amenities, brands, courses, degree programs, destinations, and more.
Image Extensions: Can display an image under a search ad.
An Example of What Extensions Look Like:
How Can These Extensions Help Your Local Business?
These extensions can help local businesses in a number of ways, including improving your online presence, increasing visibility, and driving more conversions. They provide valuable information to potential customers such as pricing, product highlights, and customer reviews. Some extensions that are particularly important for local business include:
- Call extensions enable customers to call your business directly via your search advertising.
- Review extensions allow you to incorporate third party reviews into your advertising, improving the social proof of your business as a solution to meet your potential customer’s needs.
- Location extensions enable you to include information about your business’ physical location(s) for the convenience of local shoppers.
- Store hours extensions display your store opening and closing hours within your search advertising, providing important and convenient information for local customers visiting your brick-and-mortar location.
For example, adding the location of your business to your search advertising through a location extension can help your potential customers, who are specifically searching for local solutions, find your business.
Importantly, according to Semrush, in the US there are more than 800 million searches annually that include the term ‘near me.’ Including your location information via an extension will help your business be included among those search engine results pages.
‘Near Me’ is one of the most common phrases people use to find local businesses. Local searches make up 69% of all digital traffic, and 22% of all website traffic. 28% of people who search locally end up making a purchase within a day. Local businesses should do all they can to optimize their search advertising to convert this business opportunity.
Search extensions do not cost anything extra, although sometimes there are qualifications your business may need, including having an established Google Business Profile.
If you’re interested in learning more about optimizing your investment in search advertising through extensions, Sentinel Solutions can help. We are experts in search advertising and can help you create a search campaign fully integrated into your marketing mix.
Give us a call at 603-352-5896 or send us an e-mail to advertising@SentinelDigitalSoutions.com if we can be of help.
