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Using The New AdWords Message Extension

Do you want to continue to effectively use Google AdWords management to grow your business online?

Luckily for us, Google are regularly rewarding their AdWords users with new, impressive and pretty useful updates to play around with. This means your ads and your company can stay ahead of the game.

A recent introduction is the AdWords message extension for mobile ads. The great news is they are easy to set up, meaning you don’t have to be an AdWords expert to implement them.

In This Google AdWords T-Time Show

– What the new Google AdWords Message Extension is

– Why you should use it

– How to setup the AdWords Message Extension

– How to manage and measure its success 

What is the AdWords Message extension?

(00:54) You know call extensions right? They allow someone to tap the number straight from the ad and it will call your business.

Well, they’ve been around for a while – so think of message extensions as it’s younger and much cooler brother. Text message extensions is a type of mobile ad extension (the extra bits of information that extend from you ad). In a nutshell, it allows a user to send you a text message directly from your ad after clicking it.

How do click-to-text message extensions work?

(01:32) It’s pretty self-explanatory really.  When users click on the message extension icon, an SMS window will launch automatically on their mobile. The business can set up an generic pretext that will be the default message in the message window. But users also have the option to edit that message into their own personal text before sending.

So for example, you may set up a default message saying: “Hi I’m interested in getting a quote. Please call me back.” The user can send this, or change it to whatever they like.

Who should use it?

Short answer. Everyone. In this ever changing digital age, mobile phone activity trumps desktop. Plus, it’s no secret that phone calls are declining with individuals preferring to communicate through messaging services, rather than face-to face (or is that voice-to voice?).

But the message extension is particularly targeted at those individuals and businesses who cannot always be reached immediately. So you may be a plumber, a hairdresser or run your own business part time in the evenings. You want the luxury of people contacting you at anytime, with the flexibility of responding to that enquiry at your own dispersal. Hopefully, it means you won’t lose out on potential customers or conversions because you were not available to answer the phone.

How to implement message extensions?

(01:37) Message extensions are added to your campaigns the same way as other ad extensions.

Once your in your Google AdWords account, you go to the Ad Extensions tab. Here, you’ll find a drop down menu showing all the different types of ad extensions, including the new ‘Message extension.’ Once you select this, you can create and edit the message extension elements:

  • Business Name: List the name of your business.
  • Text Phone Number: This is the phone number that the text message will be sent to.
  • Extension Text: This is the text that will appear with the message extension. (i.e ‘Text us now and we’ll get back to you.’)
  • Message text: This is the default text message you set that users can send. (i.e ‘I’m interested in your service, please call me back.)
  • Advanced Settings: This is optional, but it allows you to create a custom schedule on when your message extensions appear with your ad. You can chose Start/End dates, plus certain days and times.

How to monitor it?

(03:03)It’s important to monitor the performance of the message extension to evaluate how well it is working. When you go to the message extension tab, you are presented with some data. You may look and see that it says your message extension received 20 clicks and 15 conversions but you only received two text messages. Don’t panic!

This is in fact showing you the data for overall performance of the ad when this ad extension was shown.

But you want to see data just for how the ad extension is performing right?

(04:08) Hooray for you, because you can. To see how many people actually clicked on the message extension, You click segment and then segment by click type. That will break down and show you the clicks and other metrics for each element and ad extension on your ads.

It’s important to remember that message extensions are new and unfamiliar – both from a business and audience perspective. So why not take advantage of it. If it can generate more leads and conversions, than what’s to lose?  It’s exciting to see how successful and valuable it could be to your business. You may find yourself gaining from those previously missed leads and opportunities in the past. Plus you can always turn it off if it’s not working for your business.Speak with a SpecialistLearn AdWords with a Pro

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