Once you’ve gotten the hang of Pay Per Click Account Management in Google, it might be time to begin investigating some of the ‘extras’ that Google has made available to help boost performance. Ad extensions are one of the many tools that advertisers should be aware of, as they allow additional information about one’s business, website, or offerings to be included in standard text ads. There are currently 4 types of ad extensions that you can activate in your AdWords account:

• Location Extensions
• Phone or ‘Click To Call’ Extensions
• Product Extensions
• Sitelinks Extensions

Feel free to check out some of our musings on Sitelinks here.
Some of these are more easily activated than others, but one of the most simple is the Click To Call Phone Extension. This will make it possible for a clickable phone number to appear along with the text ad, allowing users to call your business straight from the ad. The benefit here is threefold:

1. Users can very easily call your business, and may be more likely to do so thanks to the simplicity of the process.
2. You can better measure the value of your campaigns based upon the number of calls that you generate, as you’ll be able to track these calls from within your AdWords Interface.
3. Your ad may stand out from the others on a search page, since it has extra information associated with it. This may result in increased CTR.

Enabling phone extensions is easy. You just enter the campaign you wish to use them in, navigate to the ‘Ad Extensions’ tab, and select the ‘Phone Extensions’ view. Then you click ‘New Extension’ and enter your business phone number. For more detailed instructions, as well as additional information about Phone Extensions, check out this Adwords Help Center link.

Something to keep in mind when enabling Phone Extensions, however, is that you’ll only be tracking the phone calls that originate from a user clicking on one of your extensions. If a user navigates to your home page via your advertising and calls you after obtaining your phone number there, this will not be counted as a phone call in your AdWords interface. In order to get the most complete tracking possible, we highly recommend using AdWords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics to set up goals and track your conversions this way.

So, if you’re ready to add a little something to your run-of-the-mill text ads, check out Click To Call Phone Extensions and make it as easy as possible for your prospective customers to reach you. Have any feedback about Phone Extensions, or tips to share? We always love to hear them, so leave us a comment below!