How to Sell Online to Generation Z
Generation Z (Gen Z) is no longer the future, it is the present. Let's learn about their shopping habits, what makes them unique, and how to sell to them.
Google Ad assets (formerly known as “extensions”) can be a great addition to any Google Ads campaign. They can help improve the performance of your ads, thus decreasing your CPCs (cost-per-click) and making your marketing budget go further. Today, we’ll look at our three favourite Google Ads assets.
Table of contents:
What are Google Ad assets?
Google Ad assets are additional elements that advertisers can add to a Google text advertisement. These are the ads found at the top of Google search results.
These text ads are a huge source of income for Google because they’re incredibly effective. Users enter millions of search terms into the search engine daily. With the right keyword targeting, advertisers get to place ads at the top of these search results and grab the attention of a highly relevant audience.
These Google Ad assets add extra information (e.g. phone number) into your Google Ad. This extra info increases the visibility of the ad by making it physically bigger, but it also adds value to the user by including relevant info/links.
In the following example, you can see a Google Ad with the the sitelink asset applied, which shows users additional links. In this case, the shop is showing their product category pages.
Source: The Crofthouse
Why are Google Ads assets so important for shop owners?
Setting up assets can bring a lot of benefits to your online shop.
Here are a few of the biggest benefits for e-commerce shops:
- Improved ad visibility: Assets provide additional information and links to your ad, making the ad bigger in search results. This increased visibility can lead to higher click-through rates (CTRs) and more traffic to your site.
- Cheaper costs-per-click (CPCs): With higher CTRs, Google Ads assets make your ads more relevant and appealing to users by offering extra information. With a good conversion rate, Google will lower the price of your ads.
- Enhanced user experience (trust): Assets offer users more information about your business, which helps them make more informed decisions. This transparency can help build trust for your shop and improve your ad’s performance.
- Increased Ad Rank and Quality Score: Google Ads considers the expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience when determining your ad rank and Quality Score. By using Google Ads assets effectively, you can improve these factors, leading to higher ad positions and, as we mentioned before, potentially lower costs-per-click (CPCs).
- Better Mobile Performance: Assets are particularly valuable for mobile users. Features like Call Assets, Location Assets, and Sitelink Assets are highly effective in reaching users on mobile devices, where space is limited. With that in mind, mobile users often seek quick and relevant information.
What are the different types of Google Ad Assets?
There are a lot of different assets that can be used in a Google Ad. Some of these are added by Google automatically. Some others require manual setup. Depending on the types of products/services you sell, some of these assets will become available to you while others won’t.
Shutterstock/Graphic and Photo Stocker
Here are some of the most common ad assets for e-commerce owners:
- Sitelink assets: This asset allows you to include additional links to specific pages on your website, letting users navigate to relevant content quickly.
- Callout assets: Callout assets let you highlight key features, benefits, or offers without the need for a clickable link.
- Structured Snippet assets: This asset lets you showcase specific aspects of your products or services, such as product categories or brands.
- Location assets: They display your business address, phone number, and a link to Google Maps, helping users easily find your physical location.
- Call assets: Call assets allow users to call your business directly from your ad by clicking a "Call" button, which can be particularly useful for mobile users.
- App assets: App assets let users download your mobile app by providing a link to the app store.
- Price assets: With these assets, you can display a list of products or services with their respective prices, helping users compare offerings.
- Promotion assets: Showcase special offers, discounts, and promotions directly in your ads.
- Lead Form assets: Capture lead information with a form in your ad, making it easier for users to express interest in your products or services.
- Seller Ratings assets: Display a star rating (between 1 and 5 stars) next to your ad if you collect service reviews (aka shop reviews) from a Google-certified reviews partner.
- Image assets: Image assets enable you to add images to your text ads to make them more visually appealing.
Recommended reading:
5 Ways to Spend Your Free Google Ads Credits
Once again, please note that the availability of these assets may vary by campaign type, location, and other factors.
We won’t get into the nitty-gritty details for all of them today, but we will share our 3 favourite assets for e-commerce shop owners. But first, let’s quickly look at how to add these assets to your Google Ads.
How to add assets to your Google Ads campaigns
Adding assets to your ad campaigns can be done fairly easily:
- Go into your Google Ads dashboard
- On the left-hand navigation menu, select “Assets”
- From there, you’ll see a list of existing Assets as well as the possibility to create new ones.
- Click on the blue “+” sign to create a new Asset.
Source: Google Ads
- You will have to choose which Asset you want to create (we’ll learn more about that below).
- You’ll enter the relevant information for that particular Asset.
- Add any of the Assets to your current ad campaigns (in the copy-text section).
Tip: Google ultimately decides automatically which (if any) assets will appear in your ads. Because of this, it is advisable to add as many relevant assets to your campaign as possible.
3 Free Google Ads Assets your online shop should be using
There are many to choose from and you should feel encouraged to dive a bit deeper into any of the assets that we mentioned earlier if they seem interesting to you. With that said, here are three of our favourite Google Ads assets:
Price assets
Your prices will almost always be a factor for your shoppers. It will in many cases, get them to click on your ads and enter your shop and that’s often the first step, isn’t it?
Recommended reading:
12 Tips for Creating Perfect Google Shopping Ads
Stay transparent while giving your audience more information right on the spot.
This can work particularly well with product category searches. In the example below, a search for “self-watering pots” leads to this ad. Combined with the Structured Snippet assetin the first row of links, the bottom row shows users the pricing for one of their products with the Price asset. Clicking on “More” reveals other products that may fit the user’s search terms along with their prices.
Read more about Price assets on Google's support pages.
Seller Rating assets
Customer reviews are a really important part of the consumer journey. Sure, price is an important factor when buying online, but being able to trust a shop you’ve never heard of is also something users try to calculate.
With Seller Rating assets, you can display your seller rating directly in your ad. This can be a really effective way to make a good first impression with your audience. If they see a high rating along with a high number of reviews, they are much more likely to trust you.
Source: PuzzleYou
What’s important to note is that you should be using a Google-certified reviews partner (like Trusted Shops). With the Google Integration tool, sending your reviews to Google for your ads is done automatically.
Either way, remember that you only get one chance to make a first impression. And shining stars are a great way to inspire some first-time clicks.
Tip: Make sure you display your reviews throughout your website as well (both service reviews and product reviews).
Read more about Seller Ratings on Google's support pages.
Sitelink assets
The Sitelink Ad asset is the number one on many lists and for good reason. It’s essentially a juiced-up version of Structured Snippet assets, which only share a few links below the ad.
With Sitelink assets, not only do you share a few extra links, but they’re bigger and contain extra room for descriptions of each of those pages. This means you’re taking up a lot of “real estate” on the screen. This is particularly true for mobile devices, where screen space is even more limited.
Source: Future Shop
If your website consists of more than just a homepage, it probably makes sense to implement this asset. For example, if you sell clothes, you might divide your product categories into many pages: Men, Women, Boys, Girls, etc.
If you sell electronics, it could look something like this: TVs, Smartphones, Computers, A/V
If you work in a specific niche, you might want to display your About Us page.
The point is that you’re being more transparent about your offer and you’re giving them more options to click. Users who see your ad will get a better feeling for whether or not your ad is relevant to them and click on the appropriate link.
Read more about Sitelink assets on Google's support pages.
Recommended reading:
What Is SEA and How Can Your Business Benefit From It?
Conclusion
Google Ad assets can be a great addition to any campaign you are running. By increasing trust, being more transparent, and providing more information, you’ll not only take up more screen space, but you’ll give users more reasons to click on your ad.
