Google is giving online merchants a new way to stand out over the highly competitive Black Friday shopping weekend. AdWords structured snippets, which let online advertisers customize their PPC ads with valuable product and store information, have two new header fields: Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These header snippets can offer details about store opening times, sales and promotions.
Here’s what you need to know.
When Snippets Can be Used
- Black Friday snippets can be included in ads between November 20 and November 27.
- Cyber Monday snippets can be included in ads between November 20 and November 30.
If both headers are utilized, only the Black Friday header will appear through November 27. After that, the Cyber Monday snippet will be displayed.
How to Implement the Black Friday/Cyber Monday Headers
Access Structured snippet extensions within your campaign screen and create a new structured snippet. Choose Black Friday or Cyber Monday from the header dropdown menu.
Once selected, input a value to be displayed beside the header.
Since structured snippets can be set at the ad group, campaign and account levels, these can be as general as a site-wide sale or specifically geared to certain products. As with all marketing efforts, the more targeted, the higher conversion rate you can expect.
Use –– and Balance With –– Other AdWords Extensions
AdWords offers different fields, or “extensions,” to promote various messaging and information within PPC ads. The best part: you don’t have to choose just one –– many extensions can be used concurrently.
Callouts
Reassuring users about your shopping experience is a critical component of effective ecommerce marketing, but it’s tough to justify valuable paid real estate to these reassurances. That’s where callouts come in. Grey text toward the bottom of an ad can be used to convey your count of social media followers, product features or store-wide benefits such as free shipping.
Sitelinks
Sometimes customers are intrigued enough by your ad to visit your site, but may not be only interested in the product or category promoted in the display ad. Sitelinks let users navigate directly to other areas of your website, such as category or product pages.
They can be particularly useful for businesses with brick-and-mortar stores that include sitelinks to Hours or Location pages.
Robust ads feature social proof, business perks and helpful information that entice searchers to click your ads. But remember to review all ad extensions before publishing. When using Black Friday/Cyber Monday structured snippets with other extensions, be sure they provide a diverse balance of information with no overlap.
Using AdWords Structured Snippets Beyond Black Friday
One study showed structured snippets tripled click-through-rate and more than doubled conversions –– a testament to the effectiveness of telling consumers more about your store and products from the get-go. Despite the clear benefits, ad extensions come at no additional cost to the base cost-per-click charge.
The first version of this extension, dynamic structured snippets, has been available since early 2015. Dynamic snippets are not inputted manually but are automatically pulled directly from your store categories. They do not always appearing on ads and are shown at Google’s algorithmic discretion. The unveiling of structured snippets in September 2015 gave advertisers the flexibility to determine the snippet and whether or not it is shown.
Common ecommerce snippet headers include Brands, Styles and Types. Advertisers can choose from 12 headers that are not customizable and must use a minimum of 3 values (snippets). The Black Friday/Cyber Monday headers are an exception to this rule, with only one value required.
For ecommerce stores not already taking advantage of this free AdWords boost, the Black Friday weekend is an ideal time to see how structured snippets can boost conversion rates and get you more bang for your PPC buck.
Photo: meneame communications
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