Unlocking the power of Paid Search

Paid search is a powerful and strategic digital marketing technique that can drive targeted traffic to your website, boost your online visibility, and help you achieve your business goals. With paid search, you can reach potential customers at the right moment, when they are actively searching for products or services you offer.

By leveraging paid search platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, you can unlock the power of precise targeting, compelling ad copy, and strategic bidding strategies to drive results. Our digital marketing agency is well-equipped with the expertise and experience to help you unlock the full potential of paid search.

Our team of skilled professionals will work with you to develop customised paid search strategies that align with your business objectives, deliver measurable results, and drive tangible ROI. Let us help you unlock the power of paid search and take your online marketing efforts to new heights.

Driving digital expansion: the case for Paid Search

Heightened brand exposure

Paid Search places your ads at the top of search results, boosting visibility, clicks, and conversions.

Targeted advertising

Paid Search lets you target specific keywords, demographics, and locations for maximum efficiency, reaching the right audience at the right time for higher ad relevance and better results.

Measurable ROI

With Paid Search, you have full control over your budget and can set spending limits. Additionally, you can track and measure the performance of your paid search campaigns, allowing you to optimise your strategy for maximum return on investment.

Achieving digital success: our Paid Search roadmap

At Clear Click, we have a proven roadmap for maximising your business growth through strategic Paid Search campaigns. From targeted keyword selection and ad creation to ongoing campaign optimisation, our roadmap is designed to deliver results and help you achieve your business goals. Let us leverage the power of Paid Search to drive your business success.

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Keyword discovery and competitor analysis

Conversion tracking and analytics setup

Development of ad campaigns

Advanced analytics and reporting

Discover our latest Paid Search articles

By
Alistair Mains
Google Ads Image Extensions: Boost Your CTR
November 29, 2023
• 4 min read
Paid Search

Google Ads Image Extensions: Boost Your CTR

Welcome to our guide on Google Ads Image Extensions, a tool for increasing click-through rates and making paid search campaigns stand out. At Clear Click, we recognise the importance of appealing ads, particularly in the context of the rollout of Performance Max Campaigns and evolving consumer search trends.

With the rise of platforms like TikTok, there's a clear shift from text to images and videos in marketing campaigns. In this blog, we’ll explore how Google Ads Image Extensions can improve your campaigns and reduce your overall ads spend.

What Are Google Ads Image Extensions?

Google Ads Image Extensions allow advertisers to add images to their text-based paid ads. These images provide a more engaging experience, helping your ads stand out in busy result pages. When used effectively, image extensions can significantly boost your ad’s click-through rate, driving more traffic to your website from the search result pages.

Here is an example, although the two ads using image extensions rank second and third in the search results, they still achieve a better user experience than the ad in first place.

Google ads image extensions


How Do They Work?

When you add an image extension to your Google Ads campaign, you can choose relevant images that complement your ad text. These images are displayed alongside your text ads in Google Search results, offering a snapshot of what you're offering and enticing users to click through to learn more.

The Benefits of Using Image Extensions in Google Ads

  1. Enhanced Visibility: With eye-catching visuals, your ads become more noticeable, helping them stand out from text-only ads.

  2. Increased Engagement: Visual elements can convey emotions and details faster than text, leading to higher engagement rates.

  3. Better Click-Through Rates: A visually appealing ad is more likely to be clicked on, potentially boosting your CTR.

  4. Improved Ad Relevance: By adding relevant images, you can make your ads more pertinent to the searcher's intent.

Implementing Google Ads Image Extensions

To start using image extensions in your advertising campaigns, follow these steps:

  1. Select High-Quality Images: Choose images that are clear, relevant, and appealing to your target audience.

  2. Align Images with Ad Content: Ensure your images complement your ad copy and accurately represent your product or service.

  3. Conduct image tests to determine which ones have the most impact on your audience.

Best Practices for Google Ads Image Extensions

Creating impactful images for your Google Ads Image Extensions involves more than just selecting attractive images. It requires a strategic approach to ensure that your visuals align with your brand identity and campaign objectives. Consider the following when selecting images:

  1. Consistency: Keep your images consistent with your brand's style and message.

  2. Relevance: Use images that are directly related to your ad content.

  3. Quality: High-resolution images are crucial for making a good first impression.

Linking Image Extensions to Paid Search Strategy

Integrating image extensions into your paid search advertising can achieve higher engagement rates and make your ads stand out to your audiences. By adding a visual component to your text ads without using display ads, you're providing a more complete story about your product or service. This integration can lead to a more compelling and effective paid search campaign.

How Image Extensions Complement Paid Search

  • Enhanced Ad Performance: Visuals can boost the overall performance of your paid search campaigns, generating more clicks on your ad.

  • Targeted Messaging: Tailor your images to match specific segments of your audience for more personalised advertising.

Explore our Paid Search Services to see how we can integrate image extensions into your Google Ads campaigns, elevating your paid search efforts to new heights.

Maximising Campaign Impact with Integrated Google Ads Features

Integrating Google Ads Image Extensions with other features can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your campaigns. Advertising to local audiences can benefit from localised visuals, featuring local landmarks, which resonate more with the targeted audience. This approach can also be leveraged to include geo-specific offers in the images, creating more compelling calls to action for users.

In terms of audience targeting, image extensions can be tailored to specific demographic segments, reflecting their interests and lifestyles. This personalisation can be done using behavioural insights, such as selecting images based on products the user has previously shown interest in. This targeted approach ensures that the visual content is as engaging and relevant as possible to each audience segment.

Beyond targeting, integrating image extensions with automated bidding strategies can lead to more efficient budget allocation. This includes conducting A/B testing with different images to find out which visuals have the best performance under various bidding conditions. Additionally, pairing image extensions with Dynamic Search Ads can dynamically display relevant images based on the user's search query, ensuring both the visual and textual content of your ads are highly targeted and contextually relevant.

Using these integrated solutions, Google Ads Image Extensions become more than just an attention-grabbing tool; they provide personalised and contextually relevant user experience at the beginning of the user journey, maximising the engagement and impact your Google Ads campaigns have.

Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Image Extensions in Google Ads

Setting up Image Extensions in Google Ads is a straightforward process that can significantly enhance your ad's appeal. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you get started:

  1. Access Your Google Ads Account: Log into your Google Ads account and select the campaign you want to add image extensions to.

  2. Navigate to Ads & Extensions: Go to the “Ads & Extensions” tab and select “Extensions” from the sub-menu.

  3. Choose Image Extension: Click on the plus button (“+”) and select “Image Extension” from the dropdown menu.

  4. Select Your Images: You can either upload images directly or choose from your Google My Business account. Ensure the images are high-quality and relevant to your ad content.

  5. Adhere to Google’s Guidelines: Make sure your images comply with Google's advertising policies. Avoid logos or generic stock photos; instead, use images that accurately represent your products or services.

  6. Optimise for Mobile: Since a significant portion of searches are on mobile devices, optimise your images for smaller screens. Check how they appear on different devices to ensure clarity and impact.

  7. Submit for Review: Once you’ve added your images, submit them for Google's review. This process usually takes a day or two.

  8. Monitor and Optimise: After approval, monitor the performance of your image extensions. Use the insights to optimise your images and ad copy for better results.


In Summary

We’ve uncovered the role of visual content in Google Ad campaigns, and the shift towards images and videos, driven by platforms like TikTok and evolving consumer trends which underline the necessity of visually engaging ads.

Using Google Ads Image Extensions, advertisers can enhance their ad visibility, increase click-through rate, and stand out in the search engine results. This tactic transforms text-based ads into personalised and contextually engaging advertising.

At Clear Click, we stay at the forefront of these tools, ensuring that your Google Ads account not only captures attention but also resonates with and engages your target audience, leading to meaningful interactions and conversion rate.

By
Alistair Mains
How Does the Google Ads Auction Work? [Infographic]
June 8, 2021
• 4 min read
Paid Search

The Google Ads Auction Process

As advertisers, we’re often faced with questions about how Google Ads works, and, more importantly, how PPC works. So, we thought that the best way to answer this frequently asked question would be to illustrate the Google Ads auction process.

Below, you will find our updated 2021 Google Ads auction infographic which helps illustrate how the auction process is formatted. Through this useful infographic, you’ll be able to find out;


  • How advertisers get entered into each auction
  • How Google determines which ads to show, and where they are shown
  • How much Google charges advertisers

How Does the Google Ads Auction Work?
How Does the Google Ads Auction Work?


Looking for more resources on google Ads, take a look at our Basic Introduction to Google Ads. Or perhaps you need a specialist to help run your Google Ad campaign, you can contact us, we would be happy to help.

By
Alistair Mains
Google Ads: A Basic Introduction
April 29, 2021
• 4 min read
Paid Search

Google Ads

With over 267 million unique visitors and a worldwide market share of almost 86%, Google is the most powerful search engine in the world. Google Ads was rolled out two years after Google.com was founded. As an advertising platform, it has evolved from Google Adwords from its inception to a recent rebrand in 2018, renaming the platform to Google Ads.


Given Google’s enormous reach, the chances are that you have seen and probably clicked on a Google ad, and so have your potential customers. In this guide, you will discover how to use Google Ads and how to optimise your campaigns to achieve the best results. Let’s get started!


What are Google Ads?

Google Ads is a paid advertising platform that falls under the pay-per-click advertising model. Google Ads are a powerful way to send high-quality traffic to your website, prompting your advertisements to appear at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) when the user searches for a product or service similar to the one you are offering. Google Ads helps boost your website traffic, get more phone calls, and increase your website conversions.

What are Google Ads?
What are Google Ads?

Google Ads give you, the advertiser, the ability to create and serve well-targeted ads to users across multiple devices such as mobile, tablet, and desktop. Ads can be created in many different formats spanning across other channels including YouTube, Google Display Network, and Google Shopping Ads. This allows you to reach your target audience where it makes the most sense for them to come across your ad, at a time where they are most likely to engage with it.


Google Ads will also help you analyse your advertising campaigns to increase your performance metrics over time and ultimately aid your business in reaching its marketing goals. In addition to helping you analyse performance, Google is not budget restrictive and allows you to tailor your advertising to suit your budget. Google Ads lets you stay within your monthly budget, and you can stop your campaigns at any time.


How do Google Ads work?


Google Ads operates an auction based bidding system whereby advertisers tell Google the maximum amount they are willing to pay for a click. The amount they actually pay, however, will be just over the next highest bidder which is just how traditional auction bidding works.

To illustrate the auction system we have put together an example. Let's assume there are three ad placements, and four advertisers are competing for those placements. The table shows the maximum price each advertiser is willing to pay for a click, and what amount they pay for the click.

How do Google Ads work?
How do Google Ads work?

If you want to learn exactly how the Google ads auction works take a look out our details Google ads auction process infographic

How can Google Ad help you advance your business goals? 


There are a number of reasons why Google ads can help advance your business goals. We’ve shortlisted the top 4 reasons for using Google Ads to support your business.


Massive reach


As the world's most frequently used search engine, Google receives over 6 billion search queries per day, giving you direct access to a substantial amount of internet users across the world. Coupled with the fact that Google Ads has been developed for almost 20 years, you can be sure that the platform will serve you well in helping you reach your paid advertising goals.


Return on investment

Google suggest that advertisers make $8 for every $1 they spend on Google Ads which translates to a 200% return on advertising spend. This is without a doubt the main reason why you should be considering Google advertising.


Stay competitive

Another reason you should be advertising on Google is to keep your business competitive within its markets. More than 7 million advertisers use Google Ads to promote their business online, which means even if you are optimising your businesses SEO you still run the risk of losing out to your competitors as Google Ads are placed above organic search results.


Harness intent

Advertising on Google Ads means your business will be reaching high intent audiences that are most likely to convert into customers. Unlike social media, whereby users are not actively searching for a product or service but still being advertised to, Google Ads are only shown to users actively searching for products and services related to yours.


How to Run Effective Google Ad Campaigns

Running effective Google Ad campaigns requires knowledgeable and creative ideas. It’s not always a case of pushing £10,000 into Google Ads expecting to get a return on your ad spend. Rather, advertisers need to do their homework to set their campaigns up for success. 


Understand your goals


Before you begin to invest in any type of paid advertising, it’s important to identify what success looks like for your business. Google Ads can be highly targeted or as broad as you make them, so having a predefined goal will help you mitigate any wasted ad spend.

If you’re on a small budget and aren’t sure where to get started then start by tailoring your Google Ad campaigns around high intent keywords that you believe have the highest chance of generating a lead, or revenue, for your business. 

Build quality landing pages

So many advertisers make the mistake of directing traffic to the home page of their website, with little or no thought into how to get the user to take the desired action, such as a newsletter sign up. If you want to increase your conversion rate, you must build highly targeted, user-friendly landing pages with a clearly defined action you want users to take.


Adopt a test and learn approach

You should never set up and forget your paid advertising campaigns. Once you start, that’s only the beginning. You’ll need to constantly make adjustments to your targeting, advertising copy, landing page designs, and keyword bidding based on the data you are collecting, and the objectives you are trying to meet.

Make sure that you are constantly testing something in your account. However small or large it may be, by using data and analytics you can make data-driven decisions and provide actionable insights to increase your business performance. 


How Clear Click Can Help


Wondering if Clear Click might be the digital marketing partner your business needs? Our experienced paid search team integrates strong data-driven strategies that help our clients identify growth opportunities and reduce the risk of wasting ad spend. If you want to start reaching your ideal customers and position your brand in the top search results then contact us today!