Search engine marketing (SEM) is a staple of digital advertising budgets for most businesses and it’s easy to see why. 93% of people’s online experiences begin with a search engine, so it makes sense to make every effort to ensure your finance brand is as visible and accessible as possible on search channels. This is where Google lead form extensions come in, pairing visibility with the ability to capture leads in less clicks.
Understanding customer search intent
When trying to capture attention online the intent of your audience in the channel where you’re speaking to them is important. On social channels people are usually in a browsing and content snacking mode, often with no predetermined objective in mind. Search on the other hand is a high intent channel where users have a pre-planned motive to find a specific piece of information which is usually either ‘informational’ (more details about a specific subject) or ‘transactional’ in nature (how to do something specific).
Given this high intent, search can be considered further down the marketing funnel than other digital channels such as social, closer to the point where leads and sales can be made.
How Google lead form extensions work
One of the key principles when planning any customer journey is to reduce the number of clicks it takes to perform any task. Each extra click required by a user is a point of potential traffic drop-off, often dramatically.
“ One of the key principles when planning any customer journey is to reduce the number of clicks it takes to perform any task.”
With Google lead form extensions Google has combined the ability to reach high intent search users with minimal click lead generation campaigns (at least on mobile and tablet) – a very interesting prospect for financial marketers trying to generate business leads.
Google lead form extensions are displayed below search ads on mobile and tablet devices. Search users can fill in a simple lead gen form with their contact information directly through the ad or if they’re already signed into their Google account the form will be pre-populated and can be submitted with one click without the need to even fill in the form.
This is an ideal user-journey for a user with high intent, removing the need to even have to click and go to a traditional landing page with a form that has to be manually filled in and submitted.
An added bonus is that the Google lead form extension makes the search ad appear larger in size, making it more prominent than regular search ads.
Implementing Google lead form extensions
There are some requirements to be able to use Google lead form extensions however most finance brands should be eligible:
- A good history of policy compliance
- A Google Ads account in an eligible vertical or sub-vertical. Sensitive verticals or sub-verticals (for example, sexual content) aren’t eligible for lead forms
- A privacy policy for your business. When you create a lead form extension in Google Ads you need to provide a link to your privacy policy. The privacy policy appears at the end of the lead form
- They are still quite a new format so they may also not be rolled out in all geographic regions yet
Implementing Google lead form extensions is a simple process. Within the Google Ads editor select ‘Leads’ as the goal and ‘Search’ as the campaign type. Go to ‘Ads and extensions’ and complete the simple setup process.
For best practice, although up to 10 question fields can be populated in the form only those fields that can extract data from a Google signed-in account will be able to be pre-populated and may force users to manually enter information into some fields. Whenever possible, restricting the fields required to just name and email will ensure that all users will be able to have that information pre-populated and allow a simple 1 click submit user journey.
The leads themselves can be downloaded as leads via a CSV file or can be hooked up to a CRM system allowing for more sophisticated segmentation and targeted communication.
Although these ads are restricted to mobile and tablet, that’s how the majority of users are already accessing the internet, so it makes sense that finance brands wanting to generate leads should look seriously at Google’s native lead generation ads which are specifically optimised for mobile usage.
