Make the Most of Your Bank’s Google Ads

When you first dive into the Google Ads platform, it can be an overwhelming landscape. It may be easy to create a simple ads campaign or let Google automate the performance for you. Here at BankBound, we recommend keeping your control over your campaigns – after all, who knows your market and customers better than you? With that being said, some features are easily overlooked that can easily help you make high-quality ads.

Welcome to a brief guide for Google Ads Assets (previously called Extensions). We’ll review what Ads Assets are available in Google Ads, and which ones we recommend our banking partners use to elevate their campaigns.

What Are Google Ads Assets (Extensions)?

Google provides additional assets and extensions for you to provide more information for your customers. They also serve a secondary purpose in taking up more room on the search results page. Remember, the more information you provide, the more room you take up. The more room you take, the less space available for competitors.

Using ad extensions usually results in higher click-through rates and better ad performance. By providing more information, your ad is typically more engaging and relevant to a customer’s search. Consider which you would want to click on when searching “credit union near me” – an ad with or without a clickable address right around the corner.

These extensions range in type. You have text, visual, interactive, and others. Let’s dive a little deeper.

Overview of All Available Google Ad Extensions

So what extensions are available to use? Some may or may not be relevant as a bank, but we’ll get into our recommendations next. First, let’s review everything you could use.

• Image: add an image representing your product to your ad
• Business name: Include your bank name at the top of your ad.
• Business logo: Very simply, show your logo next to your business name and URL.
• Sitelink: Take people to a specific page on your website. This is different than your ad URL – you can get much more specific or lead to pages like “contact us”.
• Callout: Provide extra text information about your bank or products and services. No links are involved.
• Structured snippet: Provide more information about a group of products or services your bank provides.
• Call: Show your phone number directly in the ad, making it easy for people to click and call
• Lead form: Gather leads directly from the ad. Your potential customer will be prompted to input their information in a form.
• Location: By connecting to Google Business Profiles, show the location addresses closest to your customer.
• Price: Show the price of a particular product.
• App: Advertise and lead directly to your app, promoting downloads.
• Promotion: Promote a discount of some sort off of a product or service. Can be monetary or percent.

Our “Best for Banks” Ad Extension Suggestions

Now that we know what extensions are available in the Google Ads platform, let’s take a look at what BankBound suggests you should use, and why.

• Image Ad Extension

  • Adding an image to your ad is an incredibly simple and effective way to draw more attention – and subsequently more clicks – to your ad and website. Customers are very visual – match your ad images in your search campaigns with your display and social ads and create a cohesive message. If this messaging matches your website, even better! Finding ways to make your ad stand out from the rest is key, and images are one of the easiest ways to do so. This is not to be confused with your business logo – make these images relevant to your ad. You can add these extensions to either the ad group or campaign level.

• Business Name Ad Extension

  • Including your business name shows your bank is official, and again, draws more attention to your ad. Having your business name included stands out more than just a basic URL or headline. Using this and your business logo in tandem helps you connect with your bank’s customers and leverage your created brand recognition.

• Business Logo Ad Extension

  • You’ve spent time and money on your logo and branding, make use of it by including your logo next to your Google Ad. Again, this is another way to visually grab your customer’s attention, and possibly their business.

• Sitelink Ad Extension

  • Including sitelinks with your ads allow you to begin to lead them to different pages, as well as grab more room on the search results page. Any additional information you can provide your customers the better, as you may be seen as more relevant to their needs. By taking up more room with your ad, you will also push your competitors down further – very important as more and more customers are searching from small, mobile devices.

• Callout Ad Extension

  • Call out different features you’d like to highlight at your bank. It is important to note that this asset does not include any links. Callouts we recommend: Join Today; Serving Your Area Here; Apply Online; Your Tagline. You can also get more advanced with your callouts, and schedule them to only show during certain times or certain days. This could come in handy when running a promo for a CD special or holiday loan, for example.

• Structured Snippet Ad Extension

  • Structured snippets allow you to provide more information to your customers about the products you offer. This can be things like types of loans or checking accounts, or benefits of banking with you (mobile banking, unlimited ACH, etc.). Again, this takes up more room on the search results page and provides more potential value to customers. This allows them to easily recognize that your bank can fulfill their needs.

• Call Ad Extension

  • Any time you can make it super simple for your customers to reach you, the better. Why make your customers have to click through multiple steps when you can just as easily show your phone number directly from the ad?

• Location Ad Extension

  • Easily let your customers know you have convenient locations nearby. They can simply click on the location, and Google will provide them with directions right to your branch doors. Make sure your Google Business Profile is correct and optimized.

Other Google Ads Asset Options

There are a couple of other ad assets you can use if you have the right capabilities. These are not on our “must-use” list, but they are worth a look if it sounds right for your bank.

• Lead Form

  • While lead forms sound like they would be in our “must have” list, they are a more complicated ad extension to set up and utilize. You either have to connect directly to your CRM or use another app or third-party integration. This can be very complicated to set up. Google also provides you with the option to directly download leads, but this requires you to manually log in and check Google every day to ensure you don’t miss any that may have come in.

• App

  • If your bank has an app they are actively trying to push, Google does allow you to directly promote and link to your app on the app store. This can be useful but be aware you will need to install additional tracking codes on your app to see what your customers are doing once they have visited the app store.

Take Your Bank PPC Advertising to the Next Level

Using ad assets is just one aspect of creating high-quality Google Ads. There can be plenty more reasons your ads are underperforming. However, BankBound is here to help raise your pay per click advertising performance. When you are ready to take your Google Ads and PPC campaigns to the next level, contact a financial marketer to help get you there.