Social Extensions in Google Adwords

Google+ is growing by leaps and bounds (I personally love Hangouts) and the inclusion of social extensions in Adwords ads is becoming a standard practice in the industry.

Ok, but specifically what are these social extensions?

Social extensions show the data from our Google+ page below our Adwords ads to users who are logged into their Google+ accounts when they search.

In the event that someone in our circles has given "+1" or follows the brand in question, we will see their profile images accompanying the ad.

By the way, social extensions also work for the Display Network!

Example:

Why should you use social extensions?

According to studies done by Google, social extensions help improve the CTR of an ad between 5% to 10%, with ads that show a relationship between some of the user's connections and the brand being much more effective.

It is important to bear in mind that if a user clicks on the social extension, he or she is directed to the company's Google+ page, so a strategy must be developed for that social network in order to attract attention of the user and lead him to carry out the conversion we want.

But ... What do I need to use social extensions?

To use social extensions in your Adwords ads, you just need to create a company account on Google+, which you can do in the following link: Google+ Business

What good is a Google+ page to my business?

Google+ business pages are very similar to Facebook fanpages in terms of what we can do, basically it is another communication tool with our consumers where we can publish content, hold contests, special offers, etc.

I have everything ready, how do I add social extensions to my Adwords ads?

All you need to do is add the social extension in all the corresponding campaigns, for this we click the "Ad extensions" tab and then select the "Social extensions" option.

Once we have created the social extension, from this same tab we can see its performance at the campaign level.

It is important to bear in mind that in order to use social extensions we need to link the brand's Google+ page with our website, for this we must follow the following steps: Google + pages

Case study

A very interesting case study is that of Cadbury during the Olympics and how they managed to take advantage of the conversations that were taking place on Google+ about the brand to get 1.2 million followers.

You can see the case study in the following link: Cadbury Case Study