Nov 24 2009

Inside Adwords has announced today that Google rolled out a new feature to its Adwords paid search platform called product extensions.  Currently available to U.S. customers only, product extensions will be a way to enhance your existing ads by showing searchers your product images, titles and prices in a plusbox located beneath the ad.  The products will be most relevant to the searcher’s query and the advertiser is charged on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.  If a searcher clicks on the ad text, or a product within the product extensions plusbox, the advertiser will be charged for the click.  The advertiser will not be charged if the searcher clicks on the plusbox, but does not click through to the advertiser’s site.  The use of product extensions will enhance a searcher’s experience by increasing the relevance for shopping-related queries by allowing advertisers to include relevant product information directly within the ad.  Even further, the product extensions feature give advertisers the option to select which products they prefer to display for specific search queries in addition to the ability to use automatic targeting.  According to the Inside Adwords blog post, a specific advertiser who implemented product extensions feature during Google’s beta test reported seeing over a 10% increase in click-through-rate (CTR) for their ads.

To get started with product extensions, simply go to the Google Merchant Center and add your Adwords customer ID to your account.

Kurt Kaufer

It’s no secret that the customer is the basis of all marketing and business strategy. A corporation’s largest concern should be understanding the customer’s needs, wants, and demands because in the long run, a company that is genuinely interested in their customers will be interesting to investors. A successful business is built on having a profound perception of the entire consumer driven process highlighting what moves them from awareness, to interest, to eventual action. Having this understanding prefaces the strategic formulation of effective actionable insight. The end result can be a real competitive advantage in your industry.

Consumers can fall into many segments. For example, Gary A. Williams and Robert B. Miller state in their article entitled, “Change The Way You Persuade” that persuasion works best when it’s tailored to five distinct decision making styles. These styles include charismatics, thinkers, skeptics, controllers, and followers. Being able to tailor your messaging based on individual personalities can greatly improve your chances of creating an actionable and loyal customer base. Because each purchase decision is based off of many personal influences, it’s important to have a framework in place to identify what customer values and purchase styles are. One method to organizing this information is to create representative profiles of your customers based on real data. These hypothetical archetypes, or “personas” represent specific customer segments and include valuable information pertaining to their individual purchase behaviors, rationality, and emotions. Having these touch-points mapped out not only helps with marketing and business positioning strategies, but assists in creating alignment internally and externally when it comes to messaging, sales, and customer service. All internal and external parties will be making decisions from the same vantage point, using the same language. The end result can be an accelerated marketing foundation process that is highly effective in driving the consumer into your desired action.

Please click on the image below to see just how truly informative and effective a persona can be.

Kurt Kaufer