If you use Google Ads to collect lead information, you are probably familiar with the typical setup. You create an ad, directing to an awesome landing page with a contact form, and you send valuable traffic there in hopes that you collect leads for your business.
Typically, these leads will be dropped into a CRM system and boom! You’re in business!
But, something new is on the horizon that may just help boost your numbers.
Though it’s been in beta since late 2019, Lead Form Extensions in Google Ads are starting to become available for more and more advertisers.
Haven’t heard of Lead Form Extensions?
That’s okay, we’re here to help.
What is a Lead Form Extension?
Currently, the Lead Form Extension is a beta test within Google Ads that helps advertisers capture leads directly within search-based text ads. There is recent talk of Lead Form Extensions opening up to YouTube (just released) and in Google Display Network (GDN) campaigns later this year as well.
With a Lead Form Extension, those who see it accompanying your search ad can submit their contact information directly within the ad unit, with a mini lead form and submission page displayed once the data is sent through the ad.
Wait, wasn’t this already a thing?
Ah-ha, you sneak! Yes, Google tested something similar to this in 2010, called Contact Form Extensions, where the leads were sent to advertisers via email. They have since been sunsetted. Lead Form Extensions are different in that you can choose to have the data in in a downloadable format in Google Ads for up to 30 days after submission, or you can use a web-hook and key integration to have the leads drop directly into your CRM.
Ok, I’m in, where do I start?
To see if you are eligible for Lead Form Extensions, login to your Google Ads account, navigate to the Extensions tab under Ads and click the blue + sign, as if you were to add a new extension. Here, you should see a list of extensions you are eligible to run.
If you see Lead Form Extensions listed here, you are golden!
Click on that to get started.
You’ll first be prompted to select the campaigns where you want to add your Lead Form Extension.
For our example, I selected all.
Next, you will be prompted throughout your Extension build.
Under “Create Your Extension” you’ll see a drop down with tons of Calls to Action such as:
- Learn more
- Get Quote
- Apply now
- Sign up
- Contact us
- Subscribe
- Download
- Book Now
- Get Offer
Select the one that works best for your business and move on to the Extension Text. This is where you would want to place a more detailed call to action (CTA) than the preset ones that will appear. It’s 30 characters in length, and in our example we chose “Tell Us About Your Project” since it matches a question on the contact form on our website.
Here’s how our Extension would look on any given ad, since we chose the “Contact Us” Call to Action and the “Tell Us About Your Project” Extension Text:
Now that the Extension part of your ad unit is created, you move on to creating your lead form.
Here you have the ability to list your business name, create a 30-character headline and 200-character description. You can also select what questions you display in the lead form. We chose First Name, Last Name, Phone number and Email to match our lead form on the website. If you are a B2B retailer, you can consider collecting company information.
You have the ability to upload a background image.
We chose a beautiful image of a luxury outdoor patio (Really, these patio covers are amazing. Check them out here and here). The last part of the unit shows the form submission page. Here we encourage users to continue onto our site and call our team for a Private Tour of our showroom, or a Free Consultation.
When complete, this is how the lead form appears (broken into two pieces to denote the scroll):
scroll…
The next part of creation is the form submission page. We stuck with the pre-populated “Sent” headline and used our 200-character description text to add in a few more options. We actually chose to cut down our text to less than 200 characters, so as not to overwhelm. Again, you can have the user select an additional call to action, and we chose to send them to our website, however you could select “None” if you don’t want or need them to do anything further.
Here is how that completed lead form submission appears:
The last part is selecting a Lead Delivery option. Since we are testing, and we tend to find that Google Ads doesn’t typically serve beta extensions as much, we are just going to download collected leads into our ad extensions table, but if you have a CRM system and start to see a large volume of these leads, you may consider managing your leads with a web-hook.
We’ll be launching our new lead form extensions shortly and report back with our results. Since Lead Form Extensions are also slated to be added to GDN campaigns later this year, we are hoping it’s due to good, strong data from those who were granted early access.