One of the challenges of online marketing is establishing credibility. The online marketplace is filled with companies around the world that are vying for the attention of customers. It’s vital for businesses to give their target audience a reason to trust the company. Google is testing an ad extension that can help brands instantly build trust.
Companies that are already established have an advantage when creating advertising and marketing materials. If a brand or product is already being used by a large group of people, mentioning that in ad copy gives potential customers a reason to trust the company.
When using PPC ads for search, marketers have a limited amount of space to make their pitch to the customer. Ofter, there isn’t enough space to explain the offer and tell customers how many people use the product. Last week, SEO professionals began to notice some ad tests in Google search results with a new extension that can build trust.
According to reports, Google is testing a new, automated ad extension that highlights a site’s popularity. An SEO specialist Tweeted that ads for WeWork Boston showed the number of weekly visits the website had, along with a people icon. By showing how many people use the site every week, the ad immediately shows the target audience that people trust the WeWork Boston website.
The way this extension is used illustrates the point made earlier about building credibility without wasting space. Writing “more than 10,000 website visits in the past week” would have taken up all of the space in the ad for text. By placing this information in a stylized extension, advertisers get the best of both worlds. A job search tool like WeWork Boston can definitely benefit from letting their target audience know that people trust the site and use it often.
That said, they do have to sacrifice the ability to use another automated ad extension, such as call extensions and dynamic sitelinks, but the ability to quickly establish credibility may be worth the tradeoff.
The feature may be useful, but marketers may have to wait a bit before the option becomes available officially. Search Engine Land reached out to Google to learn more about these tests, and the answer they received suggests there are no immediate plans to launch this feature.
“We’re always testing new ways to improve our experience for our advertisers and users, but don’t have anything specific to announce right now,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.
Social credibility is crucial for online companies. Consumers are always looking for easy ways to cut through all of the noise and find high-quality companies that can provide a service. An ad extension that shows weekly visits can be what it takes to get someone to take a chance on a company they hadn’t heard of before using the search engine.
The value of this extension, along with the low opportunity cost of implementing it, are reasons to believe it will become available for public use, eventually. For more recent news about Google, read this article on Google’s new advanced location targeting options.