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Google’s New Lead Form Ads: What Does The New Ad-Format Mean For Your Business?

Google Lead Form Ads: A Search Engine Marketing Tool for Lead Generation

For users logged into a Google account, their contact information will be pre-populated in the form, making the process as frictionless as possible. This immediacy will likely play well with mobile users, who are notoriously impatient with page loading times and offer little in overall attention spans.

Google Lead Forms: A Comparison with Traditional Search & Display Networks

First things first, the new lead form extensions are not a replacement for traditional Google search ads; they are complementary addition to your existing campaigns. Since they are simply extensions, they are listed along with your ad, not an altogether new-type of advertisement themselves.

How Does It Work?

Google Lead Form Extensions 101:

The first thing to know is that lead form extensions are a campaign-level addition, not something that can be simply added to an ad-group on its own. Keep in mind, this means that all bidding and targeting options must be implemented on the campaign-level.

Adding a Lead Form Extension:

First, you’ll have to pick your call to action (displayed next to an icon) from the following list of choices offered by Google.

• Get quote
• Apply now
• Sign up
• Contact us
• Subscribe
• Download
• Book now
• Get offer

After that, simply add a link to your company privacy policy, an optional (but recommended) background image, and move on to the form submission message.

Why Use Lead Form Extensions?

It’s simple: to generate more leads.

Of course, this oversimplification doesn’t offer a great deal of nuance or add much of the surrounding context about why lead form extensions were recently added by Google, but it is correct —and in more than just a “technical” manner.

Marketplace vs. Price-by-Quote Business Models
Marketplace vs. Price-by-Quote Business Models
Negative Bid Adjustments on Google Ads Campaign
Negative Bid Adjustments on Devices | Removing Mobile Devices Entirely

The Stats: Forecasting Potential Conversions from Lead Form Extensions

While the format is very new and no official data has been published yet, we anticipate a strong response from mobile users — who may value the simplicityease, and time savings of simply submitting their request on the search page rather than navigating through various website contact forms & pages.

Forecasting Conversion Rates with Social Network Data:

First, we must discuss our methodology in approaching this forecast. While this is by no means a “scientific” approach — as we have little true data to work off of — we still must ensure that our projections are a fair and representative estimate of what we intend to analyze.

A Visualization of Conversion Rate Differences Between Ad-Platforms
A Visualization of Conversion Rate Differences Between Ad-Platforms
Facebook Lead Ad Results:

The lead form ad-type was originally added to Facebook in 2015, and has had more than four years to mature as a core platform feature.

LinkedIn Lead Gen Campaign Results:

Analyzing the conversion rate data for LinkedIn’s “Lead Gen Form” ads is a bit trickier. While there is immense coverage of aggregated Facebook data-averages (including specifically, conversion rates by individual ad-formats), there is little available data about LinkedIn’s “Lead Gen” ad conversion rate — considering only this specific format alone — particularly not any widely-accepted or authoritative consensus on the matter.

Combining the Data:

The distinct boost offered by lead form ads is strongly consistent between both platforms — with Facebook boosts between 67–267% and LinkedIn falling somewhere in the 200–300% range — and therefore, should give us a solid general idea of the impact of the ad-type itself, rather than the ad-network.

Google’s Actual Trial Data:

Oops. We may have, once againlied to you earlier in this article, as there there is some official data — provided by Google — about lead form extensions and their performance. However, the information is not a complete and transparent window into lead form extensions’ performance in the wild. A single “mini case study,” selected by Google itself, is all we have to work off of.

Google provided an example “mini case study” on a company:

Totalplay, a telecom provider in Mexico. Totalplay, a leading telecom provider in Mexico, was having a difficult time getting quality leads from its various digital advertising campaigns. By implementing lead form extensions, Totalplay reached users who were actively searching for internet, TV, and phone services on Google Search. As a result, sales leads closed at a 20% higher rate than other lead generation efforts.

The Roundup: Winners & Losers

While the format is very new and no official data has been published yet, we anticipate a strong response from mobile users — who may value the simplicityease, and time savings of simply submitting their request on the search page rather than navigating through various website contact forms & pages.

Who Benefits Most? Businesses and industries best-suited for Google Lead Form Extensions

In general, speaking in broad terms, businesses that will likely see the most benefit from lead form extensions are those that have direct relationship with their clients or customers, and particularly those with a lengthy or “case-by-case” sales process.

Get in touch to discuss your campaigns

To learn more about Google’s new Lead Form Extensions and their relevance to your business, get in touch with our team at Ink, Inc. and we’ll be happy to schedule a free consultation. Our team just produced this simple explainer video on Google Lead Form Extensions. It should walk you through the process rather easily as it features many of the tips from our full-length article.

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