Paid Search Advertising for Non-Transactional Websites

Non-transactional websites tend to have different challenges from ecommerce and online retail websites when it comes to promoting their businesses with paid search advertising. One of the differences is that non-transactional ads tend to promote the business and its services more, whereas transactional sites are more focused on the products available on sale.
Here are some paid search features to consider as you create your campaigns:

Ad extensions

Ad extensions are a must for non-transactional websites especially for local service businesses that should provide an address and telephone number for target customers to reach them. That’s mainly because the transaction is completed offline either in the shop or business premises or over the phone when customers call the business. Using location extensions, all applicable address can be imported from the ‘Google My Business’ account when it is linked with the adwords account.

Also, a telephone number should be added in call extensions and for mobile customers, the click-to-call feature is helpful when they see your ad because they can call your business directly from the ad and get through to you. You will first need to set mobile preference in the call extension settings and it may be helpful to use a Google forwarding number if you would like to track call conversions – however, if your business phone number is important to your promotional strategy, then don’t use the Google forward number option.

Google Ads

Non-transactional ads for services, B2Bs and so on generally do not include features and benefits related to delivery, prices and shipping because these are more important for online retailers and ecommerce sites. For non-transactionals, the ads act as an introduction to the business and much of the business transaction will be conducted offline, for example, a law firm that’s advertising its family mediation services.
For non-transactionals, ads should focus on things like how customers can benefit from working with the business and include reviews from past customers to show how they’ve performed in the past.

Keywords

Keyword searches for non-transactional sites tend to be at the early stage of the buying process so searches that include words like ‘buy’ ‘purchase’ ‘download’ ‘order’ tend to be non-applicable. Keyword targeting should be focused on raising awareness of the business, brand or services and this should include a combination of long tail keywords and primary keywords.

Conversion tracking

Conversion tracking is a feature available in Google Adwords and other paid advertising platforms that helps you track actions on your website. As a non-transactional website you will not be making any sales online but your website can be used to track the following:
– Contact form
– Newsletter signup
– Whitepaper download
– Request demo
– Book a consultation
– And many similar actions
So there are many things to track and it all depends on your sector and what your goals are. An effective way to track these actions is in Google Analytics because it provides more in-depth reporting than Adwords tracking features.
First, you should link your adwords and analytics accounts and then import adwords goals into your analytics account. Linking these two also helps to see how paid search contributes to goal conversions and how it assists other traffic sources like social network, organic and referrals and how these also affect its effectiveness.