Generating high-quality leads from Google Ads often comes down to one unexpected factor: speed. If potential customers have to jump through hoops to reach you, you’ll lose business fast.
That’s why Google Ads offers a trio of what I call “Contact Us assets.” Instead of sending users to a landing page, Call Assets, Lead Forms, and Message Assets let customers call you, fill out a form, or start a conversation directly from your search ads.
Let’s dive into how to set up and optimize these three essential assets to simplify your funnel, capture valuable personally identifiable information (PII), and turn an expensive click into a lasting customer relationship.
Call Assets: The must-have for phone leads
If the action you want someone to take after clicking your ad is calling you, you need to use Call Assets. They display your phone number alongside your ads, allowing users to call you directly from the ad with a single click.
If you’ve been relying on Call Ads to drive phone calls from Google Search, those are being deprecated. You’ll need to use Call Assets alongside Responsive Search Ads instead.
3 essential tips for Call Assets
- If you want Google’s bidding algorithms to prioritize phone calls, you need to set “Calls from ads” as a Primary conversion action.
- There’s nothing worse for a customer than calling a business and getting voicemail — or worse, no answer at all. Use asset scheduling to show your phone number only when someone is available to answer. If your business closes at 5 p.m., consider stopping your call asset at 4:55 p.m.
- Getting a phone call is important, but it’s just as important for Google to know that call happened so it can optimize for more of them. When you enable call tracking, Google uses a forwarding number. That means the number shown in the ad may not be your actual business number, but it lets Google (and you) track call duration and see which keywords triggered the calls.
Lead form assets: Capturing data in the ad
Lead Form Assets let users submit their email address or phone number directly within the ad. If you’ve run lead generation ads on Meta or TikTok, the experience will feel familiar.
The main difference is that on social media, the lead form is the ad. In Google Search, it’s an optional asset attached to your Responsive Search Ad alongside your primary headlines.
Because of that, you probably won’t see the same volume from Lead Form Assets as you would from a dedicated landing page. But if generating form fills is your primary goal, Lead Form Assets are absolutely worth enabling.
Essential tips for lead form assets
- Because Lead Form Assets are so easy to complete directly from the SERP, they’re often more vulnerable to low-quality submissions. To improve lead quality, add a screening question. A simple question about budget or specific needs forces users to pause and qualify themselves before submitting.
- Don’t let these leads sit idle in the Google Ads interface. You need a system that pushes them directly into your CRM through a third-party integration. The longer it takes to respond, the colder the lead becomes.
- Make sure to set “Lead form submission” as a Primary conversion action if you want Smart Bidding to prioritize lead generation. You can run it alongside your standard website lead form conversion action, which should also remain set to Primary.
Message assets: The beta that means business?
Message Assets are the newest addition to Google’s “Contact Us” assets, and they’re currently in beta. I wrote about them last year.
These assets let potential customers start a conversation with you through WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or Zalo directly from your search ads. They don’t support SMS text messaging — only third-party messaging apps.
Essential tips for Message assets
- You can’t use Message Assets until you complete Google’s full advertiser verification process. It’s part of Google’s effort to keep the advertising ecosystem safe.
- Message Assets only appear on mobile devices, which makes sense—most people aren’t trying to start a WhatsApp chat from a desktop browser.
- Message Assets are compatible with Search and Performance Max campaigns.
What sets ‘Contact Us’ assets apart
The biggest reason to use these three “Contact Us” assets is to capture personally identifiable information (PII) from potential customers. When someone calls you, fills out a form, or sends a message, they’re giving you a direct way to follow up.
This data is incredibly valuable. Once you have an email address or phone number, you can follow up through email marketing or direct outreach without paying for another ad click. It turns a one-time ad interaction into a potential long-term customer relationship.
How to get the best results from Call, lead form, and Message Assets
Whichever asset you use, implement third-party lead tracking software to capture, filter, track, and respond to your leads. Once calls, forms, and messages start coming in, you need a system for responding quickly.
You also need a way to tell Google which leads were high quality and which were spam or a poor fit. Lead tracking software lets you send that data back into Google Ads so the platform can learn what a qualified customer looks like for your business—and stop wasting budget on junk leads.
If direct contact is central to how you win business, these contact assets aren’t just nice to have. They’re essential for effective lead generation.
This article is part of our ongoing Search Engine Land series, Everything you need to know about Google Ads in less than 3 minutes. In each edition, Jyll highlights a different Google Ads feature, and what you need to know to get the best results from it – all in a quick 3-minute read.