Google Responsive Search Ads: How to bring your sales to the next level

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Introduction

Have you ever dreamt of an ad that is capable of changing itself in order to cater to the audience’s preference? Well, dream no further, because Google Responsive Search Ads are here to bring your wildest ambitions to reality. In the article below, we will tell you how to create search ads that bring in real results.

Google Responsive Search ads

Quality Score and why you should care about it

There are two interlinked factors that directly affect your the frequency at which your ad is shown: money and ad quality. To put it short, the sum you are paying for an ad gets multiplied by its Quality Score, and the higher the resulting ranking, the more times your ad will be shown to a user. We will go more in depth on the financial side of things in another one of our articles, but for now, the key takeaway is that high Quality Score is how you reduce your cost per click(CPC).

How do I improve it?

Quality Score is based on four factors:

UAWC graph components of Quality Score
  1. Expected CTR(click-through rate).This indicates the likelyhood of your ad being clicked when shown. Unfortunately, there is no uniform advice for improving this – some things are just naturally more likely to be clicked. However, the one tip we can give you is to make good use of negative keywords to reduce the number of irrelevant searches. Breaking down your ad campaign into multiple small, precisely targeted ad groups will also be a dramatic improvement
  2. Keyword relevancy How well your keyword, ad content, and landing page match each other. To put it short, a user has to see the exact thing they are searching for in your ad and on the landing page once they click it. Aside from increasing your Quality Score, this has some positive psychological implications, which we will mention in the next section of this article.
  3. Landing page quality To ensure the best user experience and the highest Quality Score, your landing page should be relevant to the search query. Make sure it loads fast, its content is unique, and include the keywords you are targeting both in the URL address and the page title.
  4. Account quality Aside from taking into account your current ad’s quality, Google also keeps track of your account’s past performance. If your previous ads had a high Quality Score, your future ads will get a slight boost, and vice versa. Therefore, it is a good idea to start putting effort in your Quality Score as soon as possible.

Expanded Text Ads: an obsolete redundancy or a welcome supplement?

Ever heard the saying: ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket’? Well, it’s generally a bad idea to put all your money on one type of advertisement. In marketing, there can be no one, universal way to generate sales. Every case and every ads campaign is unique. So, let’s figure out how the two Google ad types compare.

In a way, Expanded Text Ads can be viewed as fixed, non-adaptible RSAs. They can only contain up to three headlines and two descriptions, with their positions and order predetermined. The advantage is obvious – you have full control over what kind of ad your viewer sees.

UAWC spreadsheet comparison of responsive search ads and expanded search ads

The sacrifice, however, is the ad’s capability to adapt to your audience. An ETA will always look the same, regardless of the user’s search query.

The main takeaway is this: use Expanded Text Ads if you rely on a specific headline-description combination to inspire a certain impression, and use RSAs to create varied, personalyzed ads. But ideally, use both to create unique and inspired ad combinations. Generally, we recommend using at least two responsive search ads per every one of your ad groups.

Pinning headlines and descriptions

Google Ads pinning headlines and descriptions

Responsive Search Ads also give you options to pin certain headlines and descriptions to specific positions, effectively allowing you to combine the adaptability of RSAs with the creative control of ETAs in any proportion you deem fit. For example, by pinning several headlines to one position, you will be forcing them to rotate between each other depending on the algorithm’s choice. This way, you can choose exactly which headlines and descriptions will be shown in which positions and prevent your ad from showing text that might not make a lot of sense.

Summary

Responsive Search Ads are an amazing tool and can be an important addition to any marketing campaign, but just like any tool, they should only be used where it is appropriate. However, while building your marketing around them can let you easily reach different demographics at no extra expense, by completely abandoning Expanded Text Ads you might end up missing out on creative control over the text your viewers see. We believe that every decision should be based on thorough research and data from Google Analytics

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