Google has continued to improve their response search ads (RSA’s) for more engagement and increase conversion rate, but there are still other opportunities to take optimizations into your own hands. We are going to walkthrough five different ways to increase the performance of your RSA’s to ensure elevated ad performance.
Optimization 1: Less sometimes is more
In Google search ads, you have the ability to add 15 headlines and four descriptions but you do not always need to utilize this capability to the fullest. Here are a few reasons why you do not need all headlines and descriptions filled in:
- Potentially diluting the key unique selling points of your business
- Using more headlines and descriptions could be causing Google to create too many variations
- By having less headlines and descriptions, there are better scopes for A/B testing ad copy
Optimization 2: Keyword insertion
By inserting targeted keywords in your headlines can help serve more relevant ads and help improve your ad quality score. Here is an example, if your keyword targeted is “4-stroke mufflers”, you could have a headline that reads “Buy 4-stroke mufflers today”. While this is a positive optimization, it should be overused due to headlines not reading correctly or may misconstrue the information being provided.
Optimization 3: Insert countdown for promotions or sales
This is an interesting feature because it ads a sense of urgency to your RSA’s which could lead to a higher conversion rate for that campaign.
To trigger the countdown, insert: “Sale ends in {countdown yyy/mm/dd}”, this will tell Google to insert down to the second how much longer a potential customer has to take advantage of the sale.
Optimization 4: Ad pinning
If you do not like where Google is showing your headlines, you can pin ads in two potential spots to control what users are seeing in their ad. When you pin a headline in the first or second position, you are telling Google to always show those particular headlines in those positions. This potentially could limit your ad quality score, but this allows you more control of which headlines will be showing at all times. This will also allow you to A/B test which two headlines prompt the best performance for engagement or conversions.
Optimization 5: Increase ad variations
This feature is probably one of the most underutilized features of RSA’s and another alternative to A/B testing two separate ads. For example, If you have a legacy unique selling point scattered across multiple RSA’s (“Free Shipping Available”) but are thinking of replacing it with a similar but refreshed take (“Free shipping when you spend over $50”), then you simply select the “Find & Replace” variation type, input the original copy and replace with the new.
By utilizing these five optimizations, you can elevate the performance of your responsive search ads in Google Ads to help improve your objectives within the platform. Always test new copy and continue to drive positive results to take your Google Ads to the next level!