Responsive Search Ads: The "best practice" you should probably ignore
Have you ever read up on the latest digital marketing innovation only to later find out it is useless? Unfortunately, this can be commonplace in the world of marketing. It can be difficult to figure out which strategies will be useful and which will be... well, useless!
Unfortunately, you may have encountered this with Responsive Search Ads, which are frequently touted as the next big thing.
Responsive Search Ads (or RSA’s as the pros call them) are celebrated for being Google’s largest and most flexible ad asset. They sound great because they let you create an ad that adapts to show more relevant messages to your customers. With the option of including up to 15 different headlines and four different descriptions in search results, surely you can incorporate every relevant keyword amongst an offering of over 40,000 permutations. Right?
Not quite. If you fill your RSA with 15 headlines and four descriptions but only pin one headline this will eliminate more than 90% of your ad testing permutations. You may find it hard to believe (amongst the loud noise that people make about RSA’s) that even Google themselves strongly advise against pinning one headline or description. Sadly, doing this causes your ad to show in only one specific location. This prevents other headlines or descriptions from showing in their place. In other words, this could potentially damage your advertising campaign results!
At this stage, we could easily explain the reasoning behind this occurrence by going into the mathematically proven phenomenon of permutations and the natural generalisations of an ordered arrangement concept when k>n (say what?!). But perhaps it's best to leave that out. A better way to understand it is to tell you that with each asset you pin, the chance of you finding a winning permutation decreases. In other words, less is more!
Furthermore, if you use all of the available headline permutations that come with an RSA, you’ll have a total of 2,730 options to choose from. However, if you’re to pin just that one headline, you’re right down to 182 different permutations.
However, there is a single exception. If you know all of the following:
your winning permutation
the order of headlines
the order of descriptions
And they're all pinned in the right place...
... you'll be getting the best results. But don't worry, it's difficult for most people to wrap their heads around!
Now, you might be thinking that 182 permutations are a pretty large amount and you’re quite happy with that, thanks very much! In some respects, you’re right. At some stage down the line, you’ll discover that one of these ad permutations is a winner. The best! You’re possibly judging this based on the one with the highest click-through rate (CTR), the lowest cost-per-action (CPA), or the highest return on ad spend (ROAS). However, having eliminated over 90% of your potential permutations, you’re taking a huge gamble that your best performing ad isn’t one of the options that you just got rid of.
Hopefully, you’re still following…(phew!)
So, what’s the answer? Simply put, it’s a case of testing out as many permutations as you possibly can. You can never be entirely sure if something will work or not until you’ve tried and tested it, so there’s no excuse not to test it. For example, if you have a hunch that your brand name might work well in Headline 1, you should absolutely test it. If users that are searching have the same insight, your suggestion will perform better. Why wouldn’t you try?
Naturally, there’s always a slight risk that if you don’t have relevant search terms in the particular ad permutation that’s being shown, your ad relevance can decrease. This is one of the many learning curves of testing combinations, unfortunately. However, by using RSA’s, you are optimising to improve your overall click-through rate. If, in the worst-case scenario, your winning ad permutation fails to contain the user's search term (thus deemed as less relevant), your Quality Score can go down. No need to fret! Unpinning your RSA assets will barely affect your Quality Score, and your ads’ higher click-through rate will take it right back up again.
The ultimate winning formula comprises of high-performance ads that drive traffic and conversions rather than keywords that score highly. A low-Quality Score is not synonymous with a bad score, but a poor ad is.
The key to success is utilising as many permutations as you can to avoid narrowing your window of victory. Try pinning two or three headlines or descriptions to each position as this will give you a greater indication as to what works most effectively.
If we’ve blown your brain cells and you feel the need for a gentle, headache free chat with us about RSA’s and what not to do, we promise we’ll be gentle and would love to hear from you. Contact us today at hello@theunderdogagency.co.uk
