This new search ad solution can now deliver tens of thousands of feature combinations, which means there are nearly endless ways to optimize the tool to produce better results. Here's a brief guide on what responsive ads can offer your business marketing efforts.
What Makes Responsive Search Ads Unique
The biggest benefit of responsive ads is the degree of customization they offer in contrast to traditional search ads. Instead of creating a single static ad, explains WordStream, responsive search allows you to write as many as 15 headlines and up to four descriptions. An ad can display up to three headlines and up to two descriptions at once, for a total of 300 characters — twice as much total text as a traditional search ad. Google then automatically tests which combinations of headlines and descriptions perform best, as well as which combinations are most relevant for different search queries.
As Search Engine Land points out, this new flexibility is part of a larger push toward responsive ad placements powered by machine learning. While marketers may create the copy for the ads, Google's automated solutions do the heavy lifting of optimization. For resource-strapped organizations, responsive search ads can provide a much-needed dose of campaign support.
Why Businesses Should Care
It's not just the reduced workload that business leaders should be excited about. Google's research also suggests these ads offer a higher rate of return than traditional search ads. According to Search Engine Journal, the average click-through rate for responsive search ads can be up to 15 percent higher than the standard. Even accounting for fluctuations based on other performance variables, this lift in ROI should be persuasive to marketers who haven't yet embraced this solution.
Best Practices for Better ROI
Success with responsive ads depends, to a large degree, on the options you give Google's machine learning decision-makers. Google suggests that the more headlines and descriptions you provide, the more opportunities the platform has to create ads that are relevant to your potential customers' search queries.
Keywords also need to be featured in these titles, and different keywords should be mixed in to create better matching opportunities for a broader range of search terms. But it's also smart to leave a few headlines that are keyword-free, creating some flexibility in how and where that title is deployed in a search ad. The same goes for descriptions: If you take time to write different copy, with different represented keywords in each of your description fields per search ad, you'll create better opportunities to display optimized, high-value ads.
Responsive search ads may be an adjustment for some experienced marketers, but for beginners and overworked marketers in need of better support, this new search marketing tool will be an excellent asset that can make your marketing strategy more competitive overnight.
