Here is where new ad formats from Google and Microsoft can help. Through Search and Display campaigns, you can include ad formats which can continually optimise and adjust their ad copy depending on the context.

Responsive Search Ads

Responsive Search Ads (RSA) were in beta for both Google and Microsoft until recently but are becoming more and more mainstream after significant improvements in performance seen by early adopters. Essentially, RSAs group headlines and descriptions to create an optimum combination for every search queries. Advertisers can provide up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. Then all the possible combinations are tested with the power of machine learning to discover the best performing combinations.

How to set up steller performing RSAs?

The first rule of RSAs is to treat them as a different ad type from the existing Extended Text Ads (ETAs). ETAs are limited to 2 headlines and 1 description which urges an advertiser to fully use the character limit of every asset.

With RSA there is a possibility to include up to fifteen headlines. Therefore advertisers can “afford” not to maximize the character count of every single headline. For example, you can take a whole headline only for the name of your brand.

Make sure the headlines in RSA are unique and work well together in different combinations.

For more information, read our guide on Responsive Search Ads.

Measure results like a pro

RSA performance should be measured on clicks and conversions, not on click-through rate. Moreover, if you run RSAs, they will not take traffic from your existing ETAs, but optimise for getting incremental impressions, clicks and conversions. Sometimes RSAs might have lower click-through rates (CTRs), but this is nothing to worry about. The performance metric to focus on is incremental traffic.

RSAs come with two performance reports in the Google Ads interface.  The reports help advertisers understand how the different headlines perform on their own and the most shown combinations. The asset report shows the number of impressions of different headlines. A best practice is to gradually replace headlines with the lowest impressions. The other report shows the ad combinations shown to users and which combinations had the most impressions.

Measuring & Optimising Performance in One Place

It’s important to utilise both networks where you can. Though Google holds the dominant power in the search arena, the Microsoft Audience Network still has 13.7 billion PC searches a month and reaches 63 million users that Google doesn’t. Plus Microsoft’s users are both more educated and affluent with a third of Microsoft users in the US having a household income over $100k.

Microsoft ads are also much cheaper to run in comparison to Google while the audience is more than enough for your ads to be effective, as we’ve discovered in our research. One of the pain points however is having to jump between both networks to make changes to your ads.

But that doesn’t have to be the case anymore. With free tools like Adzooma, it’s now possible to manage your full campaigns, including responsive search ads, for both Microsoft and Google in one platform, so you never have to jump between the networks again. You can add new creatives or entire campaigns, adjust budgets, and apply changes from a single screen.

You can read more about how Adzooma Management can help or sign up for free today.

Responsive Display Ads

Display advertising can be a challenge for small businesses because of the cost of making good quality creative. Every creative had to be reproduced in different sizes to fit the available inventory. Not having the right size of every banner limits the reach of a campaign. On top of that, you had to design a separate creative for different channels such as YouTube and Gmail.

Responsive Display Ads, unique to Google, come as an opportunity for advertisers who want to save time and reach more inventory. The advertiser provides the assets: Business name, long headline, logo, up to five short descriptions and headlines and up to five images. Machine learning-powered technology combines the assets together into ads which can show across the Google Display Network, including YouTube and Gmail.

One of the biggest benefits of building Responsive Display Ads is the ease of the setup. By entering the domain, Google and Microsoft ads can scan the website and extract the logo and images. Advertisers also have access to a free repository of good quality stock images for their ads.

When building RDA advertisers, see a similar ad strength score like the one for RSAs. The score measures the quantity and diversity of assets. My recommendation is not to publish ads with poor ad strength and less than two images. The more high-quality assets you provide, the better the chances of sticking a high-performing combination.

Similar to RSA asset performance reports, advertisers can see performance ratings for each asset. Advertisers can gradually replace low performing assets and double down on high-quality ones. A combination report also shows the top ad variations.

The secret to a great Responsive Display Ad is a superb image

The most important asset of a successful RDA is the image. Make sure you use an image different from the standard image ads in your display campaign. The best performing assets are clear, high-resolution photographs in a natural physical setting. Text, logo and call to action overlays are obsolete, as you add these as separate assets when building the ad. A strong visual focus which connects with the message you want to conduct is key for the success of the creative.

When it comes to the text assets try to use short and unique headlines and avoid anything too generic or salesy. Since you have a separate logo asset, there is no need to repeat the brand name in a headline. The long headline must demonstrate a unique value proposition.

This asset might be shown without description text or can run as an individual text ad. Start the descriptions with the most important information like promotions and CTAs, because sometimes these assets might be shortened on smaller screens.

Lastly, when adding your business name, stick to a conversational brand name – no Ltd. or LLC as this looks too formal.

You can choose how to structure your display ad groups – using a few RDAs per ad group, or combining RDAs with standard image ads. In any case, I would recommend adding at least one RDA per ad group.

Summary

RDAs and RSAs are a big time-saver when it comes to testing and implementing new ad copy at scale. They work great together with standard image ads and expanded text ads to unlock incremental clicks conversions, making your ads eligible to compete in new search auctions and show on more display inventory. Advertisers can ensure good brand representation by bringing in high-quality, unique and helpful text and image assets.

There are different ways you could answer these questions and I understand excellence and success can be measured in many ways. Still, there are few things that you could do in your everyday work as a digital marketer which will get your Google Ads account above the average.

What is Search Excellence?

Search Excellence is Google’s playbook, containing four strategies to help businesses to achieve their goals using Google Search. The strategies are:

• Grow my business
• Measure success
• Spend more efficiently
• Increase market share

You can download the Search Excellence playbook and planning template and tackle your business challenges.

Measuring optimisation

If you are familiar with the Google Ads interface you probably know the Optimisation score which you get on account or MCC level. This measurement shows how many of the important recommendations from Google you accept when managing the account. Some recommendations are more weighted as they can significantly improve performance, others are just small tweaks on the way to excellence.

Important note: Optimisation Score is different from keyword Quality Score. The Optimisation score is not used to determine Quality Score or Ad Rank. It is a pure way to see how much of Google’s best practices specific to this account you have implemented. Besides checking your Optimisation score there are other best practices which can help you have a well-optimised account.

Account structure

There are a lot of views on what a perfect account structure would look like. Some advertisers want to go really granular on campaign level, separating every possible product, action or keyword match type in its own campaign. Such an approach was common in the past when a lot of the success in Google Ads was dependent on manual bidding and constant bid adjustments.

Today, this approach is being replaced with a simplified account structure featuring high-volume campaigns, providing enough data for automated bidding to run. Still, if you really want to go a step towards excellence, you can go granular at ad group level. By creating themed ad groups with relevant keywords and ad copy leading to specific landing pages, you can still make a difference in the performance. The reason is that this approach provides a better experience for the impatient user and increases their chance to take action.

Keyword strategy

Same as with account structure, there are a lot of opinions on how you should select keywords. Some advertisers like to have more control. Therefore they add thousands of exact match keywords in their wish to appear only on what they consider “good searches”. In the past, this used to be a tactic to win low competition auctions and reduce CPC.

Now keyword matches have been changing, allowing more and more search queries to appear even with the most restrictive settings (exact match). New devices allow voice search, users have a desire to find personalised information and are increasingly demanding. The result is that 15% of the daily searches on Google are now completely new. To make sure you are not missing out on relevant queries, use more broad and broad match modified keywords, as well as Dynamic Search Ad campaigns or ad groups.

For further help with your keyword strategy, check out Mangools. Their easy keyword research tool helps you find keywords that you can easily rank for, and you can see what your competitors are doing.

Search creative strategy

Writing good ad copy with the tight character limit in Google Ads is an art in its own form. Many accounts with nearly perfect keyword coverage still suffer from a lack of creativity with the ad copy. Have in mind that the ad copy is all that the end-user sees when searching on Google. It only takes them a few seconds to decide whether to click on an ad or scroll away. Ad copywriting requires a lot of testing and continuous reassessment. Responsive Search Ads are designed to spare some of this effort to advertisers.

These are essentially grouped assets – headlines and descriptions – which get mixed and matched in different combinations by Google’s machine learning-powered technology. The result is an ad copy personalised to each user’s query. This ad format is designed to bring incremental conversions and clicks. Since it makes your ad more relevant to specific queries it is likely to help you win auctions which you were not qualified before. To make the most of your ad copy, use Responsive Search Ads in a combination with at least two Extended Text Ads in each ad group.

Audiences

This is a step a lot of advertisers underestimate. Adding an audience list to your search campaign provides additional signals for your campaigns. You can add lists like remarketing, Similar Audiences, Customer Match, Detailed Demographics, In-market Segments and Affinity Audiences. You can use these audiences with an “Observation” setting which means your ads will show to both new users and the ones who already have visited your website. The key is to use audience signals in your bidding and compete harder for the users who are more likely to convert. If you are using an automated bidding strategy, this will already be picked up by it. With manual bidding and Enhanced CPC you can set a bid adjustment for each list.

Ad extensions

Ad extensions have been an essential part of the optimisation of an account for a long time. Most advertisers are familiar with the main types – Sitelinks, Structured Snippets and Callouts. These are the ones which every advertiser can implement. Depending on the business type, Location and Call extensions can provide additional conversions. Taking advantage of all applicable ad extensions reflects on your Ad Rank. Google has recently introduced another extension type called, Lead Form Extension still in beta. This allows you to generate leads directly from the search results and does not require users going to the landing page to fill out a form. You can set up a webhook integration to import these leads directly in your CRM.

This is not an exhaustive list of the steps to set your Google Ads account for success, but it does cover the fundamentals for search campaigns. As you go on your journey to excellence, you will discover more ways to improve performance, unique to your business.