ICYMI, Responsive Search Ads (RSA) will soon be the only standard search campaign type in Google Ads. With this ad format, you can provide up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, and Google will mix and match these into the best ad for each search.
But you’re not just dealing with 15 titles and 4 descriptions. You’re dealing with all the combinations and permutations that need to be meaningful. That’s enough to damage anyone’s brain. But today, I’m going to share with you a simple process for writing a responsive search ad title (and description, for that matter) – using templates to make your life easier.
Responsive Search Ad Copy Strategy
Before we get into the process, it may be helpful to know where you (or your PPC partner) are within the scope of RSA copywriting. You’ll probably be able to name the one that I think you should adopt soon.
Control freak
Pinpoint three titles and two descriptions
Control Freak is very against letting Google make any decisions for them. For them, the transition from Extended Text Ads (ETAs) to RSA is almost an existential threat, so they will do everything in their power to regain that control.
In particular, they will emulate an ETA using their RSA by providing only three titles and two descriptions and fixing them all. If you do this, your ad will look similar to the one below.
- advantage: For highly regulated industries Google Ads disapproved, think finance or healthcare, controlling all messaging may be the only way to ensure you are legally protected.Whether for anti-discrimination, legal disclaimers, or other content, if you have advertising must To be included, you may need to forego any automation and ensure you present your company or clients in a compliant manner.
- shortcoming: If you do use this method of full control, you may accept lower ad strength scores, although we’re told they don’t currently affect Ad rank, may have some negative effects. Also, you will miss out on the potential benefits that machine learning can bring to your account.
hot mess
Throwing RSA Spaghetti at the Wall…Blindfolded
Unlike Control Freak, Hot Mess has absolutely no strategy write their Google ad. This guy added a new variant, adding some headline News And some descriptions based on their whims at the time, click to post, and then probably drunk texting an ex while jaywalking under a ladder and carrying a black cat.
They may also have too many or too few ads in each ad group (horrible Account Structure) and did not take advantage of the insights that their ad performance provided them.
- advantage: no.
- shortcoming: too many to list
None of these are pretty.
practitioner of computing
Both pro-marketing and pro-automation
Rather than controlling every aspect of ad copy or letting the phases of the moon determine your performance, computational practitioners have a strategy to ensure their ads are consistent from start to finish and leverage machine learning to see improved performance.
- advantage: This strategy allows you to Write super effective Google Ads Follow RSA best practices (see cheat sheet below).
- shortcoming: For Hot Mess, that means more work. For control freaks, this means giving up some control.
So what are the strategies of computing practitioners? We’ll get to that soon.
Best Practices for Responsive Search Ad Copy
To fully understand this strategy, you need to make sure you understand RSA best practices.you can find them here Responsive Search Ads 101 Postsbut here are the basics:
- Don’t use the bare minimum. Use at least 8-10 of the 15 titles, and at least three of the four descriptions available.
- Make your title unique. Google doesn’t show similar variations.
- Don’t put keywords in every title. At least three titles should no Keyword-centric (i.e., shared features, benefits, or CTAs).
- Use pins sparingly. Excessive restrictions may limit Google’s ability to maximize your ad mix and performance.
- Change the title length. This will allow Google to show ads with two or three headlines, so don’t use all 30 characters for all headlines.
Check out the full cheat sheet here.
5 Steps to Writing Great Responsive Search Ads
OK, now that you know the best practices and where you are in the Hot Mess –> Control Freak spectrum, you can start learning the strategy. I will use a fictitious ad example for my paid media pro YouTube channel.
Step 1: Create Different Types of Titles
use this spreadsheet template Brainstorm different types of headlines. Inside, you’ll see eight different categories of title types, as well as character counters.
Get free Google Sheets templates here.
Here are my suggested categories, along with some fictional examples:
- Key keywords: PPC Video Library, PPC Videos for All Channels, Free PPC Videos
- feature: Step-by-step tutorials, learn at your own pace
- benefit: Improve advertising effectiveness, grow your business and save wasted budget
- Brand message: Paid Media Professionals,
- Social proof: Over 17,000 subscribers
- price comparison: watch online for free
- Better than the competition: Watch ad-free, no registration required
- Call to Action: Access now for free, view YouTube Chanel, subscribe on YouTube
how much to write headline News You can think it fits into these categories. If there are other categories that make sense for your particular industry, add them to them as well.
Step #2: Assemble Categories into Theme Templates
Now that we have some headlines, we need to decide where they go. But before we choose a specific title for each RSA, we’ll outline the template for the entire RSA.
Here are some examples you can use – again, just focus on the headlines at the moment.
The link to the template is above.
Each header matches a category for which you’ve written multiple headers, but the idea here is to map the overall message flow.
Don’t forget that title position #3 doesn’t always show for every impression, so this part of the message shouldn’t be required for every impression.
Step 3: Add message and pin to template
Now is the time to put your money where your mouth is. When creating an RSA, select the template you want to use and add a title for each category, then pin them to the template location.
For this example, I used template #1 from step #2 to create my ad, which is:
Keyword Focused – Call to Action – Price Comparison
Each keyword-centric title is anchored in title position #1, the call-to-action is in title position #2, and the price comparison is anchored in title position #3.
As you can see above, you can pin multiple components to the same location, but the key here is to make sure you do it correctly.
If you pin at least one header to all three header positions and leave the others unpinned, those unpinned headers will not be used. So, to properly employ this strategy, pin each title.
Step 4: Describe following a similar 3-step process
Obviously, the header is not the only part of RSA.Conduct similar topic generation and content writing practices illustrate and add them to your headline template to create a fully coherent ad variation.
Some tips for describing writing:
- Try not to copy the language used in the title. It’s not strategic at all.
- Don’t forget to include a call to action in some variations.
- Description 2 won’t always show up, so it only makes sense to make sure you write a copy that doesn’t depend on that variable.
Here are some examples of descriptions for the fictional ad we’re working on:
- We want to make paid advertising more accessible to everyone. New videos every week!
- Check out a library of past videos to boost your marketing capabilities.
- Learn how to advertise and get empowered to drive growth for your business.
Step 5: Start testing
With the previous four steps, you now have a fully formed responsive search ad. It has a title and description that fit the overall template, where you can control the user experience for your brand, and also allows Google to choose specific messages based on its “gut feeling”.
Now is the time to test, just like with expanded text ads. (If you think you don’t need to test your ad, please read my google ad error Post and make me change my mind. ) Here are some examples of tests you can run:
- Test templates against each other. Which types of messages are most effective where?
- Test in template. Create 3 different RSAs and use the above strategy for all but one of the components. Test a single aspect of the ad with each RSA to see how each aspect performs.
- Test the messaging topic in the same template. Maybe you tested template 2, but you made one variant, all risk-averse messages, and another variant, positive messages.
At this point, your ad copy test is like a choose-your-own-adventure book.
Start writing great responsive search ad copy
Even if you’re not a big fan of responsive search ads, or you still feel bad about losing control, the truth is that RSA is here to stay. I don’t like losing control in my ad campaigns, but I’m also not that anti-automation, and I don’t think you should either.
So while the Control Freaks are still furious about the upcoming changes and the Hot Messes are clueless about what’s coming to them, be a planned practitioner. Get your test room organized, develop strategies to make the most of this change, and let the dust settle from your competition.
