Responsive Search Ads: The Full Guide
Responsive search ads can be called a marketer's dream. These ads optimize searches to attract the most consumers. All you need to do is write a few variants of your message, launch the campaign and monitor its performance. Do you like this idea? Let's take a closer look at how Google responsive search advertising works.
What Are Responsive Search Ads
Responsive search ads are a type of ad in Google search results that automatically allows you to select the optimal combination of headlines and descriptions. The algorithm independently compiles different options for addressing potential customers and tests them to determine the most effective ones. Ads with the best click-through and conversion rates are displayed more often and eventually become priority options.
Responsive search ads allow you to create four description options, up to 90 characters, and 15 headlines, up to 30 characters. In total, you have 35,900 unique ad options available. This is enough to find at least a few effective combinations but is too much to manually analyze such a data array. That's why automatic optimization is a perfect way to improve your ad campaigns.
How Do Responsive Search Ads Work?
Now that we know what a responsive ad is let's see how responsive search ads work. Setting up responsive advertising is quite a simple process that even beginners can easily handle. That is why this tool is very popular among small businesses and individual entrepreneurs. However, it has several nuances that require closer attention.
Here's what a responsive ad looks like, what it consists of, and how to launch your own campaign.
What does adaptive advertising look like in search results
We have already mentioned above that you can create up to 15 headline options. It's worth noting that one ad can display from 2 to 3 headlines, depending on the page layout and the size and resolution of a user's screen. They are separated by vertical lines.
Following the headlines is the URL of your landing page to which you direct traffic. Below that are descriptions — one or two, depending on the layout of the search results and the characteristics of a user's device. The overall length of the ad cannot exceed 300 characters, including spaces.
Google provides the following example of combining elements of responsive search ads.
How to create your own responsive advertising campaign
1. Log in to your Google Ads account.
2. Click the Create button.
3. Select Campaign, and then select Responsive Search Ad.
4. Add the campaign to a specific ad group to improve analytics.
5. Enter the URL of the landing page to redirect traffic. Consider adding UTM tags to the end of your URL for further thorough analysis of the campaign and evaluation of its effectiveness in Google Analytics.
6. Select the URLs that will be displayed in the ad. For example, instead of https://example.com/catalogue/product/product1, you can leave only https://example.com.
7. Using the prompts, create headlines and descriptions to be displayed on the search results page.
8. Click the Save New Ad button at the bottom of the screen.
9. Wait for the ad to be moderated.
10. Check the balance of your account.
11. If you have fulfilled all the conditions of the search engine and activated the campaign, your ads will be displayed automatically.
Why you should run responsive advertising
How do responsive search ads work? We have touched on this, namely, about automatic optimization. According to Google's statistics, this approach increases the click-through and conversion rates of ads by an average of 7-15% and, in some cases, by 1.5-2.5 times compared to static ads. Of course, these are average values, and the actual results can differ. It all depends on the specific situation, including the specifics of your commercial offer, brand reputation and the characteristics of your target audience.
Responsive search ads also have the following advantages:
- Convenience. Once your ad is launched, you don't have to interfere in the process at all. The algorithm will do all the work for you — you just need to monitor the results and top up your Google Ads account in time.
- Speed. The algorithm takes some time to optimize. However, with sufficient ad displays, it reaches its maximum efficiency within a few days, maximum within a week.
- Uniqueness. Users see fewer repeated ads, especially ineffective combinations. This makes responsive advertising more personalized, improving attitudes toward it and reducing the number of negative reactions.
Your responsive search ads can work perfectly in tandem with Claspo, providing a personalized omnichannel experience and improving your results. They drive traffic to your website, and our interactive website widgets allow you to get the most out of them.
This is possible with our UTM targeting feature. Remember we advised you to add UTM tags at the end of the URL when creating a campaign? Reuse them when configuring your widget display rules and show a personalized message only to visitors who came to the website from Google ads.
Let's return to the example above, where the ad discussed trendy women's shoes and free shipping. If people clicked on this ad, they were interested in the offer, right? When they come to the site, they are greeted with a widget that reminds them of your offer and takes them to the catalog to choose women's shoes. How can you increase the chance of a purchase?
- Add a unique promo code that they can copy and apply at checkout.
- Use a website countdown template to emphasize that hypothetical free shipping is only available for a limited time.
- Set up an exit-intent widget that appears at the last second before leaving the site. This will work perfectly for visitors who came from Google ads but didn’t place an order. In particular, such a widget can increase your conversion rate by 10% - 50%.
Responsive Search Ads Best Practices
Automatic optimization does not mean that artificial intelligence will do everything instead of you. To make your responsive search ads campaigns as effective as possible, you'll need to do some work on your part for their development. Here are the best marketing practices that will help you improve your results.
1. Try not to repeat yourself
Keep in mind that one ad can display up to 3 headlines and 2 descriptions at a time. If they convey the same message, their effectiveness will be significantly reduced. Such an avalanche of spam can irritate people and will definitely show that a marketer is incompetent.
To avoid this, use synonyms and general calls to action. An example of Google responsive ads in search results is “Buy Now | Free Shipping | Branded Clothing”. It is a good practice to include targeted keywords in one or two headlines and in all descriptions, but you shouldn't add them to all headlines.
For example, this is how it looks like in Amazon's responsive search ads:
Note that keywords are present in both the headline and the description.
2. Write unique commercial benefits and calls to action in your ads
Be sure to use those things that distinguish your brand from competitors in the text. Perhaps you offer faster delivery, help with product selection, or are the first to offer a specific product in your country. And remember the call to action — buy, order, install, call, register, etc.
Such a combination of commercial elements makes advertising more successful than merely listing commercial offer points. Compare: “We offer discounts on auto parts, we deliver to all regions” and “Buy at a discount | Fast delivery of auto parts | Individual selection”.
For example, this is how a responsive search ads for Samsung's Indonesian subsidiary are structured:
One of the headlines contains the name of the product, which is also a key query word, and two others contain unique selling points. At the end of the description, there is a simple and clear call to action.
If you are unsure which wording, messages and offers will work best in your responsive search ads, test their effectiveness in practice first with the help of Claspo widgets.
Our built-in analytics and A/B testing features let you know which offer or message resonates best with your audience. Once you've identified winners, use them in an advertising campaign. What are the benefits of this approach? You are not guessing. You are basing your choices on real data. This reduces the risks that your chosen messages/offers/wording will fail and that you will spend the budget on this campaign in vain.
By the way, about the budget. Analytics and A/B testing are available even in Claspo's free plan, so you can get your first website conversions and valuable data for future campaigns without spending a penny.
3. Reuse successful campaigns
If you've already run static or dynamic Google Ads campaigns, analyze them and choose the best ones. Reuse their headlines, calls to action and keywords to generate effective ads quickly.
For example, if your most successful ad in the past was “Shoes at 20% off”, you can turn it into a responsive search ads template such as “Shoes | Discounts | Exclusive offer”. It's a good practice to use this kind of headline construction scheme for your ad campaigns:
4. Run several campaigns simultaneously
Google Ads allows you to combine up to three responsive advertisement campaigns into one group. This considerably expands your space for experiments. Don't just focus on one area. Work with different user intents, change the tone of your messages and add different variants of your business benefits. Study the effectiveness of your campaigns over time and disable the least effective ones. You can use additional tools like AdAlysis for this purpose.
For example, suppose you emphasize big discounts in one campaign. In that case, you can try adding information about quality service in the second and long-term support for regular customers in the third. In the first one, you can work with commercial intent (“compare”), in the second, with transactional intent (“buy”), and in the third, with informational intent (“learn”).
When choosing this approach, remember Claspo's UTM targeting. Using it, you can show personalized pop-ups to visitors who came from each separate campaign. That is, visitors from the first campaign will see a pop-up with a discount, and those who came from the second campaign will see a widget promoting quality service. With such personalization, your widgets will not distract from the purchase process and will lead people to the checkout faster.
5. Be careful when using the pin function
Responsive search ads allow you to set the text that should appear in each headline or description. But don't overuse this feature — if overused, it will simply turn your dynamic advertising campaigns into static ones, leveling all the advantages of modern technology.
It's a good practice to include your company's brand or main keywords in your ads. It is better to do this only in the headlines. You can also create alternative campaigns by testing different hypotheses: in one, you can include only the brand; in another, the keyword; and in the third, both elements.
One more tip: use dynamic keywords. This feature allows you to automatically insert the necessary attributes based on a user's request in a particular topic. You can learn more about it in this video. Once you've pinned a dynamic keyword in one of your headlines, make sure you don't use the keywords in other ones.
6. Analyze advertising campaigns
By selecting any example of responsive search ads in Google Ads, you can open a report on the effectiveness of individual combinations of headlines and descriptions. If you haven't pinned certain elements before, you can pin the most successful options to decrease the error and get better performance.
But that doesn't mean you should stop at just one option. Remember that Google selects combinations based on specific queries, the composition of the search engine results page and competitors' ads. Don't break the algorithm — don't abuse the pinning function.
Conclusion
A responsive ad in Google search results is a modern analog of static ads that is more effective and causes fewer negative reactions due to the automatic selection of effective appeals. Setting and maintaining campaigns is easy — you just need to create several options of descriptions and headlines and monitor the results by analyzing the performance of specific combinations. Combine responsive ads with Claspo pop-ups to personalize the customer experience and increase conversion rates on your website. Try Claspo for free right now!
