The Truth About RSA Ad Strength: 3 Big Mistakes & My Go-To Copy Framework (Episode 532)

0:19Hello and welcome to the paid search podcast.

0:21Chris Schaeffer: My name is Chris Schaeffer. And today I'm going to talk about search ads. I'm going to discuss ad strength. I'm going to share the three most common mistakes I find people make. And at the end of the episode, I'm going to share my preferred method on how I write all of my ad copy. It's after many, many years of working with responsive search ads. And I really think I found the absolute best way of doing it. And I'll share that at the end of the episode. But before I do, I want to make sure that you understand how ad strength works and what it can and cannot do. And I also throw in some stuff around dynamic insertion, which is something I feel pretty passionately about.

1:12So stay tuned because I have a lot to share. I do this type of podcast every single week. If you don't know me, if you're new here. I've been running Google Ads campaigns for over two decades, and it's all I do. I work on Google Ads campaigns for my clients every single day. I've been doing it for a long time, and if you'd like to reach out to me, I do offer coaching as well as management if you just want someone to just fix it for you. That's what I do day in, day out. So you can find more about me,

1:47Chris Schaeffer: chrisshafer.com but before I get into the episode let me tell you about why I can take time from my busy schedule to give you these amazing pointers and that's because Optio has built a software that I think is worth just a few moments of your time if you will take a few moments and check out Optio, you will be very glad that you did because everyone has questions. Everyone has problems in Google ads. If you haven't had a problem, just wait, uh, just, just wait a little bit longer and you will, if there's only one thing that's consistent about Google ads and that it's inconsistent. Um, so you always have problems and you always need to discover and solve the solutions in a manageable way.

2:38Chris Schaeffer: We all have things to do and Optio can help you get things done faster when you're managing your Google ads to check what's wrong, to find what's wrong. You can find those solutions with this amazing tool. It connects to your Google ads account and then you can interact with your data in ways you've never seen or done before. It gives you recommendations. It is a power tool for your Google ads campaigns. It works on many networks, but you're here to hear about Google ads and that's where I think it really shines. We're going to be talking about ad copy and Optio helps you write creative ad copy.

3:20Chris Schaeffer: It is a tool that can do many things. It has many uses. So check it out for free for 28 days. You get to try it for entirely for free for 28 days at optio.com slash PSP. That's optio.com slash PSP. And let them know you heard about it here on the podcast. They give you that special 28 day free offer optio.com slash PSP. All right. So let's get into the first point. let's talk about ad strength so ad strength isn't i'm not misspeaking here ad strength is not ad rank if you're familiar with ad rank good we're not going to talk about it ad strength is entirely different ad strength is a specific metric that is not a numeric metric but in fact it is a description in four different words.

4:21Chris Schaeffer: It's either poor, fair, good, or excellent. So Google gives you a type of ranking or measurement of your ad strength. It is not a direct factor of how much you pay per click, but it does influence it. So if you've never considered your ad strength, I'm going to break down really simple at the top here. what the negative impact of a poor ad strength can bring your campaign. So we're going to go through a quick story here. Let's say advertiser number one, right, number one because he's the best, has a good or excellent ad strength. And then advertiser number two has poor ad strength. What kind of experience does advertiser number two with the poor ad strength have that the excellent and good advertiser have, well, advertiser number two with a poor ad strength has less impressions.

5:29Chris Schaeffer: They literally will receive less impressions. Their impression volume, no matter how much they bid, no matter how much they push on these specific keywords, they'll just be eligible to show for less searches so this is this could be a really big deal for some of you if you're perhaps running exact match keywords and you're under the impression or were under the impression that you're not getting clicks or impressions because exact match just doesn't have enough volume Have you considered improving your ad strength? Have you tested to make sure your ad strength is at least average, good, fair, poor, certainly not something that you want, excellent would be great?

6:25Chris Schaeffer: So this is a very important metric to pay attention to because poor ad strength can also lower your expected CTR. okay so expected ctr is is part of the ad rank uh measurement formula where the feedback that google gives us about why our ad rank is what it is you don't have to worry about all that formula but basically a lower expected ctr a poor expected ctr can lower or will lower your ad rank which then further lowers your ability to show in the search auction. So this is a bit of a double whammy. I'm not repeating myself here. I mean, there's two things that have happened. You are now not eligible to show for as many impressions.

7:21Chris Schaeffer: And then upon further investigation and further time by pushing poor ad strength, you can not even show up because your ad strength is not high or assuming your ad rank is not high enough to get you there so that's a little complicated let me just say it in plain english uh poor ad strength higher cost per click poor ad strength lower impressions lower clicks poor ad strength, lower positions in search results. Okay? Bad. Generally, there's very, very few situations when you should be okay with poor ad strength. It is not doing your campaign any favors. Okay, so let's talk about now three things that I find that people greatly misunderstand about responsive ads.

8:24Okay, this first one is very common. People that have, you know, as I often hear, enough knowledge to be dangerous. I hear that all the time. People say, Chris, I have enough knowledge of Google Ads to be dangerous. Well, I'm talking to you. If you feel that you know enough to be dangerous, implying that you know enough to screw things up, Let me tell you one of the things that you probably don't realize and is very important.

8:55Chris Schaeffer: A responsive search ad does not match your keyword that was clicked on. Okay, so if someone searches for red running shoes, and you have 15 headlines in your ad, and one of them says red running shoes, Google does not necessarily match red running shoe search to red running shoe headline. It might happen, but in no way does Google prioritize a matching between the search query and the actual headline in the ad. If you assume that, then you're wrong And the only way that you can get it done properly is by separating your red running shoes from your black running shoes from your white running shoes.

9:52They need to be in separate ad groups based on color, if that's an important aspect.

9:56Chris Schaeffer: And, of course, this applies to anyone who is advertising multiple services, multiple products, multiple features in one ad group. And you just decide to kind of just dump them all into one responsive search ad and then kind of just jumble them up and assume, We'll let Google sort it out. We'll let Google make sure all the headlines match. No, they don't. And it's definitely showing green running shoe whenever they search red running shoe. And more on that later about how they could be showing the wrong thing a lot more than you think. So let's get into number two. Number two thing that people perceive incorrectly about responsive search ads.

10:45Chris Schaeffer: Responsive search ads do not optimize for conversions. Now, you can write your angry comments. I do read those, and I plan to address some of the arguments I received recently from people. You can send me an email, paidsearchpodcast at gmail.com. I do read all of those as well. I'll be addressing some questions and feedback soon. But I'm going to make the argument, responsive search ads do not optimize for conversions. Bidding strategies optimize for conversions. Responsive search ads optimize for clicks. The default is to optimize for clicks. so this is really bad news if you've written highly incentivized headlines okay so you know saying things like uh you know free something or you know uh you know cheap this or cheap that um highly incentivized uh headlines are preferred if they lead to more clicks okay so if those incentivize clicks then lead to more conversions the cycle will repeat and increase so again and faster again and faster again and faster this is a bad thing it's your job to write headlines that optimize for the right click not just to get a click.

12:23And if you just pass that on to Google, it will use the one that gets the most clicks. And I have a perfect example of, you know, I saw a situation that had fallen into this cycle very deeply. I was doing an audit of a in-home personal assistant company.

12:48Chris Schaeffer: It was an account that was, unfortunately, unbeknownst to them, optimizing for job seekers, people that want to be hired as a personal assistant in someone's home. But that's not what they were trying to advertise. They were trying to advertise people who want to hire people, not be hired. So it was finding a ton of job seekers were coming to their website. They were clicking on their ads and coming to the website. And these job seekers were seeing ad copy that said the word staffing in it, that said the word placement in the ad copy. And because that received the most clicks, and then these job seekers then went and filled out the questionnaire form or the contact form on the website, that got a conversion.

13:41Chris Schaeffer: The cycle continued to spin up over and over, faster and faster. I mean, this was a bad situation where it was driving more and more conversions, better and better metrics, quote unquote, right? I mean, the cost per conversion looked phenomenal. The conversion rate looked phenomenal. But upon deeper look, you realize it was just the same type of searches, job seekers that were not right for what the account was supposed to be bringing in. and this was because it was presenting the wrong message and Google Ads was optimizing for that. The responsive search ads were optimizing for higher click-through rate.

14:23Chris Schaeffer: And then the bidding strategy was optimizing for conversions. All right, so that's number two. And number three, responsive search ads technically have three headlines that can be fulfilled. There is headline one, two, and three. I'm here to tell you there's no such thing as the third headline. Third headlines are dead. So if you're pinning things to third headline, you're not going to be getting any impressions or anything at all. This is essentially just throwing away any type of formula that you think might be happening. The third headline is just not happening. So this is a detriment. And as I said, towards the end of the episode, or at the very end of the episode, I'm going to tell you my method on how you can make sure you utilize these two headlines.

15:29How do you make sure that you do it the right way?

15:35So you should write ads knowing that you only have two headlines to make your pitch correctly. And I find many people who don't put much time into your ad copy are writing these throwaway headlines. And your headline, your ad, will be extremely bland. It won't get any clicks. Or if it does get clicks, it gets highly unqualified because it says things like, call now low price right that's headline one says call now and the second headline says low price these are just throw away short non uh explanatory um headlines for my e-commerce friends it says fast shipping order online today i mean maybe someone searched for something that isn't exactly

16:31Chris Schaeffer: what you sell. And if you would have stated what it is that you're, what you're selling, if you clarified what it is that you're selling in your ad copy, maybe they won't click because they're sure not going to purchase. They were looking for this really specific thing and you sell this other specific thing. They wouldn't have clicked knowing that you sell something for cats and they're looking for dogs. Um, you know, that's going to, that's not going to work. so these throwaway headlines can be mixed up. Headline one, headline two can lead to very poor. So like I said, I'm going to mention my formula on how you can fix it very soon.

17:08Before I get into that, I want to tell you the last thing, dynamic insertion. I have to address dynamic insertion because dynamic insertion, sometimes referred to as DKI, dynamic keyword insertion, is things that I find many people use and use it too much. I don't think that dynamic keyword insertion in ads is a good idea. If you're not familiar with it, then ignore what I'm talking about because you shouldn't use it. I think it's not a shortcut.

17:46Chris Schaeffer: It does not magically grant excellent ad strength. you say well well chris how can it not i mean dynamic keyword insertion repeats the person's search matches it to my keyword and then shows my keyword in the headline so it's essentially you know saying if they if they search red running shoes and then my keyword is red running shoes it'll show red running shoes in the headline yes but that does not mean that you have excellent ad strength because you happen to have that exact matching keyword. The algorithm gives you excellent ad strength from asset diversity, not just matching the keyword in the ad copy.

18:31You can't just say, you know, this matches to this, so that's perfect. No, it looks for asset diversity. It wants diversity, things to test. The algorithm is looking for multiple ways to be able to test things. And DKI does not lead to diversity. It leads to highly repetitive things showing over and over. And what I find is the system can highly lean on DKI. So it ends up grabbing that very repetitive thing over and over again. And you end up in the same situation like I talked about before. The cycle that I referred to can just intensify over and over. you know, call now low price. That ends up getting a lot of clicks, but they're junk clicks.

19:21Or what I talked about with the staffing example, you know, the job seekers are clicking on it, they're converting. So now more job seekers see it and they're converting. I highly suggest that

19:32Chris Schaeffer: what you lean towards is diversity and testing and actual clarification about what you're selling, what you're offering. Your ads should clarify your services, not just repeat the person's search. And keep in mind, the only thing that people ever see about your campaigns is what you put in your ad copy. You can have the best bidding strategy. You can have the best keywords. You can have the best landing page for 95 % of the people that see an ad is the only thing they ever see is whatever you put in your headlines. So your headlines are the forward facing part of, you know, what 95 % of everyone sees about your campaign.

20:25And maybe you're not writing very good headlines. And maybe that's killing you. So I'm going to tell you what I do. I'm going to give you my favorite method, the Chris Schaefer method. I should probably have a better name. Actually, let's go back. Let's go back a few years. The great Chris Schaefer method. Those of you who've been around for a long time may recognize the great Chris Schaefer method of writing ad copy coming up right after I tell you about Optio. Remind you, please do check them out. They are a wonderful sponsor that keep me interested in doing this, honestly, because this does take a lot of time to write these episodes and, and, and I edit them and put them all out.

21:05It takes a lot of work. And if you appreciate that, give my sponsor a chance, or at least let them know that, you know, you, you hear about them and you're considering their product. You can reach out to them on social media, but if you'd like that link, it is optio.com slash PSP. Okay. The great Chris Schaefer method. This is what I do. I pin at least three or four headlines to first position or, or headline one to headline one. I don't want to call it first position, but I pin three or four headlines to headline one and all other messages, all other

21:51Chris Schaeffer: headlines are written in order to support those three or four pinned headline one messages. So that means all others are unpinned. Remember what I said, there's not a third headline. So that means you're only pinning to first headline and everything else you can assume will be headline number two. Okay, so I pin that primary message and I try and push for clarity. I try and be as explicit as I can about what it is that I'm selling, what makes it exactly the right match for them. I try and use different synonyms for the term. I try and mix them sometimes with numbers, sometimes percentages, sometimes with, you know, some creative ways of using brackets or parentheses.

22:45Sometimes I put it in there. I mean, there's all kinds of geographic things that I can put in there to call attention. And that's headline one to make sure they when they click on it, they should very well know what they're clicking on. And then all my others are unpinned. And they are things like a call to action, some kind of feature or some kind of benefit about the product or the service. Geographic references, you know, we serve all of this area. Trust factors, you know, been in business for 20 years.

23:14Chris Schaeffer: These are supporting headlines that are supporting headline one. So what you don't want to happen is to support headline showing. You want a primary and then a secondary. And when you use this method, you'll always get a primary message and then a secondary message. And if you do it that way, every person that clicks will know exactly what it is that you're selling because it's going to be in headline one and then headline two further communicates some other reason behind that. This is the great Chris Schaefer method in ad copywriting. I give it to you for free, and I appreciate you guys listening, watching to this podcast.

24:01As I said, my name is Chris Schaefer, the great Chris Schaefer. You can reach out to me, chrisshafer.com. I offer training, coaching, support.

24:14Chris Schaeffer: I'm a shoulder to cry on whenever your Google ads is not working well. Or if you want me to just go in there and fix it, I do offer full support management by me. By the way, I'm not an agency. I'm not a group. I'm not just the head figure of a big agency. You're going to talk and work with me exclusively, which is very unique nowadays. So if not, thank you so much for being here and I will catch you guys next week.