October 8, 2021
The Ideal QA Process in Digital Advertising
Looking for a way to improve your clickthrough rate and qualify your audience? Try utilizing IF functions in your ads to tailor your messaging to specific subsets of users. You can target searchers based on the device they are browsing on or the remarketing list they fall into, which can be applied to expanded text ads on the search network. Combat competition and take your brand messaging to the next level with IF function customized ad copy.
Setup
As the name suggests, you can create these ads by simply inserting an IF function into either the headline or description line of your ad, similar to creating an equation in Excel. For each case, you must also include default text that will show if someone is not within your specified group of users.
Device: Let’s say you sell shoes, and you want to offer a special discount to users shopping on mobile. You can use an IF statement to show specific text like “$15 Off Mobile Orders” in Headline 2 to someone searching on their cell phone. Simply insert your desired mobile text into the first half of the equation below, and include the text you’d like to default to if the searcher is not on mobile. In this example, someone searching on desktop would be shown the text, “Shop Our Wide Selection!”
{=IF(device=mobile,$15 Off Mobile Orders):Shop Our Wide Selection!}
Remarketing: You can also recapture a searcher who added a pair of sneakers to their cart but never checked out using an IF function. Insert an IF statement so that your description line will display “Still Searching for the Perfect Pair?” to a user in your abandoned cart remarketing audience. To implement this, enter the name of your desired remarketing list within the formula with your tailored message in the first part of the equation. Don’t forget to include the default text to show if someone does not fall within your list! In this example, a user who has not abandoned the shopping cart would see “Shop Boots, Sneakers, and More.”
{=IF(audience IN(Cart Abandoners),Still Searching for the Perfect Pair?):Shop Boots, Sneakers, and More}
You can find more information on setup here.
Evaluation
IF function copy can be difficult to evaluate, as there is no way to see exactly how many users were shown a customized ad within the interface. This is especially true if you are running multiple ads per ad group to take advantage of Google’s Optimize ad rotation. Additionally, remarketing audiences tend to perform more strongly than prospecting audiences, another compounding factor. That being said, you can evaluate performance here by looking for an overall lift in clickthrough rate by mobile device or audience performance period over period after implementing the ads.
This tool is especially helpful for businesses facing increased competition and more expensive cost per click (CPC). Implementing highly specified ad copy that is unique to each searcher can also help improve your ad relevance and quality score, which in turn can potentially lower your average CPCs. Hopefully, targeting options for demographics will be next from Google. In the meantime, tailoring ad copy based on device and remarketing audience can set your business apart and entice searchers both new and returning to your site.
Contact us to learn more about IF function customized ad copy.
