Never Write Another AdWords Ad Again with these 5 Personalization Tricks
It can take hours to write a dozen different ads for a new campaign.
Re-writing the same thing over and over in more creative ways is brutal.
And chances are, those ads won’t be personalized.
With ad-blocking on the rise, remaining banner blindness and millions of other advertiserscompeting for attention, personalization has never been more crucial.
But scaling personalization and compelling copy isn’t easy with mass-produced ads and a character limit.
Thankfully, a few AdWords hacks can help you kill two birds with one stone: writing fewer ads while utilizing more personalization.
We all know, writing AdWords ad can be a nightmare.
It’s painful (if not nearly impossible) trying to squeeze in value, CTAs, and promotions within a 30 character headline.
Your description? Only 80 characters. Good luck.
What about writing compelling copy with almost no room?
Don’t panic! We’re here for you.
Here’s how to never write another AdWords ad again with a few nifty personalization tricks.
AdWords personalization trick #1 – Dynamic keyword insertion
Ad-blocking technology is on the rise. In the last few years, growth has been unprecedented even in mobile browsing.
Why? Well, most people don’t click on ads, or even take extra measures to block them for a few reasons.
Generally, ads are missing the mark. They aren’t on topic with user interest, and they aren’t hitting the right targets or keywords.
It’s becoming harder to reach users because specificity has declined in favor of mass production.
Now, it’s all about reaching 100,000 new users, rather than converting 100 high-quality leads.
But that approach has clearly backfired, and now people take extra added steps just to avoid it.
To land a sale, you need specificity. To tap into what users are really searching for.
If someone searches for “red and black basketball shoe size 10.5”, they want a red and black basketball shoe in size 10.5. Not your entire selection of 10,000 basketball shoes.
And that’s where dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) comes into play.
DKI allows you to update your ad text automatically based on specific keyword searches:
You don’t need to write 100 ads for all of your products or services.
Using a simple parameter within your ad text, you can meet the demands of hundreds of searches, delivering the exact, specific content users are searching for.
In an experiment with DKI, pausing dynamic keyword insertion on ads caused a 48% drop in clicks, a 38% decrease in CTR and a 70% drop in conversions in just 20 days.
Why? Lack of specificity.
People search on Google for clear reasons, as indicated by differing keywords. If they search something and your result doesn’t line up, you can’t expect sales to flood in.
To use DKI, type ”{“ in your ad textbox and select Keyword insertion from the drop-down list:
In the customization box, plug in the default keyword you want to appear when keyword insertion fails to replace the given keyword in your ad:
This should be the most general form of your keyword search on a topic.
Once you’ve applied the new changes, you can start to take advantage of customized text at scale without writing painful ads all day for dozens of campaigns.
AdWords personalization trick #2 – Use the IF functions
Like DKI, IF functions on AdWords allow you to customize your ad text without writing hundreds of ads to appeal to various segments.
You can effectively personalize ads based on device, query and more to show various offers if conditions are met.
IF functions help you to provide relevant offers and content that match the medium of each user. Plus, they are easy to scale and easy to implement.
They work by utilizing simple IF-THEN protocols.
For example, you could structure an ad like this:
IF device = mobile, THEN say “free shipping on mobile orders!”
Currently, IF functions can be used for device and audience targeting:
These present powerful opportunities to convert traffic with deep personalization at scale.
Using IF functions, you can customize offers based on device and audience to cater to their specific needs or tendencies.
For mobile specific users, you can provide discounted incentives to induce a fast purchase on the go:
If they abandon their carts, you can use that audience segment to create a new IF function providing a further discount:
With high average rates of cart abandonment and leaving without purchasing, these ads can have a huge impact on retention and closing deals.
As with all function style changes, they enable you to write less and scale faster without worrying how to squeeze tons of offers into your ad.
AdWords personalization trick #3 – Use Geolocation functions
Local marketing is a buzzword. Is it Yelp? Billboards? Radio? Google Maps??
Local presence. Localized SEO. Local, local, local! It’s all marketing jargon in the end.
But that doesn’t take away from the fact that location-based targeting works.
And currently, location-driven searches are exploding.
According to Google’s latest local search data and consumer insights, 30% of all mobile searchesare location-based.
That’s nearly one out of every three searches, and that number continues to grow.
According to that same report, there has been a 2.1x increase in mobile searches with local-based queries in the past year alone. Not to mention the 1.3x increase in local searches including “where to buy” in the query.
And that’s not all:
76% of people who search with local queries on a mobile device visit a store relating to their search. 28% of those people buy a product or service.
Now is the time to capitalize on local search ads. But therein lies the problem, too:
Writing location-based ads is boring and tedious.
If you sell products or services in specific locations, you can use geolocation functions to capitalize on local traffic and online searches.
For example, when someone searches, Google will use their location in the actual ad text, helping you personalize your ads without creating dozens of geo-targeted campaigns for different locations.
With geolocation functions, you can customize beyond just the location of a search, too.
You can even change your descriptions and calls to action based on locations:
For example, you can use coupon incentives to drive sales in local areas.
According to the latest data, geolocation functions can improve click-through rates by up to 30%. Plus, conversion rates of 13%+ and 50% reductions in acquisition aren’t uncommon.
Geolocation functions allow you to customize and personalize ad text at scale just like DKI and IF functions.
To take advantage of geolocation functions, you can insert them into any ad in any field except for the final URL:
But before you’re able to do that, you’ll need to upload a list of customizers into AdWords to help AdWords recognize your scripts each time you implement them.
To do this, head to the “Business data” section of your dashboard:
Next, create a new set of ad customization data:
From here, AdWords will provide you with ad customization data templates in CSV format. You can use these to fill out information for geolocation targeting:
Upload your file, apply the changes and go back to your ads to introduce automated, scaleable geolocation functions directly within your ads.
Now you never have to worry about writing personalized local ads, especially at scale.
AdWords personalization trick #4 – Use RSLAs
Attracting visitors to your site is the easy part. Reeling in traffic with a nice piece of bait isn’t too hard, considering that fact that content is crucial to the buying journey.
But once you’ve attracted visitors, you realize that converting them is nearly impossible.
That means you can expect a whopping 2% conversion rate for new traffic.
That’s not good. And that’s why most people turn to remarketing audiences.
Remarketing audiences are a step in the right direction. But, most will turn to display ads because they are easy to implement fast.
Instead, Google packs a powerful remarketing alternative that many people aren’t taking advantage of:
Remarketing lists for search ads. Also known as RSLAs.
And according to a Clarks case study using RSLAs, the remarketing lists generated a 15% conversion rate and a 6x return for each dollar spent (6x ROI).
So, how do they work? Well, instead of showing up on partner sites with display ads, you show up in search listings as a user continues their buying journey.
You can use RSLAs to increase bids on keywords related to their page visits or even to bring back old users who haven’t converted in a while.
To get started, all you need to have is an existing remarketing audience established in AdWords.
From there, create a new search network only campaign and select your remarketing list as the target audience:
With RSLAs, you can remarket users without the need for cheesy display ads.
Now, the next time a user in your funnel searches for similar keywords, you can capitalize on their research process by giving yourself another chance to drive the sale.
AdWords personalization trick #5 – Target one specific URL
Real personalization is tough to accomplish without being creepy.
We saw you looking at this…
We noticed you visited….
Or even those ads for a product you talked about once and somehow saw on your computer the next day.
We’ve all seen those ads before, wondering what those advertisers were possibly thinking when writing that text.
Nobody likes a peeping tom. Especially not when browser privacy and history are concerned.
When all else fails for personalization tactics, resort to personalization that isn’t creepy.
Using a remarketing list on AdWords, you can easily create hyper-specific ads that require almost no copywriting that you haven’t already done.
Let me explain:
By using one specific target URL on AdWords as your remarketing audience, you’ll know exactly what those users are interested in.
That provides you the chance to personalize ads based on interest rather than potential creepy personal data.
When creating a new audience in AdWords, you can select users to target based on specific page URLs.
Getting specific, you can limit the audience to a single URL and even configure specific date ranges of those visits depending on how often you change, update or shift content on your site.
If your ad is awareness based, you can choose a popular blog post to convert top of the funnel traffic into leads.
If your URL selection is a pricing or features page, you can hone in on specific benefits that your product will provide potential customers.
Plus, you’ve already written the copy.
Take a target URL that shows heavy interest in your company. For example, your features page for a specific product.
Steal the headline and supporting body copy to implement as your description for the ad.
Now you’ve got a hyper-specific ad targeted at an audience that resonates with this specific product.
You can move away from generalized ads and into single URL focused audiences who engaged with a very specific niche, like a content marketing specialist course.
Instead of creepy personalization, get personal on the content level by using directly proven interests to your advantage.
Conclusion
Writing ads on AdWords could be a sanctioned form of government torture.
Squeezing value propositions, calls to action and promotional messaging within a 30 character headline and an 80 character description is almost impossible.
But the worst part is that it forces you to neglect key aspects of a converting campaign:
Personalization.
Writing compelling ad copy in such a small character limit requires creative tools and techniques.
Thankfully, AdWords provides a few nifty tricks to increase personalization without spending hours writing new ads.
Using DKI, you can appeal to specific searches, ensuring that queries are always met with exact landing pages and results. With IF functions, you can personalize discounts and offers based on device and audience measures.
Geolocation functions help you appeal to local queries that are currently exploding. With RSLAs, you can take advantage of remarketing without the poor display performance that usually accompanies it.
Lastly, if all else fails, remarket users with specific URL visits based on a single page to hyper-focus your messaging to interested cohorts.
Personalization at scale on AdWords is brutal. Use these personalization tricks to lighten your burden.
