TalkTalk, the telecommunications company, faced the challenge of keeping their ads relevant in a competitive environment. Learn how they unlocked the power of automation to improve ad positioning and increased their quality scores by 20% while seeing their cost per clicks fall by 15%.
The business challenge
The telecommunications space is hugely competitive. TalkTalk tasked media planning and buying agency m/SIX with making the best possible use of their search budget in attracting customers to the brand’s products and services. The agency seized an important opportunity to gain an advantage, setting out to enhance TalkTalk’s quality scores and ad rank by increasing the relevance between keywords and ad text.
Dynamic automation within ad copy added a competitive edge across a highly expensive space.
When an account is very large and ads change frequently due to the addition of new offers, relevance can suffer. To cope with the scale, ads may be copied from one ad group to another without the keywords being edited or tailored to the ad copy for the new ad group.
The approach
By rolling out a structured strategy using automation, m/SIX developed an efficient way to manage this complexity. They hoped this would result in TalkTalk paying less for each click and sale, while appearing at a better ad position.
To trial the approach, they ran a 30-day test on an existing campaign made up of generic keywords that were known to perform best in driving traffic and conversions. These keywords were aimed to engage users across the UK but excluded current TalkTalk customers.
The team utilised the business data portal in Google Ads to create a long-term running feed that would target down to a keyword level. They also incorporated ad customisers to dynamically adapt the headline of each ad and create optimum relevance between keyword and ad copy. By using countdown customisers, m/SIX introduced additional urgency to encourage users to click through to limited time offers.
The team added a quality score script within TalkTalk’s Google Ads account to monitor quality scores down to a keyword level. This data was backed up and imported into a shared document on a daily basis. They then converted the data into easy-to-read, digestible graphs using Data Studio.
The results
“Not only were we able to successfully track, back up, and present results in an accurate manner, but the results surpassed our initial expectations,” says Reece Collins, Search Account Director at m/SIX. “Dynamic automation within ad copy added a competitive edge across a highly expensive space.”
Over the 30-day period, the team saw quality scores increase by an average of 20%. This allowed TalkTalk’s generic keywords to appear in higher positions at a lower cost. In fact, costs per click fell by 15%, while average position improved by 11%. As the ads started appearing in better positions, click-through rates improved by 6%, resulting in more website traffic with better cost efficiency.
With the test having proved that ad customisers are likely to increase relevance, quality scores, and ad rank, the team has adapted the strategy to the rest of TalkTalk’s generic campaigns. At the same time, m/SIX says the feed-based management of ad copy has delivered a 30% savings in campaign management time.
“Ad customisers were a success story across our generics category,” affirms TalkTalk Senior Online Marketing Manager Eliza Vlachou. “The strategy and tools have given TalkTalk the competitive advantage we need to set us apart from our competitors.”
