When working with paid search campaigns, we sometimes work in a silo and get sudden demands from content or merchandise teams. These requests are usually centered around changing ad copy to reflect upcoming sales, promotions, or sponsored events. As many of you know, ads written under stress and with short turnaround times are far more likely to have mistakes or be misaligned with the website copy. This can confuse the customer, ultimately causing you to miss out on a lead or lose a sale.
By creating a content calendar to improve coordination with content marketers (lead gen) and merchandise teams (ecom), you will improve the effectiveness of PPC campaigns.
In this blog, I will describe one situation, pre and post ad content calendars, and how the additional coordination across teams has helped get quality ads implemented and refreshed consistently in a Google Ads account.
Content Calendars For Education Advertisers
A brand I work with has multiple schools spread across the US. A few years ago, we tested urgency ads with the school application dates included in the ad copy. We also tested countdown ads. (To read more about this test, check out this blog post, How You Can Generate More Conversions for Lead Generation Accounts.) These ad strategies, including the application date in the copy and using countdown ads, worked really well for the brand because they are so specific to each school. That said, it usually takes a bit longer to implement these ad styles.
Writing these ads was often stressful since we had quick turnaround times. There was very little time between the day when we were notified of the school application deadlines and the day when the ads were expected to launch. The quick turnaround time created stress on the team who had to write ad copy, go through quality assurance checks, and then get approval from our contact before launching the requested ads.
After the school application season ended, we worked with our contact to confirm their future application dates and input them into a content calendar. We were able to write the next few rounds of ads and get these ads approved months in advance. We spent more time working on the quality of the ad copy and analyzing the performance of the previous ads. The new content calendar process removed stress from the client because they had more time to review the ad copy and give us notes before we would implement the copy in their campaigns.
We even went one step further and used automated rules in Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising to tell the platforms when we wanted to enable and pause the ads, according to the various application dates. Once the action was completed, we received an email confirmation that ads were either turned on or off at the proper time.
Content Calendars For eCommerce Advertisers
I work mostly with education brands but the same set up can also work for eCommerce brands that change ad copy for many occasions, including but not limited to:
- Holiday sales
- Product Launches
- Special shipping promotions
By working with your internal teams to map out these dates on a content calendar, you are proactively producing the most relevant ad copy and also giving yourself time to plan for changes in the budget due to the special promotion.
Coordinate With Your Internal Teams For More Effective Ad Copy
Sometimes, content, merchandising, and advertising teams are disconnected. This can lead to very little lead time when it comes to writing ads prior to a sale, promotion, or sponsored event. Quick turnaround times always lead to extra stress and often induce unnecessary mistakes.
Coordinating with content marketers (lead gen) and merchandise teams (ecom) on upcoming content pieces or sales, respectively, will decrease stress and likely improve performance.
