Writing effective ad text is a challenging task that takes sometime to master. Fitting eye-catching phrases into the 25 character headline and 70 character description space isn't easy. But ads are an important part of a PPC campaign; and need to be well written and compelling despite the character limitations. Before you ever start writing an ad, there's some preliminary research steps you must take.
#1. Know Your Business
To begin, know your business. Ask yourself, what do I offer? Why is my business unique? And why are my current customers, customers? Next, make a list of the promotions and other benefits you're currently offering. Do you have free shipping? A free guide? A coupon? Find out why customers like you and what makes them act; and then use those benefits in your ad text.Thus you have to spend time thinking about what makes your business appealing to customers.
#2. Stand Out !
One last research step you should take before you start writing ads is to check out your competition.Enter some of the most competitive industry terms into a few search engines. See what benefits your competition are highlighting and what calls of action they are using.The idea here though is not that you write an identical ad. You want to stand out from the competition and get the user to click on your ad.
#3. Choose Relevant Keywords
Now that you've listed out your unique selling propositions and prepared yourself to write great benefit-driven ad copy, the next phase of the process is to choose relevant keywords. Scroll through your keyword list and choose 2 to 3 top performing keywords for each ad group. Then work to incorporate them into your ads especially in the headlines.If the users search for one of your keywords, your ad will appear.
Using keywords also helps to raise your ad's position. If the keywords are in your ad and on your landing page, your quality score will go up and so will the ad position while the Cost Per Click(CPC) will go down.
#4. Include Strong Calls to Action
Finally, after you've chosen your top performing keywords and a few of your best benefits, finish the ad writing process off by brainstorming some eye-catching calls to action. You want to avoid weaker phrases like Buy Now but utilize strong calls to action such as
Browse
Shop Now
Learn More
Get Started Today!
Get More Info.
Calls to action can be highly effective but you don't always need one. Test between an ad with a call to action and one that is purely benefit-driven to determine what works best for your account and your account goals
Now you have the tools you need to write compelling ads; and as you are writing, keep the following best practices in mind:
1) Highlight Benefits
If you can highlight more than one benefit in your ad, that's great! But don't just include as many benefits as possible. Use your judgement for ad readability.
2) Be Specific About Offers
Be specific about what you offer, not general. You want the user to know you have what they are looking for including the price they are willing to pay.
3) Capitalize Each Word
One strategy you might want to use is to Write Your Ad Like A Headline With Capital Letters At The Start Of Each Word. This catches the eye differently and increases conversion. You can't use ALL CAPS in advertisements online, it won't get approved. But You Can Use A Capital Letter at the start of every word in your headline.
4) Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI)
Utilizing Google's Dynamic Keyword Insertion is a great way to make your ad as relevant as possible to the user's search query.
5) Display URL Keywords
You will also want to include a keyword or a partial keyword in the ad's display URL. It's just another opportunity for your keyword to be included in your ad and attract the user's attention. If you're not using custom display URLs start using them and your ads will likely get more clicks.
6) Use Exclamation Marks Or Question Marks At The End Of A Headline.
Use exclamation marks or question marks, but never use a period at the end of a headline in a PPC ad.
When you ask a question the ? completes that thought. When you make a declarative statement,
a ! does the same thing. But in a PPC ad, ending the statement with . doesn't help. Don't use periods
in your ads.
7) Keep The Mindset Of The Searcher
You've got to think like your user and address the issues they care about!
Imagine, if you were searching for your products online, what would you be looking for? What kind of ads would you want to read?
9) Create Multiple Ads
Creating multiple ads gives you a chance to see which ad performs best. Be sure to include at least
2 ads per ad group and set up your ad rotation so you can rotate and test them against each other. Testing ad copy is often called A/B testing or split testing. This approach allows you to incrementally experiment with variations in your messaging to determine which ad text perform the best for that account.
After your new ads have accrued enough data for you to analyse their performance, start analyzing. Which ad had the highest Click Through Rate? Which ad had the highest conversion rate? You may have written what you thought was the best ad Google would ever show but the numbers might say otherwise.Once you determine the poor performer, pause it and try testing a new ad with a different message.
Ad text is one of the most important elements in a PPC campaign Your ads give users a sense of what kind of company you have and what you offer. Following the above best practices will help your users form the right impression and thus help get more clicks on your ad.
Thanks for reading this blog post! For more news and information about the PPC industry, follow me on Twitter @PPC_Consult and sign up on the contact form on the right hand side of this blog.
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