Creating effective PPC ad content is essential for reaching and engaging your audience. The cost of living and general economic conditions require marketers to do more with less.
Using AI can streamline this process, making it more efficient and effective. Here’s how you can use AI to align your ads with the customer journey, feed the machine the right data, and use recommended tools to create high-performing content.
Aligning Ads to the Customer Journey
Understanding your customer’s journey is key to crafting relevant PPC ads.
To connect with your audience, it's essential to guide AI targeting with compelling messaging and engaging designs. Make sure your message strikes a balance—not too broad or too niche—and tailor it to various customer needs.
Your ad creatives should:
- Educate: Focus on brand awareness and education. Use videos, blog posts, or other low-intent content to inform your audience about your brand.
- Explain Value: Highlight the benefits of your product or solution and direct users to an intent-focused page on your website.
- Present Pricing or Offers: Ideal for warm retargeting audiences, these ads target users who are ready to make a purchase, sign up, or speak to sales.
The customer journey consists of several stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. Tailoring your ad content to each stage helps meet the specific needs of your audience at the right time.
- Awareness Stage: Create ads that introduce your brand and products, focusing on the problems your product solves or the benefits it offers.
- Consideration Stage: Provide detailed information, comparisons, and testimonials to assist customers in evaluating their options.
- Decision Stage: Highlight special offers, discounts, and clear calls to action to encourage conversions.
AI can analyse customer behaviour and segment your audience, ensuring your ads are relevant and timely throughout the customer journey.
Feeding the Machine
For AI to generate effective PPC ads, it needs high-quality data. The better the input, the better the output!
Here’s what to include:
- Keyword Data: A comprehensive list of keywords that potential customers are searching for.
- Customer Data: Demographics, past purchasing behaviour, and engagement metrics.
- Competitor Analysis: Information on your competitors' ad strategies, including their keywords and ad copy.
Providing this data helps AI learn and improve its recommendations, resulting in more effective ad content.
With AI expanding audiences and increasing competition for attention, it’s crucial to design ads for all potential placements. Use your data to identify which channels and placements are most effective, and maximise the use of headlines, descriptions, and creative options.
Testing various sizes and formats extensively is key to avoiding a limited audience pool. Aim for variety while sticking to your brand guidelines. Significant differences in creative elements are necessary for algorithms to test successfully. Simple tests (e.g., green vs. blue) can quickly exhaust the creative and lose audience interest. Instead, test diverse concepts and designs (e.g. people vs. laptop), applying past insights to new iterations.
With more placements available across different advertising channels, maintaining various formats is essential to capture and hold consumer attention. You might need over 100 different assets for a single campaign.
Quality should always take precedence over quantity, especially when time and resources are limited.
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT can save time by assisting with:
- Creative concepts and ideation
- Ad copy
- Localisation/translation
- Audience research
- HTML5 code generation
AI features in design tools can also accelerate creative production by:
- Brainstorming ideas
- Storyboarding
- Removing or filling backgrounds
- Changing aspect ratios
- Photo editing
- Vector creation
- Colour correction
- Subtitle generation
While creative testing may seem like more work, AI tools help teams complete tasks much faster than before.
Suggested Tools to Use:
Several AI-powered tools can assist you in creating high-quality PPC ad content:
- ChatGPT: Great for brainstorming content ideas.
- Dall-E 2: A good tool for storyboarding.
- Canva: Removing backgrounds and adding video overlays.
- Google Ads: Utilise tools like PMax to optimise your campaigns.
- Google Conversational Experience: Text-to-image generation.
- Ad Copy Generators: Tools such as Copy.ai and Jasper (formerly Jarvis) can create compelling ad copy based on your inputs.
- Analytics Tools: Use SEMrush or Ahrefs to gather data on keywords and competitor performance.
- Personalisation Platforms: Dynamic Yield and Optimizely can tailor ads to individual users based on real-time data.
While AI can boost efficiency, prioritising authenticity is crucial. AI should serve as a tool to speed up tasks, not as the final arbiter of your content. Always thoroughly review the AI's output, ensuring it aligns with your brand's tone of voice in every design and message.
Tips for Content That Performs Well
The most successful PPC campaigns require a strategic blend of creativity and a deep understanding of consumer behaviour.
To ensure your PPC ad content performs well, consider the following tips:
- Keep It Concise: With limited space, every word must count.
- Use Strong CTAs: Clear and compelling calls to action encourage user engagement.
- Highlight Benefits: Focus on what the customer will gain from your product or service.
- Test and Iterate: Use A/B testing to find out what ad copy resonates best with your audience.
- Utilise Visuals: High-quality images or videos can quickly grab attention and convey your message.
Conclusion
Integrating AI into your PPC ad creation process can greatly improve the relevance and effectiveness of your campaigns. By aligning your ads to the customer journey, feeding the AI with the right data, and using recommended tools, you can produce high-performing ad content that drives results.
For more expert advice on digital marketing and PPC strategies, get in touch.
Lottie Hippisley
