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Adwords PPC Basics – Effective Ad Copy

Picture of Honcho Honcho : Dec 15, 2010 10:27:15 AM

Welcome to my new PPC basics blog. In previous blogs we have covered keyword selection and keyword targeting. Now you have chosen the keywords that will go into your campaign and how they will be targeted it’s time to start writing your ad copy.

Ad copy plays a vital role in your campaigns success, it’s the face of your campaign and without effective copy your campaign could perform poorly. In this blog I will run through a simple step by step guide about how to produce effective ad copy. Research Research is a very important part of creating your ad copy, failure to research and prepare before writing could spell disaster. As Winston Churchill famously said “He who fails to plan is planning to fail”. The first step in research is to make sure that you know the content on the page that you will be directing traffic to inside and out. Try to make a list of the keywords, key content and any unique value propositions that you could use as your call to action. Once you know your way around the page you’re going to promote it is a good idea to do a search for some keywords you will be targeting. This will give you a good insight into what competitors are doing and what ads are achieving high positions.

Figure 1 - Ad Copy Example

Figure 1 shows the top three ads when searching “football boots”. From this example we can see that they all have a strong call to action and unique value propositions. To ensure that your advert stands out from the crowd you need to structure it with all this research and a unique value proposition in mind. Implementation With a solid base of research and a clear direction for your ad, building it should be the easy part (touch wood). The most important thing to do when writing ad copy is to be specific and try to avoid generic terms that could harm your CTR and quality score.

Figure 2 - Ad word creation

Figure 2 shows the ad creation tool that allows you to make your advert and see a preview before its made. Start by writing the Headline of the advert, this tends to be 2 or 3 words long so make sure you pick words that are descriptive and appealing to a potential customer. Underneath the title of your ad you are provided with two lines to describe the page, explain any offers and entice potential customers all while trying to cram in as many keywords as possible. Sound impossible? Its not ! My tip would be to save the bottom line for your call to action, this could also be your unique value proposition as they can often be linked. Now you have the top row to fit in keywords and product description again they are often the same. Finally Adwords gives you the option to display a more friendly and readable url, try to keep this down to the main URL then a related keyword. Figure 3 shows this in action.

Figure 3 - Display URL Example

Review When you have created your advert it is essential to keep an eye on it and review its performance on a regular basis. If your adverts are underperforming there is a number of techniques that you can use to identify the problem. The first technique is to create 2 or 3 different adverts with the same keywords and target url but with different advert copy. This is an easy way to see what’s working and then delete the underperforming adverts over time. The technique is known as ad variations and is one of the most successful methods. Another way is to use Google Adwords and Google analytics to analyse keyword and advert performance, this can take a long time but it will also provide you with the best results. If you follow this simple guide then you will find that your adverts are more successful and more important more profitable. Do you have any more rules that you would include? Leave a comment and let me know. Stay tuned for more PPC basics blogs.