The Essentials For Crafting High Quality PPC Ad Copy
1. The Essentials for Crafting High Quality Ad Copy
Ben Khoshabeh
16/11/2010
2. o Proven, tried and tested essentials for ad copy that converts
o The impact of Searcher modes/buying funnel on PPC ad copy quality
o Combining insights from searcher modes and buy cycles to create
hyper targeted ads
o The Importance of Testing
o The Most Common Traps
What we’ll be covering today
3. What are you looking for when “driving traffic” to your
website through paid search marketing?
As much traffic volume as possible for as little expense as possible
High CTR and Low CPC
The traffic to be as targeted as possible
Very low bounce rate on your landing page
Pre Sell your visitors on what they are about to see on your website. Keywords qualify your visitors by signalling intent
but so does ad copy.
Each unique visitor is led to conduct a specific action (purchase a product, complete a for lead generation, opt in
for a mailing list etc)
The content of your PPC ads can greatly affect all of these for better or worse!
4. Use The Keywords
(keywords get %50 more clicks on average)
Make sure your ad groups are “tight”
Ad copy quality is a second order effect in your PPC Success
Women’s Designer Handbags
Over 50 Premium Women’s Designer
Handbags. Free Shipping. Order Today!
www.designerhandbags.com
Handbags
We offer 50 handbags brands.
Affordable Deals on handbags online.
www.designerhandbags.com
Includes keyword phrase in headline and body
Broad ad that does include the entire keyword phrase.
Keyword: “Women’s designer handbags”
5. Mention your prices and/or promotions
50” Samsung 3DTV
Buy The New Samsung 50” 3DTV for Only
$1999. Free Delivery. Order Online!
www.Samsung.com/3DTV
Samsung 3DTV
Great Deals On Samsung 3DTVs. Browse
Our Online Offers.
www.Samsung.com/3DTV
6. Pre qualify your visitors & filter clicks
Are you targeting B2B or B2C?
Are you targeting a particular market segment/demographic?
Do you only sell one type of product?
Jobs For Teenagers
No Experience Required. Jobs Ideal For
Teenagers. Apply Online At CareerOne!
www.CareerOne.com.au
Ideal Weight Loss Plan
You Can Still Enjoy Beer with your Mates.
Learn More & Join Today.
www.jen4men.com.au
Weight loss for men
Jobs for teenagers
Citibank Gold Card
1.9% Pa on balances for 12 months. Min Salary
$35K. Response in 1 min.
www.Citibank.com.au
7. Use a strong call to action
You want your users to do something right? Well point it out!
Ideal Weight Loss Plan
Half Price Membership Offer For a Short
Time Only. Join Jenny Craig Today!
www.JennyCraig.com.au
Weight Loss
Jenny Craig Helps You Lose Weight.
Great for Both Men and Women.
www.JennyCraig.com.au
8. Capitalise The First Letter Of Every Word
But not articles, preps and conjunctions
Women’s Designer Handbags
Over 50 Premium Women’s Designer
Handbags. Free Shipping. Order Today!
www.designerhandbags.com
Women’s designer handbags
Over 50 premium women’s designer
handbags. Free shipping. Order today!
www.designerhandbags.com
Upper case ad
Lower case ad
Measure which ad has a better CTR and conversion rate
9. Understand Searcher Modes & the buy cycle
Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action
Surfing mode
Review mode
Review mode/buying mode
Buying mode
“new york”
“summer holiday new york”
“compare new york hotels”
“hilton hotel new york cheapest rate”
Consider language - Understand Your Audience/Target Market and
how they are searching for you
10. Hotels in New York City
Read our Reviews, for over 200 New York
Hotels exclusively from Recent Hotel
Guests.
www.Travel.com/NewYorkCity
Hilton Hotel New York
Hilton Hotel New York. Low Rates and
No Reservation Costs. Book Today!
www.Travel.com/HitlonNYC
New York Travel
Tailor Made Flight and Hotel Packages To
New York City. Enquire Now!
www.Travel.com/NewYorkCity
Top funnel
Mid funnel
Bottom funnel
11. Is your product
cheaper?
available with free shipping?
one that last longer?
on offer with a flexible payment plan
available in a wider variety of options
Highlight benefits not features!
What else can do you to make your ads pop?
Use a unique selling proposition
Flights To Bangkok
Find A Cheaper Available Price.
Flight Centre Will Beat It!
www.FlightCentre.com.au
12. Again , comes down to how well you know your audience
Use psychological buying triggers
13. How well do you know your audience?
Who is searching?
Why are they searching?
What motivates them to buy?
Who is it for?
How are they searching (consider language)?
Keywords signal user intent, ad messaging should mirror that
14. Sense of urgency - Offer valid until Wednesday
Exclusivity - One of 500 made
Sense of belonging – people want to be accepted and
included
Instant gratification - Ships immediately
Curiosity – find out more about or special techniques
Psychological triggers contd.
15. Understand the importance of acronyms
“Employment” vs. “Careers” vs. “Jobs”
Looking For Employment?
Find New Employment Opportunities On
CareerOne. Apply Online Today!
www.CareerOne.com.au
Job Vacancies
Find Your Ideal Job. Search Through Job
Vacancies & Apply Today!
www.CareerOne.com.au
Find Career Opportunities
Find Ways to Boost Your Career. Search
on CareerOne Today!
www.CareerOne.com.au
17. Why Test? Approach to Split and Mutli-Variate Testing
Identify which ad has a better CTR?
Identify which ad has a better Conversion Rate
o Trial different offers
o Different headlines
o Different USPs/benefits
o Experiment with psychological buying triggers
o Tweak ad copy order
o URL with www and URL without www
o URL with sub domain vs. URL without sub domain
o Exclamation or no exclamation. Buy Now! Vs Buy Now.
18. Citibank Gold Card
1.9% Pa on balances for 12 months. Min
Salary $35K. Response in 1 min.
www.Citibank.com.au
Citibank Gold Card
1.9% Pa on balances for 12 months. Min
Salary $35K. Response in 60secs.
www.Citibank.com.au
The little nuances of testing
19. o Don’t base your decisions on random fluctuations
o Gather a large amount of data to compare ad performance
o Weird data may stem from insufficient PPC traffic
Need statistical significance when testing
20. o Try taking messages from other channels
o Go on Facebook or Twitter
o Look at competition overseas
o Steal from your sales team – they talk to your customers everyday
o Go for a walk and revisit your copy with ‘fresh’ eyes
Lost for Ideas?
21. o Trying To Sell Too Hard In The Ad
o Not Segmenting Your Keywords correctly
o It’s not only about the keywords & ad copy – what about your
landing page selection?
o Testing for the sake of testing – needs defined parameters
o CTR can be misleading
o Not paying attention to what your competitors are doing
o Rushing or being lazy leads to generic and bad copy
o Following Rules Blindly
The Most Common Traps
Do you provide free shipping?
Do you have %50 off your stock
Are you giving away a free report?
Placing your price, number of items available (if possible) and promotions can greatly increase conversion rate. It’s easier to for searchers to see the immediate benefit of what you have to offer. They are more likely to click on an ad with information that on a generic one.
Again, specificity and setting customer expectations in only 70 characters. It’s very easy to forget mentioning such things and get caught up in being too broad and untargeted. Be as specific as possible wherever possible. PPC is about demand harvesting – and you need to be able to cut through all the noise to pop out to your customers!
Mention your price and or promotions. Why?
Creates a sense of urgency – which drives sales!
Makes users feel like they have something to gain and a lot to lose out on
Mentions your Unique selling points – what do you have to offer your customers that’s different from your competitors
Related to CTRs and ROI, sometimes advertisers can get conflicting data. For example, sometimes ads will show a high CTR and low conversion rate, or a low CTR and a high conversion rate (you generally want high CTRs and high conversion rates). Generally speaking, inconclusive data means ad tests haven't been running long enough, and I'll continue to run tests until results become conclusive. In many instances, "weird" data stems from insufficient PPC traffic.
But click-through isn’t conversion, and your highest-costing copy may or may not be your highest-selling copy. Understand when you want to maximize CTR and when you want maximize conversion, and set up your test accordingly
