7 Ways to Be Sure You’re Writing the Best Ads Possible

You may notice that writing the best ad text possible can be quite overwhelming! To make it easier for you, we’ve devised a guide or checklist to writing the best ad text.

When beginning to write from scratch or re-write your existing ad text, go through the first 7 points of the ad text checklist. Get a piece of paper and begin writing down the answers to these seven questions:

1. What are the top keywords from your ad group that should be incorporated into the ad?
2. What is the main message you want your customers to know? What solution do you provide?
3. What is the advantage your company has over your competitors? What are the top 3 benefits you offer your clients/customers?
4. What promotional offers (if any) does your company currently offer?
5. What would get you to click through this ad if typing in x keywords?
6. What answer is the searcher trying to find? i.e. Are you fulfilling the searcher’s needs?
7. In the end, why should the searcher click on your ad?

Once you’re finished answering the seven questions, you can begin to write your ad text. Once you’ve completed writing your ad text, use the checklist below to be sure you’ve written a benefit-oriented, attention-getting, call-to-action driven ad text!

1. Title
   1. Does the ad title grab your audience’s attention?
   2. Does the title contain at least one of your keywords?
   3. Does the ad title initially answer a question?
   4. Does the ad title differ from your competitors?
2. Description
   1. Does the description contain at least one keyword?
   2. Does the description answer the searchers question?
   3. Does the description engage users to read on?
   4. Does the description contain a call to action?
   5. Is the description limited in any way?
   6. Are there any promotional offers in the description?
   7. Is the description different from your competitors?
   8. Can the searcher tell the benefit from reading the description?
3. Display URL
   1. Is the display url contain sentence caps?
   2. Does the display url match the destination url?
4. Destination URL
   1. Does the destination url take users to the correct page?
   2. Does the destination url need any tracking?

If you find it helps, use this guide and checklist every time you write or re-write your ad text to ensure you’re targeting the right customer and gaining a competitive advantage over your competition.

You Will Never Write the Perfect Ad Text, but Here Are 3 Ways To Keep Getting Closer

This week we have been exploring how to catch more clicks and conversions by writing better ad texts. Our tackle box has been filled the tools to help (just to name a few):

• Write benefit-driven ad text
• Use promotional offers and calls-to-action
• Qualify our leads as much as possible

But let’s be honest; even with all of these tactics at your disposal, you will never write the perfect PPC ad text. It’s a hard fact to face but it’s true. However, you can get pretty close to perfect (hopefully this blog series will help!) and I will tell you 2 ways to get closer to PPC ad text perfection.

Test. Test. Test. You can utilize every tip, insight and nugget-of-truth that we have discussed this week on writing better ad text but you need to continuously test your ad variations. You need to test every aspect of your PPC ads to determine which message appeals best to your audience, including:

• Headlines
• Ad Copy
• Calls-to-action
• Promotional offers
• Display URL

Review your ad serving method. Now that I’ve convinced you that you need to continuously test your ad text variations, you have to give each ad text a chance to prove it’s salt. To do this you need to alter your ad serving method:

• In Google, there are two delivery methods; optimize and rotate. Optimize is the default setting and when this option is chosen all of your ads are not being equally displayed because AdWords chooses which is the “best” performer and focuses on it. You can change this setting at the campaign level, and I suggest you do so.
• In Yahoo, the setting is called “optimize ad display.” However, if you want to evenly test your ads, you need to make sure that ad optimizer is not selected. You can alter this setting at the ad group level, under the tab ‘General Information.’ Select ‘no’ for the option of “Optimize Ad Display.”

When you write multi-variant ad texts, and alter your ad serving method so that each ad variation is displayed evenly, then you’ll be on your way to increasing your clicks, and conversions! Remember; this process NEVER ENDS. You may find an ad text that appeals best to your audience, but you need to continuously test against it. You never know what you’ll find out there in the open waters of the PPC ocean!

How to Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion to Hook Customers

We have discussed the best practices for writing great PPC ad texts. The ideas presented have thus far focused on writing techniques, not necessarily search engine provided tools. However, today I’d like to discuss one of the most powerful tools provided to advertisers: Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI). DKI is a way to write your ad so that a user’s actual search query keyword will be inserted into your ad text.

The basic idea here is that if your ad contains the actual text the searcher entered, they will view your ad as the most relevant and will click on your ad! Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing both use very similar operators for this tool. By entering {KeyWord:Your Default Text Here} into the headline, body text or display URL, the searcher’s query will be automatically entered into your ad. The caveat, of course, is that the keyword must fit within your ad’s character limits. If the keyword is longer than the space allotted in the headline or body text, the default text you enter will be displayed instead. Google’s example shows this quite effectively:

Actual Ad in Your Account	Brand New {KeyWord:Phones} Huge selection of phones. Great prices. {Keyword:phones} in stock. Free shipping! www.BestDealer.com http://www.bestdealer.com/?kw={keyword:nil}
Ad 1 - Keyword: nokia n90	Brand New Nokia N90 Huge selection of phones. Great prices. Nokia n90 in stock. Free shipping! www.BestDealer.com http://www.bestdealer.com/?kw=nokia%20n90
Ad 2 - Keyword: samsung d500	Brand New Samsung D500 Huge selection of phones. Great prices. Samsung D500 in stock. Free shipping! www.BestDealer.com http://www.bestdealer.com/?kw=samsung%20d500
Ad 3 - Keyword: motorola razor silver	Brand New Phones Huge selection of phones. Great prices. Phones in stock. Free shipping! www.BestDealer.com http://www.bestdealer.com/?kw=nil

In most cases, using DKI in your ad text can increase click-through-rate (CTR) within your PPC campaigns. But I should point out a few considerations before you go and put DKI in all of your ads. Many advertisers use DKI as a crutch for poor PPC management. In other words, they put as many keywords as possible into a single ad group and use DKI to tailor the ad for each searcher (like shooting fish in a barrel). Sounds great, but it just simply won’t work. All of the major PPC search engines have quality based initiatives in play that will “punish” your campaign for this type of thing. So, before you put DKI into every ad, try taking a look at your account structure and find ways to group similarly themed keywords together. This will make writing relevant ads much easier and at that point DKI will become a tool to use for increasing CTR instead of a crutch for writing poor ads.

One last tidbit to consider: a lot of advertisers have the mindset that using DKI in their ads will automatically increase CTR. I’m here to say that this isn’t so! As with everything in the world of PPC, testing is your greatest weapon! Pit your DKI ad against an ad written with plain text and see which one performs the best. In some cases, the plain text ad will be victorious. If you are running a PPC account and do not currently use DKI, I suggest you give it a try starting today. It’s really simple to implement and really simple to test. Let us know if you have any questions!

Use Qualifiers in Your Ad Text: 4 Ways to Catch the BEST Leads, Not the MOST Leads

Lead generation is one of the tougher challenges among paid search advertising. An even bigger challenge lies within generating qualified leads. This tends to be a problem within PPC because we know the more traffic we drive to our clients’ sites, typically the greater our chances are of obtaining leads. But obtaining the most leads isn’t worth spending money; generating qualified leads is. One way to qualify customers to your site lies within your ad text. By first qualifying people to your site through your ad text this increases the chances that someone that does turn into a lead is a qualified lead.
Below I’ve listed 4 ways to make your ad text qualify customers to your site.

1. Tell people what you want them to do. If you have a form you want a user to complete then say so. If you want them to download a pdf or whitepaper, then say so. If someone doesn’t want to download a whitepaper or fill out a request form, they won’t click on your ad. Don’t make these actions the main focus of your ad text, however, be sure to give benefits first and foremost. You can keep your action requests to a minimum, and say Request Info Here, SignUp Today, Download Whitepaper, etc.
2. Include Price Points: Another way to qualify your customers is by adding price points into your ad text. I usually will add these in the last line of my text or if I have room, in my ad text title. If someone is looking for a gift for Christmas and only wants to spend $50, and your item is $200, perhaps think about putting that price point in your ad. Of course you’ll get fewer clicks - but the clicks you do get should be people who are willing to pay $200.
3. Announce Your Target: If you’re a B2B (business-to-business) or a B2C (business-to-customer) then say so in your ad text! Many times I put in my ads that ‘we work with large companies’ or ‘customized solutions for companies’ so that smaller companies don’t click-through my ad. If your client sells or buys something and works mainly with customers, say something like, “We Buy Artist Paintings” or “We Sell Artist Paintings.” Be clear, concise and to the point.
4. Avoid ‘Disqualifying’ People: Don’t get in the mode where you’re taking up most of your ad text trying to disqualify customers. For one of my clients, I could easily say, we work with large companies, no job seekers please (since we tend to get job seekers fill out our forms). But adding ‘no job seekers’ takes up too much space in your ad text and doesn’t allow enough room to engage the potential customer about your business/service.

I’m not sure there is a client out there that can’t somehow use these qualifiers in their ads to weed out non-qualified traffic. Think about your target audience, and think about the people you don’t want to your site. Try to avoid sending mixed messages to customers or business’ about your services or products. Don’t be afraid to highlight exactly what you’re looking for in your ad text.

Increase Your Click-Through Rate With Tasty Promo Offers and Calls-to-Action

Every day this week we are writing about how to improve your PPC account’s ad texts! Yesterday we discussed writing benefit driven ads to lure customers to your site. So today, I’m going to take your ad writing skills to the next level by explaining how and why you should include promotional offers and calls-to-action in your ad texts.

There are millions of people using search engines everyday and every one of those individuals is inundated with PPC ads, organic search listings and display ads. This creates a crowded, murky body of water for you to begin casting your net for customers. My suggestion? Use promo offers and decisive calls-to-action in your ad copy, and the fish, I mean customers, will come to you.

Promotional offers come in all shapes and sizes:

• Free Shipping!
• Save 50% This Month Only!
• Buy 1, Get 2 Free!
• Spend $100, Get a Free Gift Certificate!

While these may seem like common sense, rest assured that many advertisers don’t utilize this simple piece of bait in their ads. Some advertisers rely on their landing pages or even worse, their homepage, to effectively convey current sales and discounts. The promo offer will increase your click-through-rate (CTR), and if your ad matches your landing page, increased conversion rates shouldn’t be far behind!

Writing an ad text without a call-to-action can prove to be a costly mistake. Benefits and promo offers are devices for increasing CTR, but calls-to-action have a three-fold affect. They not only increase your CTR, but calls-to-action also set the expectation for what the customer will need to do once they arrive at your site thus increasing conversion rates. Does your landing page ask for contact information? Should the customer buy today? Your job as the advertiser is to tell the customer exactly what they should do:

• Sign Up today!
• Buy Now!
• Request More Information!
• Discover the Best Deal of 2008!

I urge you to begin using both of these devices today! Create an ad variation for both a promotional offer and a call-to-action to add more enticing bait to your PPC tackle box. Check back in tomorrow as we will discuss how to use ad texts to catch the best leads.

The Benefits of using Benefit-Driven Ad Texts.

Let us not forget the fundamental root of search engine marketing: search. The term ’search’ also comprises these terms: query, hunt, seek, look for, ferret, chase, rummage. Users rummage through search query results looking for a service, a product, a piece-of-information, an answer. Search engine results pages (SERP) are filled with possible answers to a users’ query, but the key to a successful search engine marketing campaign is being the best answer. You can be the best answer to a user’s query by writing ad texts that are benefit-driven. Writing benefit-driven ad texts will allow you to catch more clicks and conversions!

Think of the internet as a vast ocean filled little fish, better known as users, and your ad text is your lure and your benefits are the bait! When writing ad texts you can’t just tell someone to click on your ad (I wish it were that easy!); you need to convince them to click on your ad. This is where highlighting the benefits of your service or product come into the equation.

The first step to writing benefit-driven ad texts is to determine what your core benefits are. Review your website, make a list of reasons why someone would choose you over your competitors. Hopefully, it’s a long list! This list is your tackle box of benefits and it can include:

• Prices (lower than your competitors)
• Product quality (better than your competitors)
• Shipping (faster than your competitors)
• Variety (wider than your competitors)

…and the list goes on and on. Once you have this list of benefits, you need to run a few queries on your core keywords to see what benefits (if any!) your competitors are highlighting. How can you make your ad text different; how can it stand out from all of the other lures on a SERP; how can it be the best answer to a user’s query?

Once you’ve answered these questions you can begin writing new ad texts that highlight these benefits. And you should write an ad for each benefit you’d like to highlight. You’ll find that certain benefits will appeal best to your target audience. Later this week we’ll talk about best practices for multi-variant testing for your ad texts.

The result of following these steps is that you’ll have new ad texts that are benefit-driven, and that stand-out from your competitors. Having these new ad texts in your tackle box will be the best answer to a user’s query and you’ll catch more clicks and conversions!