AdWords is a fantastic way for brands to promote their products and services to a wider audience, and can be a great resource that allows SMEs to get an advantage over larger competitors. However, in our experience in managing and optimising PPC campaigns, we find a vital element for a successful AdWords campaign is sometimes the most neglected.
The Ad Copy.
Time and time again, we spot poorly written ads on Google that do not entice users to engage and click. When businesses invest time and money in researching keywords and setting up an Adwords campaign, it is a waste of time only to not put the effort into writing selling ad copy. It’s worse when it is a marketing agency doing this, wasting their client’s time and money in writing ads that are not optimised to convert and drive sales or inquiries.
That’s why in this Ricemedia blog article, I am going to look at what you need to know to write AdWords Ads that sells.
Why Does AdWords Copy Matter?
As well as selling your business’ products or services, the quality of your Ad Copy plays an important part in your ad’s quality score and how much you actually pay for your clicks.
AdWords’ Quality Score was introduced because Google wants good ads. Why? Because well-written ads results in more clicks compared to poorly written ads and that’s how Google makes money. So, instead of the ad with the highest bid dominating the highest search positions, AdWords’ Quality Score helps assigns the best positions for the best ad.
Quality Score looks at three main areas;
- Landing Page Experience
- Expected Clickthrough Rate
- Ad Relevance
Writing ads that are very relevant to the search terms that you’re targeting can help improve your Quality Score and lower the cost-per-click for that ad. So it is in both Google’s and your best interest to write high-quality ads.
What Makes Great AdWords Copy?
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Make your Ad Relevant
Your ad needs to be relevant to your audience. I know it sounds very simple but it is vital, you need to quickly establish that your ad is relevant to the search term and the searcher. So don’t be afraid to be specific. If you’re targeting specific, long tailed keywords, you should try and incorporate that term into your ad.
Why?
It shows your site and your business is relevant to that person. Especially for specific products, if your ad has those specific key terms built in, you build this link between the searcher and your ad. It says you business is relevant to them and that they can get that product from you.
Cars are great if you’re looking for an example. Try it yourself, search a certain car model in Google and you’ll find ads that have that particular model incorporated into ads. This is because they know that it shows their ad is relevant for that search and your business supplies those cars.
That is why a useful tool is Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI), a feature offered by AdWords and other search engines, where you can customise ads to better suit the search query and make your ads more relevant by inserting important keywords into your ads.
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Use Custom URL
You can have custom URLs for your ad copy but why would you want that? Naturally, you are going to have a custom landing page that is optimised to sell your service or product to a visitor but often I find those URLs are not particularly attractive in an ad as well as going well over the character limit. With a custom URL, it helps your website look more tailored and relevant to your potential customer.
When searching for puppy daycare, we found this nice ad with the neat and tidy URL in an advert for puppy daycare in London. It’s nice and short, making the site look perfect for your needs.
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USP
You do not have a lot of space to advertise your business through AdWords. You get 35 characters for a headline, 70 characters for a description and 35 characters for a URL. There is no space to be subtle, you need to push your unique selling point (USP) and what makes your business different.
A good example I found is Zooplus when I was searching for dog food on Google.
In the headline, they’re pushing their USP, free delivery for their products. As well, they mention certain brands of dog foods which their potential customers would recognise and would be interested in another USP. Zooplus knows dog owners might want a certain brand or type of dog food for their dogs that might be available to that brand, so they make sure those brands are part of their ad.
Zooplus even include URL extension to some of the bigger brands because they know there’s a demand and can drive traffic directly to those products.
It’s very blunt and straight to the point, it literally pushing every word possible out of those characters.
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CTA
Going back to basics, you should always remember to include a Call to Action (CTA) in your ad copy. Phrases such as ‘contact us’, ‘get in touch’ and ‘call now’, they’re enticing searchers to engage and click on your ad because if you don’t, they won’t find a reason to click unless you ask them to.
You can support your CTAs with AdWords extensions as they can streamline traffic to key landing pages and encourage calls to better optimise your ad copy.
How Else can you Improve your AdWords Copy?
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Extensions
We’ve talking about AdWords extensions before and they are fantastic tools to help your ads convert and target potential customers better. Whether you are trying to target customers locally, within a certain distance to your business, or drive people to call and making enquiries, you can find an AdWords extension that suits you.
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A/B Testing
As much as we talk about honing your ad copy, it is not an exact science. To craft the perfect ad copy, you do need to experiment with different ad text to see what is working, especially the CTAs and branded products. Extensive A/B testing can help you work out the combination that works best for you.
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Don’t get too Creative
I’m afraid I don’t have an example of an ad that’s too ‘creative’ because they’re never on the page one on search results and I don’t bother searching past page 1 for anything. The point is, we find (or can’t) that ads that are very ‘creative’, ‘artsy’ or just don’t suit AdWords do not get good quality scores and do not convert. Be blunt and straight to the point, you can’t go wrong.
If you are interested how we can optimise your Google Adwords or PPC campaigns, feel free to get in touch today and see how we can transform your paid search campaigns.
