When auditing a new client’s existing PPC account, we analyse at every level, ensuring that we understand precisely which elements are performing poorly and which areas are performing well. However, too often we find that the ad copy is one of the areas that is most often neglected.
Why is my ad copy just as important as every other element of my PPC campaign?
Your ad content is the only part of your pay-per-click campaign that your target audience sees. It is responsible not only for click-through rates, but also highlights your USPs, engages your customers to take action, and promotes your brand identity.
With this in mind, here are our top tips to ensure that your ad copy works best for you.
Competitor analysis
Undertaking a competitor ad copy review is essential in creating effective ads. Reviewing competitor’s ads allows you to understand what you’re competing against, and helps you to understand how you can position your offer against competitors. Bear in mind that competitor analysis should serve as a starting point for understanding the competitive landscape and not a definitive direction for producing compelling ad copy.
Content
As mentioned, your ad content is the part that directly communicates to your customer, so make sure your messaging is strong and clear. Your ad should not only be relevant to your product or service, but also to the customer’s potential search term. If it suits your business, you should also include a call to action to encourage users to interact with your ad and ultimately your website.
Split testing
Split test your ads by setting them up to rotate evenly, allowing you to see which copy gets the best results. Once the ads have received enough impressions, you can review which ads have been most successful and optimise them to improve click-through rates. Similar to managing other digital marketing channels, we advise to always be testing and optimising to create the most effective PPC campaign.
Extensions
Offering helpful and relevant additions to your ads in the form of extensions not only improves click-through rates, but also makes you ad stand out in comparison to competitors. Use call extensions to ensure your customers can call you direct from your ad, or sitelink extensions to direct your customers to relevant web pages. There are a whole host of extensions available within AdWords, so make the most of them in order to attract potential customers.
Keyword insertion
An ad copy feature that is often overlooked is keyword insertion. Essentially, this allows you to substitute elements of your ad for your users search term. Make sure your keywords are well-targeted though, or you’ll end up with irrelevent ad copy.
Summary
Whilst keywords, budgeting and bids are important aspects of a PPC campaign, it is imperative that you spend time on your ads. Regularly refreshing and updating your ad content isn’t particularly time consuming, but can be the most effective way of improving click-through rates, and ensuring you attract potential customers. It’s also imperative to stay one step ahead of competitors by keeping up to date with the latest additions to AdWords by subscribing to our newsletter.
