The Essentials for Crafting High Quality Ad Copy

Ben Khoshabeh

16/11/2010

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

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 intentbut so does ad copy.

Each unique visitor is led to conduct a specific action (purchase a product, complete a for lead generation, opt infor a mailing list etc)

The content of your PPC ads can greatly affect all of these for better or worse!

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

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Includes keyword phrase in headline and body

Broad ad that does include the entire keyword phrase.

Keyword: “Women’s designer handbags”

Mention your prices and/or promotions

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Samsung 3DTV Great Deals On Samsung 3DTVs. Browse Our Online Offers. www.Samsung.com/3DTV

Pre qualify your visitors & filter clicksAre you targeting B2B or B2C?Are you targeting a particular market segment/demographic? Do you only sell one type of product?

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Weight loss for men

Jobs for teenagers

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Use a strong call to actionYou want your users to do something right? Well point it out!

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Capitalise The First Letter Of Every WordBut not articles, preps and conjunctions

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Upper case ad

Lower case ad

Measure which ad has a better CTR and conversion rate

Understand Searcher Modes & the buy cycle

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

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Top funnel

Mid funnel

Bottom funnel

Is your productcheaper?available with free shipping?one that last longer?on offer with a flexible payment planavailable 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

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Again , comes down to how well you know your audience

Use psychological buying triggers

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

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.

Understand the importance of acronyms “Employment” vs. “Careers” vs. “Jobs”

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Job VacanciesFind Your Ideal Job. Search Through Job Vacancies & Apply Today!www.CareerOne.com.au

Find Career OpportunitiesFind Ways to Boost Your Career. Search on CareerOne Today!www.CareerOne.com.au

Test, Test, Test(and test some more)

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 offerso Different headlineso Different USPs/benefits o Experiment with psychological buying triggers o Tweak ad copy order o URL with www and URL without wwwo URL with sub domain vs. URL without sub domaino Exclamation or no exclamation. Buy Now! Vs Buy Now.

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The little nuances of testing

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

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?

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

ben@adlux.com

Thank You