Ad text creatives are the first step in your PPC campaign’s conversion funnel and they begin the process of turning a user into sale or lead. So, it’s very important to convey the correct message and make the most of your opportunity to attract qualified visitors to your site. The only way to achieve the best possible results from your ad text is to test. Ad text optimization is not an overly complicated process, but there are a few steps to follow in order to test correctly and achieve the most optimal ad text variations.
1. The Basics
Before you can start creating your ad text creatives you’ll need to learn and understand the basics. You’re allowed 25 characters in your headline, 35 characters in description line 1 and 35 characters in description line 2. You’ll also have 35 characters for your display URL and your display URL needs to match your destination URL. These are the most basic of rules that you must follow in order to get your ads approved.
Now follow these ad text best practices in order to create the best possible ad creatives. Within each ad group you’ll need to create 3-4 ad text creative variations. Each ad text creative should contain the keyword at least once, have a call to action and create urgency. Your ad should quickly and concisely present your value proposition and entice users to click. Consider your display URL as an extension of your ad text creative, as it’s another opportunity to insert your keyword, or relevant terms, within your display URL. Title case generally delivers the best click through rate, but it’s worth trying other case types like sentence case or lower case. Always try to find creative ways of saying things concisely to get your message across effectively and quickly.
During your testing phase you need to set the ad text rotation setting to “Rotate: Show ads more evenly” so that each ad text creative will have the same chance to receive an equal share of the impressions.
2. Get Creative
Now that you understand the basics and have some ideas for how to vary the ads, it’s time to start creating your ad text variations. This is a good time to get imaginative and innovative. You’re goal is to create ad text creatives that vary greatly, within each ad group, so that each ad is very different from the next.
When creating your ad text, think like a user. What are they looking for? If you were searching for a keyword, how would you see the ads? Which ads interest you? Your goal is to entice relevant users to click on your ad. You want users that are generally interested and want to try, buy or sign up for your product or service. Although lots of clicks will improve your click through rate and your quality score it’s more important to aim for relevant clicks that may actually convert.
Here are a few examples of how to vary your ads:
- Use numbers within your ad – 1,000’s of books, 10% off, Save $10
- Make it about the user – use words like you, your, you’ll, etc.
- Use quotations and testimonials
- Review competitor ads and find a way to stand out and be unique
- Create urgency – buy now, save today, offer ends soon
- Use a call to action – Get Started, Request a Quote, Compare Now
- Create ads that read continuously over all lines without periods
- Try a phone number within the ad
- Vary between using punctuation and not using punctuation
- Test using an exclamation point
- Create very short ads with one word per line
- Try different font cases – Title Case, Sentence case, lower case)
- Test URLS – www.thedomain.com, TheDomain.com, Thedomain.com/Keyword, www.TheDomain.com
3. Refine and Test Again and Again
Once you’ve given your ad text about 500-1,000 impressions each you can start to remove underperforming ads. Underperforming ads are the ads that have the lowest click through rates. If all of your ads’ click through rates are low then you’ll need to consider creating another brand new variation or using elements from the best performing ads to create a new one, and then test again. It is possible that your ad text is fine, but your ad group may have some problematic keywords. If you have an ad text variation that is delivering conversions with a low click through rate you’ll need to determine which is better for your campaign, click through rate or conversions?
Once you know which ads perform best you can create more variations of these ads. But, this time you’ll only change one element of the ad at a time. So you can change the headline, a description line, or the display URL, but only one element can change per new ad text.
After you’ve completed the initial testing and optimizing you can switch the ad text rotation back to “Optimize for clicks: Show ads expected to provide more clicks” or “Optimize for conversions: Show ads expected to provide more conversions” and let the best ads show, based on performance.
Testing and optimizing ad text is an ongoing process and you need to constantly refresh and optimize your ads in order to achieve the best possible results and continually strive for that optimal ad performance that delivers the results you need and desire.
This is a guest post by Mike Williams. Mike is the Founder and President of Clickworks Marketing. Mike has been involved in online marketing since 2004 and has a wealth of experience in lead generation, search engine marketing, landing page optimization and web marketing strategy. Mike is Google Adwords Certified and has years of experience managing online advertising campaigns.
