Your potential customers decide to visit your website based solely on what they see in your ads when they type in a search query, so ad texts play a crucial role in determining the success of your AdWords advertising.

In the video below we share with you our best practices for creating winning ad texts. These will provide you with ideas to test when writing your ads, which will help to differentiate your business from the crowd and drive even more relevant traffic to your website!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GI7tsbwnVk

• Use keywords in your ad title and ad text

  The easiest way to improve the performance of your ads is to think about how to make them more relevant to your potential customers. You’ve chosen keywords that are very specific to your products or services - and therefore relevant to your target audience - so the next step is to make sure that the ads which are matched to these keywords relate closely to them.

  Including successful keywords directly in the ad title is an effective way of increasing clicks because customers can immediately see the link between the keyword they used in their query, your product, and the content of your website.

  In addition, using words from your keyword list in any line of your ad text means these words will appear in bold to users who searched on them. This helps to draw the user’s attention to the ad and further highlights its relevance.

  Think about it from a user’s point of view - if you type in ‘digital camera’ would you rather see a general electronics ad, or an ad that includes the term ‘Digital Camera’ in its ad text?

• Direct your users to the right page

  Ensure that the destination URL you use for each ad brings users to a specific landing page which relates directly to their search. For example, if a prospective customer is searching for ’8 megapixel cameras’, the ideal landing page would feature this exact type of camera.

• Add a call-to-action to your ads

  Try using a call-to-action in your ads, as this will give your potential customers a clear indication of what they can expect to do on your site. For example, calls-to-action such as ‘Buy Now’, ‘Sign Up Today’ or ‘Order Online’ can be really effective in increasing your ad’s performance.

• Include your unique selling points

  Your ad text should make you stand out from your competitors and highlight your unique selling points. These can be products, prices, delivery offers or services that make your business unique, attractive or different. Have a look at your competitors’ ads and see if you can make your ad stand out by highlighting what you offer that no-one else does.

  Remember your customers will choose you over others purely based on the benefits that your ad is selling. The more information about your product that a user can gain from your ad text, the better. For example, if a user sees the price of a product and still clicks the ad, you know they’re interested in a potential purchase at that price. If they don’t like the price, they won’t click your ad, and you save yourself the cost of that click.

• Inter-capitalize the ad text

  This may sound obvious, but using appropriate capitalization in ads can really have an effect on how they look. See below for an example of two ads - which one would you click on if you were looking to buy a new camera?

  8 mega pixel cameras
  10% off digital cameras
  free delivery buy today!
  www.camerashopsite.com
  
  8 Mega Pixel Cameras
  10% Off Digital Cameras
  Free Delivery. Buy Today!
  www.CameraShopSite.com

  The second ad looks more professional and is more eye-catching to users. Look over your existing ads and see can any of them be improved by something as simple as adding a few capitals to the beginning of words. And remember this can apply to the display URL as well, as shown in the second ad text.

Log into your account today, and edit your ads to make them even more compelling to your potential customers!

If you would like to learn even more ways to improve your account performance, why not visit our new Optimization Center, which is full of useful tips to help you get more customers?

Source: http://www.google.com/adwords/betterads/

In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for the top or leading position on search engine results and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services – the higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results, the more the people will find the ad (and click on it) to go to their websites (this is why some people call it “keyword auctioning”). Advertisers would then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through the website.

PPC advertising is also known under the following names/variations:

• Pay per placement
• Pay per performance
• Pay per ranking
• Pay per position
• Cost per click (CPC)

PPC advertising is usually done with the following standard procedures:

1. Setting up an account and/or deposit funds.
2. Creating a keyword list.
3. Choosing (and setting up) an account with a PPC search engine.
4. Bidding on the ad placement, including the search result words or phrases.
5. Writing out an ad copy.
6. Setting up the ‘landing pages’ for your ads.
7. Placing the advertisement in the search engine.

There are many benefits to Pay Per Click advertising, making it an effective way of promoting a business ‘online’. Some of them are listed below:

• Get launched immediately. PPC advertisements are implemented very quickly – they can go ‘online’ within an hour after winning the bid and paying for it.
• Obtain specific, pre-qualified, and quality traffic. PPC provides you with a quality or a well-targeted traffic. Visitors are narrowed down into ‘qualified’ people who are actually looking for specific products and/or services that you offer – those who are more likely to become a ‘lead’ (a convert) and complete a transaction (either by buying your product or subscribing to the service that you are offering.
• Widen your reach. PPC advertising provides additional traffic to your site, aside from the natural or “organic” search engines.
• Track your investment. PPC advertising makes use of a tracking system that will determine exactly who comes to the website and what they do once they arrive – the length of their stay on the site and the number of pages (including the actual pages) that they view. These are valuable tools in determining statistics such as return on investment (ROI), acquisition cost-per-visitor, and conversion rates (the percentage of visitors who are converted into customers or leads).

Below are some important things to consider when planning on a pay per click campaign:

1. Know your product. Take an inventory of the product and/or services that you have to offer (before anything else).
2. Stay within the budget. Determine your daily or monthly budget; and stay with it. This means keeping your budget in mind, avoiding bidding wars if possible.
3. Bid just right. Know how to bid right – a bid that is too high can exhaust all of your money, while a bid that is too low can make you lose that spot.
4. Watch the bottom line. Measure your profit margin against your spending or expenses. Know when to stop and terminate your PPC program – if you spend more on advertising but have little or no sales at all.
5. Find the right keywords. Decide which keyword phrases to opt and bid for. Do some keyword research, either by actually looking at existing search terms or with the use of online keyword suggestion tools, to know which terms are mostly used when searching for items that are related to your business. Focus on specific keywords, not on general ones.
6. Write effective ads. A good PPC ad is that which can persuade and move a searcher. There are several approaches to this:
   • Discount offers
   • Testimonials
   • Celebrity/famous endorsers
   • Money-back guarantees
   • Free trials or sample offers
   • Freebies
   • Reverse psychology
   • Major benefits (“Lose weight”)
   • Direct instructions (“Click here”)
7. Maintain a professional-looking site. Your web content should be regularly updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There should be no broken links or images. The website should be simple – designed in such a way that it will be easy for visitors to navigate and load. Include contact details to create a good impression among potential customers.

Done properly, PPC advertising can be an effective marketing tool that will maximize the return on your investment.