What’s In An AdWords Ad? It’s More Than 25-35-35

By Tinuiti Team

Feb 10 2012

Lisa Raehsler is a PPC Strategy Consultant with more than 15 years of marketing experience. A Google Adword Partner and columnist for ClickZ, Lisa is an expert in search engine marketing and analysis. Below Lisa talks about high level strategies that search engine marketers should use in their ad campaigns.

For some, the AdWords PPC text ad is a series of characters in a hypnotic 25-35-35 rhythm with some link to some website somewhere. Nevermind if there is no planned landing page, “let’s send it to the homepage” is a common mantra.

While you can’t include everything you want in your AdWords ads, you can pack more than you’d expect in that little space. Consider the three golden rules for successful ad copy:

Relevancy is King

Relevancy from keyword query to ad to landing page is important for both Google quality scores and the searcher’s experience with your advertising.

Send your ads to a relevant landing page. Even if you don’t have a proper designed landing page, you can still send searchers to a page more relevant than the homepage. Ensure this webpage contains keywords from your keyword list and ad copy.
Include keywords in the ads that directly relate to what was searched for to make ads more relevant. These keywords will appear in bold to the searcher.
DKI (dynamic keyword insertion) is a tactic that inserts the searchers keyword query into the ad copy. The ad, appearing super-relevant, may garner more clicks. Plan this carefully before implementing, as it can seem more irrelevant with no thought put behind it.
Custom display URLs also make the ad appear to link more strongly to the search query and landing page.
Branded terms are useful if your brand is well known. If not, including the brand name may not be useful and take up your precious characters.

Compelling Copy

Ad texts should be written in a compelling way that attracts attention and clicks.

Engage using questions. The questions can range from “looking for a food processor?” to questions that show you relate to the searchers pain “spend too long chopping onions?” Either way you connect with the searcher and can even foster an emotional connection depending on your strategy.
Key selling points or benefits will help to differentiate your product or service offering from the crowd. Why do I want to engage with you?

Seal the Deal

You can court your potential customers all day long, but you have to ask for the sale, as they say.

A strong call-to-action such as “buy now” or “sign up today” are classics that never stop producing results.
Discounts and offers (anything free) never goes out of style and is a hot topic in todays comparison shopping landscape.
Time sensitivity in “buy now” or “sign up today” can trigger a sense of urgency and help to make the sales cycle move a bit faster.

In the following example, we can see many of these best practices put to use: