Writing pay per click (PPC) ads has become big business as a way of earning income for affiliate marketers. But, how easy is it to do? Many people believe that because you have a limited space, they are easier to write than normal article content. In actual fact, PPC ad writing requires extra thought and consideration to create an effective and concise call to action. Read on for some useful tips.
What’s involved?
If you’ve ever tried to write a PPC ad, you might find that it’s a lot harder than you first perceived. According to Google, your ad’s title should be no more than 25 characters. You’re allowed two lines of 35-character descriptions, with a display URL that is hyperlinked to your landing page. You need to employ proper use of grammar, only use one exclamation mark (not in the title), and there are certain words that are not allowed unless they can be justified.
With stringent limitations, it can prove highly challenging to create effective and unique copy that does the job properly, and encourages a call to action. So, how can you maximise your ad-writing efforts?
Know Your Audience:
It’s vital to know who your audience is, before putting pen to paper and creating PPC ad copy. Knowing who you are trying to target, will influence the choice of words you use. For instance, if you’re selling products for children, your tone will be lighter and more playful, then if you were selling financial products to businesspeople. As well as knowing who you are trying to sell to, understand what stage of the buying process your ad is aimed at, and choose your wording to tie in with that.
Keep Your Keywords in Mind:
Always put your keywords at the forefront of your mind when writing PPC ad copy. Make sure the text is as relevant to the keyword as possible, so that when people search via the keyword, they will be reading copy most suitable for them. Always change your ad copy, when you change your keywords.
Add a ‘call to action’:
Your ad will only be effective if your target audience reacts in the manner you want them to, ie, you give them a call to action. You can do this effectively with your choice of words. Make them precise and direct. Commonly-used, call to action phrases that work well, include ‘call now’, ‘sign up’, or ‘order today’.
Focus on Buy Words:
With little room for playing around with in your text, try to make sure the words that you do use focus around buying. Words such as ‘go’, ‘try’, ‘buy’ or ‘get’ are typical examples that you might want to employ.
Test Your Success:
Keep monitoring the success of your ads, to see if they are effective. Track the campaigns and monitor your click-through rates to see which ads work better than others. Make any changes that you think could improve the success of your ad – it might only be something as simple as changing the odd word or two, to more powerful ones.
Be Unique:
Don’t rush creating your ad copy. Try to think up unique, interesting and eye-catching content. Think outside the box and make your copy stand out from the competition. It can take a bit of practice to master the art of effective ad writing, but with a bit of experience and knowledge of what works well, you should soon get to grips with it all.
