Developing Ad Copy That

Works

Introduction

• Inbound Marketing Manager at Cisco

• Previously in the agency world

• Writer for Search Engine Land,

SEMRush and ASPE-ROI

• Speaker at SES, Internet Summit,

ClickZLive, SMX, Hero Summit and

DMFB

Does It Feel Sometimes You

Can’t?

Writing Ad Copy Can Be Overwhelming

Takeaways From This Session

• How to write more effective

ad copy

• Optimizing your ad copy

• Best practices for testing ad

copy

• What’s New?

What’s In A PPC Ad?

• Headline that catches the eye

• Strong call to action

• Credibility and relevance

• Incorporation of extensions

Equate to: Higher CTR, more

conversions, better quality scores

AdWords Format Guidelines

• Headline – 25 characters

• Description Lines – 35 characters

• Display URL – 25 characters

• Destination URL

• Must be the same URL as the

display

Bing Format Guidelines

AdWords Ad Text Guidelines

• Ensure ads are clean and concise

• Use proper grammar, punctuation and spelling

• Do not repeat words

• Do not include unproven claims

• Accurately describe your product or service

• Do not use excessive capitalization

• Capitalize proper nouns

• Limit usage of exclamation points

The 4 B’s

Be Aware Of Your Audience

• Engage the correct audience

• What keeps them up at night?

• Provide a solution to their pain points

Be Different

• What makes your business different? • Free shipping

• Fast shipping

• Price matching

• Save 15-25%

• Hottest costumes

• Over 20,000 costumes

• Great prices

Be Direct

• Strong Call To Action • Create sense of urgency

• Purchase Now, Call Today

• Create compelling offer • Give something away

• Free gift with purchase

• Free shipping orders over $20

• Get inside the consumer’s head

Be Legitimate

• Establish your credibility

• Create a sense of trust

• Awards

• Certifications/ratings

• Reviews

• Search followers

Get Inspired!

Pay Attention To Commercials

• Can be a great way to see how

advertisers are messaging their

products

• Advertisers are getting more creative to

get your attention

• Get new phrases and tag line items • www.ispot.tv – browse TV commercials

• www.creativeblog.com – top TV commercials

•

Check Out Advertising Sites

• Can provide interesting insights on the

latest ads and creative

• Get updates on the latest advertising

news

• See some of their showcased work

What’s Up With The Competition?

• Never hurts to see what your

competitors are doing

• Can give you ideas on how they are

selling their products

• Products such as Spyfu can provide this

Read – Really?

• Magazines are a good way to get ideas

for tag lines and messaging

Optimizing Ad Copy

• Include keywords/phrases in title and

description lines whenever possible

• Consistent capitalization

• Use keywords in vanity URL’s

• Avoid abbreviations

• Strong call to action

• Punctuation for each description line

Don’t Forget Extensions

• Site Links

• Call outs

• Location extensions

• App extensions

• Review extensions

• Call extensions

• Automated extensions

• Google Plus

Callouts – A New Way To Expand

• Billboard

• Additional line of ad text

• Promote special offers

• Compliments site links

Extended Site Links

• Use primarily with brand ads

• Provide more detail about your link

• Emphasize brand keywords

• Additional page “real estate”

Site Links

• Additional links for your ad

• Gives your ad more relevance

• Increases depth and breadth

Ad Delivery

• Ad Rotation – Optimize for clicks – Optimize for conversions

• Conversion tracking

– Rotate evenly (90 days) the optimize

– Rotate indefinitely • Show lower performing ads

evenly with higher performing ads

• Ad Delivery Methods

– Standard • Distributes your budget

throughout the day

– Accelerated

• Can lose traffic later in the day if budget is depleted

Testing Ad Copy

• Develop Strategy – Know the purpose – what is the goal? – Determine starting point – Review metrics

• Low clicks • Low CTR

– Determine lowest performing ad group • Look at ads to pause that are not performing • Create new ads to replace paused ones

– Create plan – Launch/review

• Create filters to monitor ad performance • Have weekly checkpoints

Be Methodical When Testing

• Test only one thing at a time – New headline, description line, call to action – Won’t know what actually worked/didn’t work – Document results

• Track successes and failures – Don’t go back and repeat something that wasn’t

successful – It it’s not working – pause it!

• Don’t stop testing

What’s The Latest – Ad Formats

• Ad Customizers

– Power user tool

– Ideal for customers with thousands of products, services or promotions

– Extra Space Storage = Keyword Insertion

– Can insert any type of text

What’s The Latest - Mobile

• Mobile Only Campaigns • Create compelling offers for mobile

• Incorporates “call” button

• Prominent phone number in ad

What’s The Latest - Mobile

• Update on Mobile Ads • Mobile ads to be truncating the second

description line of ad copy

• Ad extensions may now show on second

line

• Consider moving call to action to first

description line

• Use ad extensions

What’s The Latest - Mobile

• Next Generation Display Ads • Mobile Light Box Engagement Ads

Dynamically resizes to fit

Any ad size

What’s The Latest - Mobile

• Next Generation Display Ads • Anchor ad format - ads stay in place at the bottom of

the screen even when a person scrolls down the page

Thank You!