How To Write Your Google AdWords Ads
The basic steps to understand Google AdWords ads: why do they look alike, how to generate more traffic and improve your CTR by writing better ads.
After reading this article you will know why ad copy is so important and how to write AdWords ads that breakthrough the 0.05% CTR limit.
Why Ad Copy Is So Important
For better understanding, here is a common situation:
You are an ordinary working girl. Next to where you live, a shoe store opens. You pass by it every day, and don’t see it. Until one month later, when you want to replace your old, obsolete shoes with a pair of new ones.
You get out of the house the next morning, with this specific thought in mind. You see the store that advertises “Shoes of all kinds. New designs”. You enter, and just because you’re there, you ask the shop girl when was the shop opened. A month ago, she answers — quick math develops in your mind, counting how many times you’ve passed by, without even noticing it.
Now back to Google AdWords ads. A great deal of talk in PPC advertising is about keywords. They help you with the efficient distribution of your ad. In fact, they place the ad right in the eyes of your potential customer. Most people would think that that is enough. But it isn’t. It takes a good ad for the potential customer to actually see it.
Ad copy prepares the deal. To avoid any confusion: ads don’t sell; they just warm-up the customer-to-be. They ask for clicks.
Good copy can raise your CTR. High CTR is a great advantage when you bid by Google’s rules. It’s simple math:
Rank = CPC * CTR.
Thus, AdWords rewards you for highly performant ads because it considers them more relevant to the person that makes the search. If your ad has a really good CTR, you can win “premium position listing”, that is the first place above the natural results list – at the top of the search page.
Ad Copy Rules
Writing AdWords ads is 5% skill and 95% common sense. The Google guidelines are common sense, too.
They ask you to observe grammar, spelling and punctuation. That should be easy.
Moreover, your ad copy should adhere to Google’s content policy or your ads won’t even have the chance to show up.
You may find it hard to work within the AdWords ads restrictions in the beginning:
- 25 characters for the headline
- 35 characters per text row
- 4 rows per ad (of which, one is the destination URL)
- No pictures
- No colors
But after a bit of practice, you’ll find that these “limitations” ease your work a great deal. You’ll see that it’s only words you have to worry about.
In case you run a large campaign (hundreds of ads) though, you may consider using Keyword Elite – a powerful tool with lots of features, including character counting and AdWords rules compliance check. A great time saver.
Copywriting 1o1
Writing ads is THE critical point in your PPC campaign. A well written ad will increase your traffic even from a low position. Bad ones will sink you.
But your words must do targeting, too. You don’t want people to click on your ad and not buy your product. Those are money wasted. A good ad doesn’t let people click “by mistake”.
You must find a balance. This is no easy job. When your space is limited to some 35 characters per row, each character counts. For you, a good ad is a client hunter. And the people that arrive to your landing page are most sure to buy the product, on one condition: that the landing page is convincing, too.
We suggest you read a small e-book named Make Your Words Sell, written by Ken Envoy and the famous copywriter Joe Robson, before attempting to write your copy. Applying that knowledge in your own AdWords campaign will seriously boost your results.
If you don’t have the patience for that, here’s…
6 Steps to Write Good AdWords Ads with no Skill
- Include keywords in your ad
- Include phrases that relate to your keywords.
- Be as specific as you can (i.e. specify the city you serve);
- Stand apart through benefits, not through tricks and gimmicks.
- Think your URL as part of the ad.
- Use common words.
Now let’s get some skills in the bidding process.
