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Lessons Catalogue
Lesson 2c: Starting Off Right_ Organisation, Keywords, Placements and Ad Text
Writing Targeted Ad Text
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Objective: Learn how to write clear and compelling ad text — from the headline down to the Destination URL.
Ad text is a crucial distinguishing factor in luring a user to your website. Successful ads are clear, well-written, specific and compelling. Here are some tips for writing ads that will get people clicking:
- Include a call to action, such as buy, order and purchase. While find and search may be accurate, these words imply that the user is still in awareness or interest mode and does not easily encourage the user to click through.
- Include keywords in your headline, since this is what people are looking for.
- Relate your ad to offers that you make on your landing page to help users complete the sales cycle.
- Get to the point — fast. Include the most relevant information about your business first.
- Write more than one ad per ad group and test the results.
Here are two sample ads promoting the AdWords programme: The first ad is vague, redundant and does not offer any benefits or contain a call to action. The second ad contains clear ad text, a specific benefit to the user and a call to action.
Google
Online advertising.
Google's online advertising programme.
adwords.google.co.uk. |
Online Advertising
Improve your website ROI. Sign up
for AdWords. Show ads today.
adwords.google.co.uk. |
The best headlines directly relate to the keywords being searched. That makes your ad seem especially relevant to the searcher's interests. Therefore, include successful keywords in the headline. Plus, if the keyword in your ad text is identical to the keyword searched for, it will appear in bold font in your ad.
To determine which keywords are successful, review your ad groups and find keywords with the highest number of clicks or impressions. For example, if the keyword online advertising is clearly generating the most clicks and impressions in your account, use this term in the title of your ad.
Commonly, advertisers make the mistake of including the company name or the website domain in their headlines. This does not typically attract more clicks unless you are advertising an established company with a distinguished brand. Consider using more general ad titles that inspire click-throughs, which will eventually fortify your brand.
The description should convey both the benefits of your product or service and include a call-to-action. Keep everything as short and simple as you can. To start, list your products or services (online advertising, website advertising, AdWords) and benefits (high ROI, show ads immediately). Then, put it all together with a call-to-action, such as Order now or Sign up now.
Your Display URL (or web address) does not have to be the same as your Destination URL (where users go when they click your ad). But it should be an actual URL for your site.
Choose a Destination URL that promotes the exact product or service that your audience is searching for, rather than your usual homepage. It is usually most effective to direct users to a landing page in which they are most interested in, as soon as you can.
There is a common theme in this lesson, namely to test and refine. Just like with ad groups and keywords, you should continue to watch, review and rewrite your ads for the best results. AdWords makes this part easy for you. You can create multiple ads per ad group. If your ad serving options are set to optimise (the default setting), Google automatically shows the best performing ad more often.
Check your stats and swap out new ads for low performing ones. To learn more, visit the Optimising Your Account lesson.
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