Leverage Ad Copy Across Your Organization

I’m a huge fan of ad copy testing. Implement Google conversion tracking, set your campaigns to optimize for conversions, and test every single day. Sooner or later, your overall system conversion rate (from impression to conversion on your site) will increase! This means higher revenue and higher margins (since Google rewards increased CTRs with lower CPCs). In addition to catapulting your PPC program to the next level, ad copy testing can have implications and use cases across your entire organization. Here are a few of my favorite use cases:

Leverage ad copy to test offline marketing messages. Does your company do direct mail? How about press releases? How about print ads in magazines and newsletters? One thing is for sure: The cost of testing messages on Google AdWords and Bing Ads is extremely cost effective. Collaborate with your entire marketing organization. Test messages via PPC before running them in other marketing programs. The added benefit: Ideas that come from your offline marketing organization may end up as winning online messages.
Consider incorporating winning ads into your website’s language. You should always be testing ads, landing pages, and user experience. I’m a big fan of Big Testing, a concept made popular by my friend Scott Brinker, Co-Founder and CTO of ion interactive. If you’re running big tests on your landing pages and website, you may not be quite as focused on marketing language and value proposition. This is where you can gain so leverage from your search marketing program. Leverage SEM to help drive brand positioning and value proposition on your website.
Communicate winning ad copy with your call center. If you have a large call center, perhaps they can benefit from your winning ad copy by weaving components of your ads into call center scripts. It’s all about integrating your winning marketing language across the customer experience. Also, make sure to sit in and listen to customer calls. Spend time with your call center reps. Call centers are an amazing source of ad copy testing inspiration.

I hope these tips help out. How do you leverage ad copy testing for the benefit of your overall company?

3 Things to Avoid When Writing Ad & Marketing Copy

By Guest Blogger Leave a Comment Mar 7 2

Hey Everyone,
PPC Ian here. Today I’m thrilled to share a guest blog post by my good friend Francesca StaAna of AdMedia Online Ad Network. I’m a tremendous fan of AdMedia, their blog (in fact, I just guest posted there), and their entire team. So, when it came time to run the latest and greatest guest post here on PPC Ian, Francesca came to mind at the top of the list. I wanted to take this opportunity to sincerely thank Francesca and AdMedia for the awesome guest post. Without further ado, let’s jump into the things you should avoid when writing marketing copy!
All the best,
Ian

AdMedia

When it comes to creating ads and marketing materials, most people strive for stunning graphics and attention grabbing images. And while there’s certainly nothing wrong with that (your ads need to look awesome, after all), graphics can only take you so far. It’s important to note that design is only half the battle and you need to pay just as much attention to the actual content of your ads.

Unfortunately, some people seem to have forgotten this, which is why a lot of ads and content on the web miss the mark when it comes to converting their audiences.

Below is a list of the top “DON’Ts” that advertisers need to be wary of. Be sure to steer clear of these mistakes whenever you’re writing content for your ads and other marketing materials:

(1) Putting cleverness over clarity – Keep in mind that main reason why you write anything – whether it’s ad copy, a blog post or an email – is to communicate a message to the reader. You don’t write to blow people away with how witty you are or to show off your wide vocabulary (at least not in the real world); you write because you want to get a message across so that the person on the other end would take the necessary call to action.

With that said, it’s essential to put your audience and your key message first when it comes to writing the content of your ads and marketing materials. While it’s perfectly okay to be witty and to inject some word play into your copy, don’t do it at the expense of what you need to say.

The challenge here of course, is striking that balance between being overly witty and insipidly direct. Be as clever as you can be, but make sure that the core message of your content doesn’t get lost in all that creativity.

Exceptions: There a few situations that can excuse people for being clever instead of clear. Trying to build up curiosity by being vague or mysterious on purpose is a good example of this.

(2) Being self-absorbed – Resist the urge to talk about your product/service too much, and instead focus on addressing the needs of your readers. While it may be tempting to go on and on about how great your company is, or how many awards you’ve won, remember that your readers don’t necessarily care about those things. What they do care about though, is making their lives better, more fun, or easier.

Keeping asking yourself the question of what’s in it for THEM? Determine the needs and wants of your customers and write your ad copy in a way that addresses those desires.

(3) Stressing features over benefits – Features pertain to a product’s or service’s unique aspects or components. Example: Rear bumper sensors found in new luxury vehicles.

Benefits on the other hand are the outcomes or underlying perks brought about by features. For instance, being able to park more quickly and easily is a benefit brought about by the rear bumper sensors mentioned above.

Recognize that there’s a huge difference between features and benefits, and when it comes to sales, highlighting the latter has proven to be more effective. When advertising your product or service, aim to go beyond the features.

List the components of whatever it is that you’re advertising think of what customers will get out of those features. You should then focus on selling those benefits and experiences rather just promoting a product’s functions.
Do you see these errors in the advertising realm? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Author Bio: Francesca StaAna is from AdMedia, an online advertising network that connects advertisers to consumers through multiple channels including search, display, social, mobile, and more.

Combining Ad Extensions For Optimal PPC Ads

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Oct 7 3

A few years back, ad copy testing was all about optimizing your titles, description lines 1 and 2, and display URLs. If you were really savvy, you’d take things to the next level and write granular, custom ads for your account of tightly-themed ad groups. Today, however, ad copy testing has evolved. You still need to do all of the great stuff just mentioned, but now there’s a new dimension of complexity: ad extensions. Some of my personal favorite ad extensions: phone extensions, social extensions, and sitelinks.

Take a look at the awesome Nextag ad to the right. This ad appears when I search for their trademark, “Nextag”. I’m quite impressed to see three ad extensions showing up: sitelinks (six of them), seller/store ratings, and social extensions. The really key point here is all of the ad extensions are incremental. They do not cannibalize each other, but show up in parallel. This is what I call the “combined effect” of ad extensions and why they’re so critical to anyone’s paid search program. The more extensions you combine, the more presence you will have on the search results page. The net effect: higher click-through-rates, more traffic, and ultimately lower cost-per-clicks (since Google and Bing Ads reward those with high CTRs via lower CPCs). In 2012, ad copy testing involves all of the fundamentals but also a focus on combining multiple ad extensions for truly rich ad units.

A Few PPC Ad Copy Ideas

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Aug 11 1

I’ve written a variety of posts here on PPC Ian about paid search ad copy such as Leveraging Social Extensions, Ad Rotation Is Changing, and Six Sitelinks In AdWords. Paid search ad copy is super high leverage. A higher CTR means more traffic/conversions and also a higher quality score (and therefore ad position and CPC benefits). If you are savvy about your ad copy selection, you can scale your CTR while maintaining or even growing your conversion rate. Following are a few PPC ad copy ideas that may help you choose your next winner!

PPC Ian Billboard

Tip 1: Truly understand your customer. Have you run surveys on your site? Have you or someone at your organization interviewed your customers? Do you make an effort to sit in on customer calls? In the early days of a new PPC account, we all often throw up a few ads up and let AdWords or adCenter pick the winner. We keep repeating a few times and the strategy really works. This is a great way to start, but these days I’m also recommending a more strategic approach. If you truly understand your customer, you will hit on the most important points in your copy. Paid search ads offer very limited space. Make sure your ads hit on the top 2-3 reasons your customers buy from you! Most of the time, such ads will have the highest impression to conversion performance.
Tip 2: Optimize for the entire funnel, impression to conversion. Ad copy testing is often focused on click-through-rate (CTR). A lot of the time, a higher CTR ad will truly help your program. That said, some high CTR ads will offer a lower back end conversion rate. The true metric I’m looking at these days: conversions/impressions. You will never go wrong optimizing your ads based on the entire customer funnel.
Tip 3: Test Google’s “optimize for conversions” ad rotation setting. These days, you’re able to rotate evenly, optimize for clicks, or optimize for conversions. Optimizing for conversions allows you to accomplish tip #2, in an automated fashion (at least, on a micro/ad group level). And, Google will not make any rash decisions. If there’s not enough conversion data to make the right choice, they default to optimizing for clicks.

These are just a few high level thoughts going through my mind these days when it comes to ad copy. What types of frameworks are you leveraging in your ad copy testing?

An Example of Great Ad Copy On Google AdWords

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 8 3

Ad copy is one of the single biggest campaign levers on Google AdWords. Optimize your ad copy and you will experience an increased CTR (which means more traffic). Ultimately, that higher CTR will translate into a better quality score and therefore decreased CPCs with increased ad position. Increase the effectiveness of your ad copy and your ads will also display more sitelinks.

I’m always testing new ad copy. Today, I wanted to share the competitive landscape from the people search vertical (check out the screenshot below). I used to work at Inflection, one of the hottest startups in the Bay Area and a leader in the people search space.

In the screenshot below, check out the first ad for Intelius. Intelius is leveraging the “1) 2)” ad copy strategy. I really like this ad because it illustrates the simplicity of Intelius. I’m definitely not the only one. The fact that Intelius has four sitelinks displaying on a generic term like “people search” means that their CTR is quite high. If your company offers a streamlined service, I highly recommend testing the “1) 2)” ad copy yourself.