PPC is a great way to drive qualified traffic to your site—but not if nobody clicks on your ads. Even worse, a low click-through rate can bog down your Quality Score which will hike up your ad costs. In this guide, we share 10 tricks for crafting compelling PPC ads that earn high Quality Scores, grab customer attention, and capture clicks—all in the name of more conversions and lower costs.
1. Think feature-benefit-feeling
not every headline needs to include the keyword you’re targeting—some of them should include features and/or benefits. Features and benefits are a staple in any sort of marketing copy, but all too often, we neglect the most important part: emotion.
2. Include a differentiator
So you’ve established your key features and benefits. Great. But guess what—your competitors provide the same exact ones. Don’t worry, I know yours are different on a more detailed and nuanced level, but you can’t capture that in a single text ad, so for all intents ad purposes on the SERP, in consumers’ eyes, it’s all the same.
3. Show a little personality
Another way to differentiate your business from other ads on the SERP? Show a little personality. With no options for images or branding (image extensions don’t count), text ads give us little room for creativity, but it’s still doable.
4. Get competitive
You know what they say…keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Keep an eye on what your competitors are using in their ad copy and use it for your own positioning.
5. Include a CTA in your headlines…
It would be naive to assume that every searcher reads every ad in its entirety, but headlines are difficult to skip over. So don’t hide your call to action in the description, put it out there for the world to see in your headline. This is likely to improve your CTR.
6. Use display paths
The display path is the text that appears after the URL associated with your ad. You’ve got two 15-character display paths to work with. These are optional, and they’re not guaranteed to show, but should you leave them blank? Nope.
7. Reiterate and reinforce, but don’t be redundant
Yes, you want to make use of the space available to you in your ad, and yes, relevance to the keyword is important for Quality Score. But no, repeating the same keywords and phrases isn’t going to get you anywhere.
8. Try seasonal modifiers
Try using a seasonal headline in your ad, even if you offer your product or service year-round. This can encourage a sense of novelty and urgency and prompt clicks.
9. Address objections with the magic words
Even though intent to buy is pretty high on search, consumers are, by default, programmed with objections. These are specific to your product or service, but in general, they fall into one of three buckets:
- I can’t afford it
- It’s too much of a hassle
- I don’t need it
10. Use relationships to evoke emotion
Coming full circle back to tip #1: Emotion is the most powerful ad copy tool at your disposal. Both positive and negative emotions influence behaviors. And what’s the best source for emotional ad copy? Relationships.
Just keep in mind that you don’t need to go over the top with your emotional words and phrases—especially with search ads. You want to evoke emotions so they inspire action, but not provoke them so they distract or come off as desperate or salesy. Oftentimes, a subtle approach works best.
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