Profit-Pulling PPC Ads How to Write Facebook & AdWords Ads that Get Clicked Karon Thackston www.wordtracker.com
Contents Introduction to Profit-Pulling PPC Ads 5 Chapter 1: The why and who of writing paid ads 6 Chapter 2: Choosing an ad style 13 Chapter 3: Copywriting strategies for Facebook & Google ads 25 Chapter 4: Writing AdWords ads using Automatic/Dynamic Keyword Insertion tools 37 Chapter 5: Does Quality really count? 40 Chapter 6: Real world testing & tracking 48 Chapter 7: Analyzing PPC ads 59 Chapter 8: Creating a PPC copywriting plan 66 Chapter 9: The Three-Step testing method 73 About Karon Thackston 76 Profit-Pulling PPC Ads 2
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Introduction to Profit-Pulling PPC Ads Introduction to Profit-Pulling PPC Ads I had a client a few months back who came to me because he wanted a landing page created for his pay per click (PPC) campaign on Google. He was selling managed IT services. Naturally, I needed to know what keyphrases he was targeting and what ad copy he was using. (He had a search engine optimization company write the PPC ads instead of my agency, Marketing Words.) With one look, I immediately cautioned him that the ad copy was full of industry jargon. It spoke the complex language of MIT grads rather than that of his small-business target customer. The client decided it was fine after all, it was just PPC copy. After an extensive amount of planning and strategizing, the campaign rolled out. A few weeks later, I followed up to see how things went. In short, they didn t. My client reported no new leads. Not one. Zero. Zip. Nada. He was confused and befuddled because their keyphrases were on the mark, their day-parting (hour of day bidding) was spot on and their bidding strategy was faultless. They had even paid a professional (me) to write their landing page for them. So what went wrong? One look told me their PPC ads ruined the entire campaign. They had virtually no clicks. While I didn t interview the people who saw these ads and chose not to click, my professional opinion holds true to my first impression: the ads were too full of jargon for the average person. If you ve been interested in pay per click (PPC) advertising for very long, there s one thing you ve undoubtedly noticed. All the talk is about settings and bidding strategies and keyword research. Yes, all those things are vital to the success of your campaign. So is your landing page (the page where your visitors will land after viewing your Facebook or AdWords ad). But none of that matters if you can t get people to click on your ads. Congratulations for having the forethought to understand this truth and take measures to improve your PPC copywriting abilities. Profit-Pulling PPC Ads 5
The why and who of writing paid ads Chapter 1
Chapter 1 The why and who of writing paid ads Never thought about it? You re not alone. Amazingly, most people who write PPC ads don t give a single thought to the true goal of these tiny, little ads or the people who will read them. The why Why write PPC ads? In four words: to get the click. That s the primary goal of any paid ad regardless of which platform it s run on. From AdWords to Facebook to Bing or LinkedIn, there simply isn t enough room in these small ads to make the sale. We ll cover this in more detail in an upcoming chapter. The who When you mention the idea of writing for a specific target audience, writers look at you as if you ve just asked them to explain the use of shift ciphers when encoding top secret data. It s not that hard. In fact, you do it every day, all day long, involuntarily. Think about it. As an example, pretend you ve been offered an exciting new job on the other side of the country. You really want to take this position, but you aren t sure how your family will feel about moving. When you explain the situation to your husband, your children and your boss, do you use the same words? Do you use the same tone? Do you give them all the same information? Certainly not. While each person gets the same core message, you pull out the information best suited to each individual when speaking with him or her. Look at it another way. Let s say you bought a new car and you want to write a letter or email to several people telling them all about it. What you re going to do is highlight the information that will be of interest to the particular person you re writing to. For example, you re going to tell your best friend all about how fast the car will go, how sleek the interior is, what a super stereo it has, how sexy it makes you feel, etc, etc. But, your mom well, it s doubtful Mom will want the details of how sexy you feel when you drive your new car. With her, you re going to talk about the safety features, what great gas mileage it gets, and that you got roadside assistance as part of the deal. See? Profit-Pulling PPC Ads 7
Chapter 1 The why and who of writing paid ads While the topic stays the same, the information you include changes and how you present that information changes depending on your target audience. Everyone communicates differently. Moms don t care about the same things as teenagers do when it comes to cars. Small business owners have different computer equipment needs than the CEOs of large corporations. Women in upper-income levels are interested in brand names and high price tags (for their perceived quality and status), while women with lower incomes are concerned with finding the lowest price possible. There are a variety of communication and behavioral styles, different approaches to the buying process, vast changes in the ways men and women shop, and other factors in the copywriting equation. This makes it important to know as much about your target group as possible. Otherwise, how can you possibly know whether to take the my-car-drives-fast-and-makes-mefeel-sexy approach or the mom-would-be-so-proud-of-me one? This holds true for Facebook, AdWords or any copy you write. Here s one AdWords example. A dentist client I worked with came to me because he was running paid ads that weren t doing well. He was using these keyphrases (along with some others): dentist NYC Manhattan dentist NYC dentistry His primary ad was: Manhattan Dentist Custom treatment plans, implants & fast service by renowned dentists It wasn t getting hardly any clicks. Performance was very poor. And, I found out why as soon as I asked him about his target audience. He was attempting to attract power suits in the Wall Street district and had assumed that custom treatments and well-known dentists would be important to them. A little research told us differently. We adjusted the ad to read: Profit-Pulling PPC Ads 8
Chapter 1 The why and who of writing paid ads Manhattan Dentist Look like a power player with teeth whitening, veneers & more. Turns out, the power suits weren t interested in custom treatment plans or how many accolades their dentist had received. They were interested in vanity! They wanted that bright, flashy smile. The new ad pulled at a much higher rate than the old one because it spoke to the dentist s intended target customer. Don t guess. Take the time to find out who your target customer is, what they want and which tone of voice would appeal to them most. You ll notice significant improvements when you do. Determining tone How do you know which tone to write in? The majority of your decisions will be determined by who you re writing to and why. There isn t one, single right answer. Testing and experimenting will give you more opportunities to discover which tone pulls the best results. For instance, when writing to a group of college kids about an upcoming rock concert, you d most likely want to use a very upbeat, excited tone. Writing to small business owners about disaster recovery insurance? Somber with a sense of urgency ( buy insurance now before an emergency arises ) would be a safe bet. When I start writing ads, I begin with several different tones/styles just to narrow down which direction the surfer likes best. Then I follow the customers lead and tweak as necessary. If one ad outperforms the others by a landslide, I ll adjust the lesser-performing ads to have a similar tone. Active searchers vs passive onlookers (AdWords vs AdSense and Facebook) Many PPC companies offer on-site PPC ads (those that will appear on the search results pages or elsewhere on that company s site) and also contextual ads that run throughout a network. That means you re frequently writing to two different types of searchers. A. Active searchers Those who went to an engine (like Google) and typed in a keyphrase to find something. Profit-Pulling PPC Ads 9
Chapter 1 The why and who of writing paid ads B. Passive onlookers Those who saw an ad while performing some task other than searching for a product/service. For instance, when checking their Gmail (for example) a person may happen upon your ad because it was being shown through AdSense. Or, while updating their status on Facebook, they noticed an ad in the sidebar of their newsfeed. Active searchers are seeking something. They ve gone to a search engine, typed in a query and are looking to find a new blouse, a set of radial tires, information on water filtration systems, the symptoms of whooping cough or whatever. They are in search mode. So, when they see ads displayed on the search engine results page (SERP), it s just part of the fruit of their labor. They expect they want these results to answer their queries. It s usually very important to include a keyphrase in the headline of these AdWords ads. The keyphrase helps the site visitor instantly know that your ad has what s/he s looking for. While it can certainly help, I don t believe it s nearly as important to use a keyphrase in the description/ body copy of PPC ads. Depending on the length of the keyphrase, it can hog all the available space that should be used for differentiating yourself, explaining a special or limited-time offer or otherwise enticing the searcher to click your ad instead of the dozens of others they ll see. Profit-Pulling PPC Ads 10