As a way to drive traffic to your website and generate new leads, pay-per-click ads are a proven method. By allowing you to target individual keywords, these ads direct pre-qualified visitors to your site’s most relevant pages. From there, they can be converted into sales with well-written copy, well-designed imagery, and well-placed action items. Since traffic from PPC ads is highly targeted, you can even push visitors to deliberate, purpose-built landing pages that are crafted to appeal to their specific – and known – interests.
One of the most effective ways to attract new customers, pay-per-click advertising is an excellent addition to your ongoing digital marketing strategies. Taking effect almost immediately, ads can provide a short-term traffic boost to supplement your website’s long-term search engine optimization strategy. Because they can be developed and deployed quickly, PPC ads are a great way to push new products, boost low-performers, or launch new businesses. After your ads are created, you can expect more website visits, more calls, and more contacts to occur as your site appears at the top of Google’s search results. But, to maximize their efficiency, you need to follow a few simple guidelines when creating your ads.
1. Write high-quality PPC ads
When creating your pay-per-click ads, you’ll want to focus on high-quality copywriting. The first thing you should do is identify your value proposition. Work out the benefits of working with your company and, from there, craft ads that convey those benefits to your target audience. If you haven’t already, consider potential objections and address those in the copy of your ads. If you know that your customers are price shoppers, include phrases like ‘affordable,’ ‘no money down,’ and ‘low price guarantee.’ Alternatively, if your major selling points are quality, use compelling adjectives like ‘long-lasting,’ ‘durable,’ and ‘rugged.’
Five tips for writing better ad copy
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- Identify your company’s core benefits. This should be easy. A clear outline of your benefits allows you to create engaging copy that tells prospective customers why they should do business with you.
- Understand your customers’ pain points. You need to anticipate the objections your potential customers may have. Whether they’re worried about pricing, delivery times, responsiveness, or quality, you’ll want to head off and eliminate these objections.
- Speak directly to your most profitable audience. To get the most out of your PPC ads, you’ll want to target a receptive audience. Your copy may target retail store owners, buyers at manufacturing companies, or any number of other demographics.
- Use language that encourages action. Above all else, you want your ads to convince people to take action. Your copy should urge prospects to ‘contact us,’ ‘schedule a demo,’ or ‘call our team.’
- Create a sense of urgency. You don’t just want customers to take action, you want them to take action immediately. Use words like ‘today’ and ‘now,’ as well as phrases that imply an imminent expiration date, such as ‘for the next 24 hours only.’
2. Market to your most likely prospects
With Google Ads, you can finely tune your pay-per-click campaigns to target your ideal audience. Using demographics and audiences, you can target prospects based on their age, location, interests, lifestyle, shopping habits, life milestones, and more. If you know that your biggest customers are women between the ages of 35 and 45 with an interest in outdoor gardening, you can use that information to ensure your ads are served to them. Men over 40 who like luxury cookware? You can target them, too. Of course, you’re going to need a comprehensive understanding of your customers. Before creating your ads, you’ll want to develop a target customer persona.
Five questions to help develop customer personas
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- What are their fundamental qualities? Define the age, gender, occupation, and education level of your perfect customer.
- Where are they located? By identifying where your best customers live, you can better restrict your ads’ targeting to ensure they only display near those locations.
- What sorts of things do they like? Whether they relate to your business or not, understanding your customers’ interests can help determine how to market to them.
- What is their income level? Defining the income level of your ideal customer doesn’t just assist with targeting your ads, it helps you understand their profitability.
- What are their common objections? While this information may not be useful when targeting your ads, it will help you craft compelling, effective ad copy.
3. Use pay-per-click advertising extensions
When it comes to pay-per-click ads, real estate is everything. You want to be the first result on the page and – just as important – you want to take up as much space as possible. Ad extensions are free add-ons that you can integrate into your campaigns. Typically appearing below your ad copy, they increase the size of your ads, provide prospects with more options, and give you additional opportunities to sell your company. As a way to gain a competitive edge in the online advertising space, extensions are a no brainer. They’re free, easy to set up, and can dramatically improve the efficacy of your ads.
Five essential ad extensions to boost visibility
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- Sitelink extensions. Sitelinks aim to get searchers to the information they need by providing them with additional internal links. By including links to your products, services, and contact pages, you can increase the size of your ads and push visitors to your site’s important action items.
- Call extensions. Beyond increasing the real estate of your ads, call extensions encourage one of the most important actions a prospect can take. Placing your company’s phone number front and center, they can help to convert prospects.
- Location extensions. If you have a physical location that you want to drive traffic to, location extensions are an excellent solution. Adding your location doesn’t just boost the visibility of your ads, it instills trust and assures prospects that you have a local presence.
- Callout extensions. Every business has its own unique selling points. Callout extensions allow you to communicate your selling points to potential customers as short, punchy statements, such as ‘High Quality,’ ‘24-Hour Services,’ and ‘Locally Owned.’
- Structured snippets. If the product you’re advertising has special qualities that you’d like to highlight, structured snippets can help. Similar to callout extensions, these snippets focus on the items being offered rather than the company offering them.
4. Direct visitors to custom landing pages
Creating custom landing pages is a great way to boost the effectiveness of your ads. In most cases, ads are highly targeted. They aim to promote a single thing. And, while you could direct your ads’ traffic to the most relevant page on your website, you’ll be able to convert customers easier by pointing them to a custom page: a page created for them and their interests. A custom landing page can mirror – and expand upon – the content of your ads. It can contain extremely specific, extremely targeted language that focuses on converting the leads that your ads have generated. When you create highly targeted ad campaigns, you should have your web design team create hyper-specific landing pages.
Five things to include on custom landing pages
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- A bold headline that mirrors your ad copy. The first thing your landing page should do is assure visitors they’re in the right place. A large headline that reiterates the content of your ad copy is a sign that tells them they’ve arrived.
- An opening sentence that urges visitors to take action. The goal of your ads is to get visitors to take action. In your first sentence, tell them what action you’d like them to take and then provide multiple paths – all unmissable – to taking that action.
- Links to relevant pages on your website. Naturally, some of your visitors are going to want more information. Provide several links to pages on your website that further detail the products you’re advertising.
- Large, highly visible buttons to initiate important actions. Since you’ve already urged visitors to take action, you’ll want to give them ways to do that. Place buttons, images, and callouts throughout your landing page so that action is always available.
- Several ways to contact you. If you’re wanting customers to reach out to you, you need to give them several options. You should include your address, a phone number, and an embedded form on every landing page.
5. Leverage the fear of missing out
At their heart, pay-per-click ads are about reaching the right customers at the right time. For the most part, it’s safe to assume that people who click on your ad are – at the very least – in a position to buy. More likely, though, is that they’re just looking for the right incentive. Because of this, your ads should utilize words, phrases, and tactics that imply urgency. By leveraging the fear of missing out, you encourage searchers to take action, click on your ads, and – if you’ve employed the other methods in this post – make a purchase.
Five phrases to invoke the fear of missing out
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- ‘Only 5 spots available!’
- ‘Sale ends in 3 hours!’
- ‘Valid only until stock runs out!’
- ‘Available only to the next 10 customers!’
- ‘Registration open for the next 24 hours!’
Want to start making more money with your pay-per-click ads?
If you’re tired of low-performing, ineffective ad campaigns, you owe it to yourself – and your company – to work with a professional. Creative Marketing Group has extensive experience crafting ads that entice clicks, attract visitors, and convert. Our team will work with you to understand your customers, precisely target your campaigns, and create compelling ad groups that appeal to their interests. We encourage you to contact us today to discuss your company’s needs and start making more money with your PPC ads.