PPC ad copywriting tips

If you’re not using pay-per-click advertising, more often referred to as PPC ads, you’re leaving a lot of your market untapped.

One way to run a PPC campaign is to submit an ad to a search engine and bid what you’d pay for that ad to appear when someone searches for particular keywords. Your bid and other factors, including your ad’s quality, determine which ad appears on the results page.

Social media is also an effective medium for PPC ads. Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook allow you to pay to promote posts. Those posts will appear on a user’s timeline based on their search queries or preferences.

PPC advertising is a highly effective strategy. With a concise headline and description, you get your brand in front of an audience that is looking for exactly what your business has to offer. You can capture new leads for your nurture campaigns or inspire a purchase by someone who becomes a loyal customer.

PPC marketing efforts: why ad copy matters

First and foremost, a search query is a question. It’s not just long-tail keywords, keyword phrases, or any of the other SEO buzzwords. It’s a person with a need, looking for a solution.

Google knows this and has adapted its search engine ranking algorithm to prioritize user intent. If your ad meets audiences' needs, it will win more bids and earn more clicks in the process. Consider that:

• 75% of people say paid search ads make it easier to find the information they need
• 33% click on a paid ad because it directly answers their question

Another 19% click because the ad has an enticing title, description, or image. The first two, known as the meta tags, draw the reader’s attention and tell them that the ad answers their question. The rest of the copy confirms it and helps it earn the click.

Simple copywriting tricks for your PPC campaign

You can become the kind of copywriter that gets those clicks. It isn't magic or an advanced strategy—it just means using effective PPC management by following a few PPC copywriting best practices like these.

1. Use review mining to find pain points

When you run a paid search ad, you have a limited amount of space to sell your brand. If you’re working with Google Ads (formerly known as Google Adwords), the most popular of the paid advertising platforms, you only get:

• Up to three headlines with as many as 30 characters each
• Up to two description fields with 90 characters max in each

That’s less than 300 characters to convince the viewer that your site has the solution they need.

This is where you can use review mining, a great copywriting technique that lets you sell products using the customers’ own words.

Through review mining, you can find the words you need on Amazon, Yelp, or any other product review sites. Just search for your product or service — or one that’s comparable at a similar price point — and find out how people describe two things:

1. Why they bought the product
2. How the product has helped them

Pick out the most compelling short phrases, then add them to the headline and/or description for your PPC ad. Before that happens, though, you need to get someone to click on your search ads. That means you need to create compelling copy.

2. Add specific CTAs

In all of your pay-per-click marketing ad copy, include a strong call to action for the services your business offers. People who see the ad should look at it and know exactly what they’re going to get.

Imagine that you’re selling SEO services, and you’re promoting them with an article about keyword use today. There’s a lot of content out there on this topic, so you want to emphasize that your business offers real value. That means including active, yet concise CTAs like:

• “Build keyword lists that work”
• “Answer your customers’ questions”
• “Use keywords better”

All of these CTAs are active. They indicate that the reader can get something concrete and helpful out of the article.

3. Use “you” language

Effective PPC ad copy addresses the reader directly. The more you use second-person language—“you” and “your”—the more your readers will feel like the ad directly addresses them and meets their needs. It’s a simple technique, but it works.

4. Mention what makes you different

Again, when you only have a few lines of ad copy to make your business stand out, you have to be explicit about what sets you apart.

• Has your business won any awards?
• Do you have a trademarked solution that’s unique to your brand?
• Are you running any promotions?
• Do you offer anything of value that your competitors don’t?

Chances are, many things make your business special. Consider the problem you’re trying to solve and mention something directly related to that issue. Put it in the headline if possible since audiences will see that first.

Enhance your PPC ads with call tracking

To get the most out of PPC text ads for your business, you need to track their results. How many impressions do you get? What are your click-through rates and conversion rates, and what does the rest of the buyer journey look like?

To effectively track conversions, you need to be able to analyze all touchpoints. Click-to-call phone numbers are great additions to paid ads, but to get the most benefit from them, you need to be able to track which ads calls are coming from. That’s the only way to learn which of your ads are most effective and how your overall campaign performance is doing.

Learn how call tracking can improve your PPC performance today.