Lessons

Lesson Info

Search Ad Hall of Fame

in this chapter I will walk you through some best practices for writing compelling advertising copy that will ensure that your ads get clicked. A great google ad is one that inspires interaction and that gets clicked. What we find is that the higher the click through rate to hire the conversion rate and so an ad itself has to have information that the user finds useful but that the user also feels compelled to interact with. Some of the structural elements of a google ad are the headline and so ensuring that your headline mirrors the phrases of the keywords that somebody is looking for is the best practice here. Another component of google ad is the U. R. L. Itself and I'll get into some best practices for that in a moment. There's also the ad description and those are the three primary sections of the ad, the headline, the your L. And the ad description. Some other pieces of the ad which are also quite important are any call outs or features of your company. This is where you can put ...

in extra services that you might offer maybe some benefits that you offer. Like free shipping. For example, you can also create other custom call outs that would make you stand out from the competition. And then finally there are something called site extensions as we had covered earlier. But site extensions and additional links such as an address or specific your all of your page are also parts of the ad that you might want to include in the google ad copy itself. Some best practices for headlines is that they should be concise and capture attention. This is going to show up at the very top of the ad. It's typically a navy blue color when it shows up on a search engine results page and it should have a clear benefit or a call to action. A headline is only about 25 characters long. And so you want to be very concise with what you're describing. Some other best practices are to use the keywords that you're targeting. And so there are actual dynamic ways that you can indicate within an ad group that you'd want that specific phrase, the search phrase to show up in the headline. And very often for a user that cues that you are the answer to the question that they've post. And so there's a direct correlation between what they're looking for as well as what you are providing to them. You should also use mixed caps for formatting meaning, capitalizing the first letter of each word as well as capitalizing maybe the title of your company as well. Using mixed caps there and most importantly, someone needs to click on it. So the headline is in most ad formats, the link to your website as well. And so ensuring that that link is compelling enough for somebody to click on is key as you develop out ad copy. Some tips here is that you should avoid certain things otherwise you'll get flagged by the system and your ad will actually be un approved or not approved by google any kind of exaggerated punctuation like having more than one exclamation point is going to be flagged by the system. So do not use exaggerated punctuation. You also can't use all caps so you can't have things completely in capital letters, you can't use swear words or curse words. So paying attention to language is also key and censoring the way that you described things is key. You also can't use the word click either so you can actually type out click here or click now or click to learn more. The word click cannot be used in any google ads whatsoever. You also are not allowed to use trademark terms. So words like iphone words, like other branded terms that are not related to your own can't be used in an ad. I had once tried to put in the term new york times when I was talking about a show that had been reviewed by the new york times without remembering that the actual term new york times, the trademark term. And the ad had gotten unapproved by google. And it wasn't until I had realized what I had done that it became clear that I had tried to use a trademark term. And so all ads go through an approval process and if the ads don't get approved or if you have a series of ads that have continuously been disapproved, your account might actually be suspended. So it's very important that, you know the guidelines of what you can and can't do in these ads in order to maintain your account in good standing. Another key part of a google ad is the actual link or the U. R. L. That you'll be featuring. This is where you'll be driving people. There are two links that you'll actually input as you develop out and add. One is the final destination. Your L meaning the actual page where you want people to go. And then there is a display your l so you can actually designate two different your Ls and the more readable. The one that's featured in your ad is the more readable it is to a human. The better meaning even if your U. R. L. Is a very long link that you may have tagged with campaign parameters, you want to make sure that what the user sees is easy to understand and that it's clear to them when they click possibly where they will be going. That will help to increase the likelihood of them engaging with your ads, engaging with the offer that you may have posed to them or engaging in the event that you might be asking them to be clicking on. The other part of an ad is the description itself. So this is where you'll want to highlight the benefits of what you're providing to the user. You'll want to highlight what makes your company or brand different special or unique. You can be as specific and relevant as possible here. It's encouraged that you really have an attractive way of describing your brand or your product or your service. Try not to sound too sales, E or spammy, this is advertising copy. So there needs to be some artistry to the way that you are marketing yourselves to the user. Another best practice would be to use keywords here. So since you're writing this ad that will be triggered by specific phrases, you can take this opportunity to mirror the thing that they may have been looking for or you can be the answer to their question. If they've had a question, this is where you can be a little more creative with describing yourself for your business to position yourself for success in the eyes of the searcher. The limit here is 80 characters, so it's not a lot of words, it's probably about the length of a sentence or maybe two sentences as most so staying concise here too, is critical to developing compelling copy. And then finally, there are call outs in an ad and as mentioned, these are features or highlights that you might want to place into the ad that sets you apart from other brands or services. So these could be things like free delivery or 24 hour customer service, you can think of these as bullet points that help to support the reasons why somebody should engage with your business, calling out things like high value or maybe small group tours or authentic experience. These are all things that will help you to have your ads stand out on the search engine results page leveraging site extensions is also critical to this as we had talked about earlier site extensions help the ads to take up more space on the page and therefore people will see your ad more than the competitors that are showing up on the page. It also gives people additional links to click on. So the site extensions themselves are links that come back into your website. Some best practices here would be to take a look at the most visited pages of your website organically or through paid and determine that okay besides the home page besides the specific product page maybe these are the four other pages that people tend to go to. I've seen people put in frequently asked questions as one of their side extensions. I've seen people put aside extension for contact us. I've seen people may be linking top blog posts so top content on your website that would still be compelling despite whether or not someone is looking for a specific product or service. These are again just other ways to hook people back into your website. Another best practice overall is that the ad copy itself should relate back to search terms. So if somebody has searched for sell your car which we're looking at on the screen right now, the headline that this one company decided to place in there is we buy your car in two hours and the U. R. L. Is we buy cars dot com. So someone's looking to sell their own car and this ad has become a response to that to say well by your car versus just mirroring the search term. So understanding the nuances also of the types of phrases and keywords that people are using can help you to draft copy that will be compelling to them. Another way that you can position your ad is to be a solution to their problem. So here we see someone has searched for help get rid of Acne and the headline that pops up is dealing with acne learn if a clinically proven acne medication can help you out. So again, they are having a conversation with the searcher in the way that they've presented this ad knowing that the person looking for this service is looking specifically to get rid of Acne and this now becomes a more interactive experience than just somebody reading about a product that might be related to their search. Another really compelling and effective way to get people to click on your ad is to use numbers. Numbers are a great way to tell a story about your prices or your discounts or your offers, but it's also a way that you can show a proof point. So if you're very, very specific with a number very often, this can be a reason why someone could believe that you are special, unique or different from anybody else. For example, what we see here is two versions of an ad from an accounting firm. One just says local tax preparation, quality tax preparation services and the second version says local tax preparation $45,329 saved in january. Whether or not it's true that they have literally saved that dollar amount, 45,329. It's a very specific number. It's such a specific number. It's hard to dispute that it's almost like this believable amount. Well it must be true because they wouldn't have listed such a specific number unless they saved that many dollars. Another example we see on the right is an ad for Trev ago which is a travel site and it says 687 hotels in L. A. From $64. So this might be even an overuse of numbers. There's a lot of numbers in just that one headline but it's so specific that it's almost compelling you to click on it to really see if there really are 687 hotels and they're giving you the specific price point and the starting price of hotel rooms on this website. Those are some best practices overall for ad copy. There are a variety of ways that you might want to approach this, whether it's being the answer to a question, whether it's engaging with the searcher as if you're having a conversation with them. Perhaps it's listing out specific numbers that are relevant to your business and or using call out site extensions and compelling copy to get people to click on your ads.