Paid Search Advertising Copywriting 101

You will love this. Read this carefully and it will help you climb the ladder to the top paid search results listings while dropping your cost dramatically. As far as I know, most search marketers fail dramatically at writing great Paid Search Advertising ads (aka. Google Adwords). I was asked a question today by a Client to basically justify the rationale for ad copywriting for a display ad network (ie. non-search). The campaign is basically aimed at people who are about to move and how ACME (fictitious name) can help the move process with all the telecommunication services new arrangements. Here is what I had to say.

First, here is the ad, according to Google Adwords Editorial Guidelines:

Moving? ACME Can Help!
Move Phone & Services in 1 Click.
Save Time on Moving Using ACME
acme.ca/moving

And now, here is the explanation. Apparently, everyone who read this today, including Steve Kellas, online copywriting genius, thought it was pretty bang on so I am glad to share this with you.

Explanation:
In a nutshell, we are using the same kind of copywriting rationale & style as if we were talking to the users through paid search engine results. We first need to establish relevance with the users which is why we use self-selecting expressions such as Moving?. People who are not moving will most likely skip the ad completely which is not a bad thing when we are using a pay per click format that online users are used to deal with.

Once relevance is established, we can then proceed with stating the benefits of ACME’s offer, which is to offer *help* in the moving process. Since we all know how any form of help is appreciated during moving time, we thought this would be the best verb to describe what ACME can do for them. This has also a great branding effect as it conveys a strong and positive emotion. (thanks for helping me out). We can only use the exclamation mark once in the ad. We then decided to put it on the headline as this is where it makes the most sense. We also need to repeat the same word (move, moving) a few times in the ads (4), on each line preferably, as online users may only read the headline or the first line of text or the second and so on. They may also read the ad vertically which is why the strongest word is often at the beginning of each line. Even if you read the ad vertically, you would still understand what the offer is. Clever hey?

We also need to capitalize the first letter of every word as it reads better, in case online users will actually take the time to read the ad completely. On line 1, we use obvious terms such as phone & services since these are the topics we are talking about and the use of the words “in one click” says how quickly we can help solve this problem. On line 2, we decided to actually states the benefit “Save time”, again to reinforce what the offer is and describe what the offer can do for them. The repetition in the ads while using synonyms and playing with images and emotions for each word is a standard practice in online copywriting. Please note that the text ad characters limit is very restrictive which is why we are trying to find words that say a lot in terms of meaning but that are in fact quite short: help, save, time, move, click are good examples. 

Removing www in the display url (acme.ca) is also a great little improvement as it cuts unnecessary elements (www) which does not help understanding the meaning of the ad. Check out how often you see *www* in Google Adwords. Did you know you can take them out? Please do! Nobody says World Wide Web anymore. If you know anyone who still uses this expression, please publish their names in the comment box below.

If you use this methodology for writing your Google text ads, you can be sure your Google text ads will be more relevant to the users. As a result, this will lead to greater qualified visitors and better ROI.

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Comments

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