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Top Secret PPC Ad Copywriting Hacks

The best advertisers are trying their hardest to hide these from you

Writing a copy for a PPC ad must be one of the easiest things to do, isn’t it? There are very few characters needed and you don’t even need to worry much about visuals. It should hardly take more than five minutes to come up with a winning PPC ad copy, right? Absolutely NOT!

PPC ad copywriting is extremely complicated, if you do not have enough experience and knowledge. You cannot say everything in the limited word length you have been allowed with. Not only do you need to include all the important keywords, but you need to make sure that your ad must be appealing to your target audience. And at the same time, the ad copy must do a complete justice to summarize the landing page that the users would be redirected to after clicking on your ad.

Many PPC advertisers have struggled to get even a single ad that works and brings them a lot of customers. They have to spend endless hours in researching about the ads and then write multiple revisions before their ad copy starts to look a bit decent. It takes sufficient amount of time and efforts. But, fortunately you won’t have to worry about spending so much time or energy. We bring to you the top secret PPC ad copywriting hacks.

So, let’s get started right away…

Hack 1 – Address what stage your target user is in the sales funnel

If you follow the PPC industry statistics, you would know that on an average, a well-made PPC ad generates one to two percent conversion rates for ecommerce websites. These are the people who have almost made up their minds to buy the product and your PPC ad only works as a reminder to them. But, what about the ninety eight percent of people who click on your ad and come to your website but do not end up buying a product? What are they doing, you think? Well, they are “browsing”, meaning they are looking around, searching, exploring, comparing, assessing, etc.

Each user represents a unique stage in the sales funnel when he or she visits your website. In other words, they have different needs to be satisfied. They have different problems to be resolved. Take a look at the below example.

PPC sales funnel

Now, you need to ask yourself an important question. Are addressing the right problem in your PPC ad copy? Also, are you addressing the right person? It should appeal to them. The message won’t be effective if they have not yet decided to buy the product or not. Instead, they are merely exploring and comparing products. Your PPC ad copy should convey the message in such a way that triggers the call to action and persuades them to perform the purchasing transaction. For the above example, below show ad copy could do the trick:

PPC ad copy

Hack 2 – Match your offer with their intent

The rule is that your PPC must have a headline that is three things: smart, simple and attractive. Ask any PPC ad expert and he/she would agree instantly. But, that doesn’t mean either that your customers would click on your ad, just because you have a compelling ad headline. The issue is that your ad copy is not in sync with their intent.

As we mentioned in the first hack above, the ad copy must be designed according to their stage in the sales funnel. And once you’ve figured out what stage they are from, you must work toward aligning your ad copy with their intent, in terms of an appropriate message, and it will do the trick.

Put yourself into your customer’s shoes. This will help you understand their intent and you will accordingly put the offer in your message that he/she simply cannot deny.

Let’s take an example. When it comes display ads or video ads, they appeal pretty easily to your target audience. They automatically are interested in such content while they are browsing and checking out other things.

But, how about when they turn to search engines? They are there with a specific intent. To buy or to compare before buying. They are intently looking for information to make an informed purchase decision. Google confirms this fact in their customer journey to online purchase article.

marketing_channels

So, in your PPC ad copy, you must work toward aligning your ad copy to their intent. Your customers are looking for instant gratification. But, they don’t want to fill out a long form or to watch a long webinar. The hack here is to see what type of keywords they are using. That shows you their intent.

For example, “Fix” or “repair” keywords show that they are looking for a resolution to a problem. Keywords like “optimize” or “tool” mean that they are looking for a specific solution. If they are using keywords like “pricing”, “quotes” or “proposal”, etc. that means that they are almost ready to make the purchase.

Hack 3 – Include specific and credible stats

If you just tell them that you’re #1 when you draft your ad copy, it simply means nothing to them. They come across such “best” claims all the time. 9 in 10 people trust recommendations from others. That don’t have to know the person who has made the recommendation. So, it’s important that you provide them with specific and credible numbers in your ad copy.

The numbers that you include in your PPC ad copy must be verifiable. They should be able to tell whether the number is true or not. Don’t round off the numbers. Give them the exact figures. It makes your claim more believable. Look at the below shown example PPC ad. It used a specific and verifiable number and the conversion rate rose up dramatically:

nps_system

The more specific your ad copy, the better are the chances of conversions. The ad copies make a certain promise to your customers. Take a look at this example ad copy from a travel company. See how they are incorporating numbers into their ad copy:

own_landing_page

Hack 4 – Go local with your ad copies

You cannot manifest a need for your product. You cannot force people to buy it either. You can rather harvest their interest into it.

Your target audience is searching for things in a specific way. They use a certain set of keywords and phrases when searching for products or services online. And if there is one thing that’s common among millions of searches that happen on the web daily, customers prefer using local information in their search queries.

Therefore, if you include local keywords into your ad copies and also include geo-targeting, then your chances of conversions increase too. Take a look at the below shown ad copy:

Go local with your ad copies

Different advertisers, as you can see in the above copies, have different ways of including local information in their ads. You can even consider using expanded headlines to include more local information in your PPC ad copy. Here is an example of how it looks like:

PPC ad copy Hotel

The more local information you include in your ad copy, the higher are the chances of conversions.

Hack 5 – Address their fear of missing out

The conversions through PPC ads are a tricky place. You cannot force them to buy. At the same time, they are not in a rush to make a purchase either. And that’s precisely why you need to create a sense of urgency in your PPC ad copy.

For example, include phrases like, “for limited time”, “while stock lasts”, “offer expires by…”, and they are sure to create artificial sense of urgency among your target users.

Take a look at this below ad:

conversions through PPC ads

Hack 6 – Spell our your call to action as clearly as possible

Your target audience comes across hundreds of ads daily, which means that they are always distracted. The so called content explosion on the Internet and especially on social media is making your customers “brain dead”. It takes away their focus.

Therefore, it’s incredibly complex now for PPC advertisers than ever before to come up with add copies that attract people’s attention instantaneously. As a result, you must tell them very specifically what they are supposed to do. Explicit calls to action must be very simple to understand and should not come across as rude. They should, subtly, persuade them to take a desired action.

Remember this:

Explicit calls to actions PPC

Having read that, now let’s look at an example PPC ad copy that not only grabs attention, but clearly spells out the call to action:

example PPC ad copy

Hack 7 – Use dynamic keyword insertion

The natural tendency amongst users is to ignore anything that even remotely looks like an ad. But, that’s not the entire problem. The more serious issue is that people take deliberate steps to prevent ads from showing up to them.

They do it mostly because they feel that the ad content is irrelevant. The ad copies, according to them, are boring. And as a result, they do not pay any attention to those ad copies, let alone doing any action as a result of being exposed to them.

With Google’s advanced features, you can personalize your ad copies as per what’s been searched for. That way, the searcher will only see what he/she wants to see.

Take a look at this example:

Or take a look at this another example:

keyword-insertion

And here is the same ad copy, by just changing the location:

keyword-insertion

Hack 8 – Ask them a question in the ad

The main job of your ad’s headline is not to sell. No, you have your landing page for that. You need the headline to get the attention and create connect with the user.

And what better way to establish a rapport than asking a question? Questions, naturally, create curiosity among users. And especially in your PPC ad copy, if you ask them a question first and also provide a tip or an answer in your later part of the copy, then your user will be definitely interested in clicking on the ad.

Here’s an example of including a question in the ad copy:

question_for_add

Hack 9 – Make your ad copy mobile friendly

There is no denying that mobile search has already overtaken the desktop searches worldwide. People are using mobiles increasingly when they are looking up information online. Here’s a look at how mobile is used for searching content across different niches:

ppc_keywords

But, more importantly, what you do need to understand is that searches have a different search pattern on mobile devices.

And when you right a PPC ad copy, you must consider this fact. You must have device-specific ad copies in your PPC campaign.

copyright-hack

When you are creating an ad in AdWords, you can ensure that your headline is adjusted according to screen sizes. You can either choose mobile or all. So, the best way to handle this situation is to create two different ad copies for each and that way ensuring that users at all platforms and devices are respected and entertained with the relevant and appealing information.

Writing a PPC ad copy is both an art and science. Don’t settle for the obvious. Understand what stage in the sales funnel your customer is at. Match your ad copies to meet their intent based on their stages in the sales funnel. Be tactical in your approach in terms of what strategy or combination of strategies to deploy in your ad copy, as discussed at great length above.

Don’t try to create more ads, instead focus on creating better quality ads.