In part 1 I showed you how to find and segment groups of keywords for your Google AdWords advertising campaign. Today in part 2 I'm going to teach you how to write the actual content of your ads. Even if you don't speak perfect English or have poor grammar, just follow my step-by-step blueprint below and you can't lose.
Recapping Part 1
By now you should have a list of about 10 keywords separated into at least 2 groups based on the context of those words. In our last example we used Windows Vista: people might be looking for information on Vista (in the research stage) or they might be ready to whip out their credit cards and order Vista (in the buying stage).
In this example let's write ads for people that are in the researching stage for Windows Vista. You can easily adapt these ads to suit your product/serivce because the principles and methods are identical.
Start With The Headline
The headline of your ad is critical to the click through rate (CTR) that it receives. For Google AdWords ads you will ALWAYS receive more clicks if the headline matches the text that the user is searching for. Google has a special feature called dynamic keyword insertion that you can use to make sure the searchers exact keywords show in the headline of your ad.
It works like this:
In both of these ads the text that the user searches for will be displayed as the headline of the ad if and only if their search term is less than 25 characters. If you look at the sample ads above you'll notice that in the first ad "Keyword" only has one capital letter - the "K". In the second ad there are two: "KeyWord" - The "K" and "W". This is used to tell Google how to capitalize the words in the headline. Ads with "Keyword" will only capitalize the first letter of the first word in the headline. Ads with "KeyWord" will capitalize the first letter of each word in the headline.
So if the user searches for "windows vista screenshots", in the first ad the headline would be "Windows vista screenshots". In the second ad the headline would be "Windows Vista Screenshots".
Finally, you'll notice the text after "Keyword:" in the brackets. This is called the "backup headline". If the users search text is too long then this text will be displayed instead. What should you use for your backup headline? Generally it should be the most popular search term that you found after reading part 1 of this series.
To recap, the formula for dynamic keyword insertion is:
{ Key[word|Word]: [Backup Headline] }
A few examples:
{Keyword: Chocolate Cake}
{KeyWord: Funny TShirts}
{Keyword: PHP Web Hosting}
Writing the Body of Your Ad
OK, now that's we've got the headline out of the way let's create the body copy of the ad. You get two lines of text, 35 characters per line. The first line of your ad should be a strong benefit the person can expect to receive after using your product/service. The second line should contain one or more features of your product/service.
Successful copywriters have one thing in common: they can differentiate between the benefits and features of a product. A benefit will appeal to the emotions of a person, such as "Lose 30 pounds in 4 weeks", or "Reduce the time it takes to close a sale". Most people buy for benefits.
Let's write the first line of our ad - a benefit. Using our Windows Vista example, let's pretend we run a site called MyWindowsVistaReviews.com where we provide user-submitted reviews on Windows Vista. Our ad will target people simply searching Windows Vista in the hope of converting them to buyers over time:
See the benefit? "Honest reviews to save you time". Come up with the number one benefit of your product/service and put it as the first line of your ad.
The second line is for features. In our example its "Sort reviews by important criteria". People looking for Windows Vista reviews might only want to see negative reviews, or reviews by people who upgraded from XP, and my fictional site would let them sort reviews based on criteria they find important.
Finally there's the URL you show at the bottom of your ad. By simply changing the way you display the URL you can dramatically increase the click thru rate of your ad. You'll have to experiment with how you display the URL. Here are the ways you can display it, shown from best converting to worst converting (in my experience):
www.YourSite.com
YourSite.com
www.yoursite.com
yoursite.com
YourSite.com/Something
www.YourSite.com/Something
The "Beat Your Own Ad" Theory
Using the information in this article you should create just two ads for your campaign. Make the ads identical but give them a different benefit or feature. After receiving about 30 clicks for each ad, use SplitTester.com to workout which ad performed better then delete the other ad.
Create a new ad and this time change the benefit AND the way you display the URL. Keep repeating this until you can get your CTR up to at least 5%. It may take a few weeks but it will be worth it.
Things You Must Test
As well as constantly tweaking the text in your ads, tiny changes can result in massive increases in your CTR. Try changing the things listed below if you want a 0.5%-1% increase in the click thru rate of your best ad (after completing the "beat your own ad" theory above):
Finish each line with a full stop or remove the full stop from each line
Separate features with a comma or a full stop
Use an apostrophe where needed or remove an existing apostrophe
Use a dash where needed or remove an existing dash
Capitalize the first letter of every word in your ad
Use a normal headline, such as "Windows Vista Reviews" instead of using dynamic keyword insertion
Register a few different domain names and use them as the URL in your ad. Sometimes this can increase your CTR by 3%-5%.
