Ad copy is a cornerstone of success when it comes to an effective and successful PPC strategy. PPC Analyst, Ramneet Panesar, shares her tips of how to write effective PPC ad copy that drives results.

Understanding The Basics

Before we get into the nitty gritty of writing the most effective possible PPC ad copy, let’s recap what exactly PPC ad copy is, and why it’s so important.

What is PPC ad copy?

PPC (pay-per-click) ad copy is the text used in ads that appear on the SERP (search engine results page), as well as other digital ad placements. These ads appear when users search for specific keywords, and advertisers pay a fee each time someone clicks on their ad.

Why is PPC ad copy important?

PPC ad copy is the first impression of your ad, and often even your brand, to those performing searches that trigger your campaigns.

The most effective PPC ad copy will grab the attention of your audience, communicate your brand’s value or specific product/promotion, and ultimately, encourage potential customers to click through to a landing page or website.

On the other hand, poorly executed ad copy can have the opposite effect – reaching irrelevant audiences, not having a clear CTA, and causing potential customers to lose faith in your brand and in turn, reduce conversions and business benefits.

I’ve collated some of my own tried and tested advice and insights to help you to create efficient, effective and engaging ad copy to improve PPC ad performance for your brand.

Know Your Audience

Your audience are your customers – so everything you do when it comes to your PPC ads needs to resonate and relate to their interests and search behaviour.

Define Your Target Audience

Before you start with ad copy, it’s important to know who it is you’re targeting.

Look at the demographics of your target audience – how old are they? What’s their gender? What do they do for a living?

This will help you to then understand their needs and wants – what are they looking for? Why would they buy from you over anyone else?

Resonate even further with your audience by diving into what your competitors are doing. Study their terms, phrases and language and use these to your advantage to better reach your audience.

Using Audience Insights For Better Ad Copy

Once you’ve defined your target audience, the data collected can help you to understand the audience segments most likely to convert and provide insights about different audiences and the way they interact with your ads.

Depending on the audience segment and the associated demographics, you can improve your ad copy with audience insights by tailoring it to match and reflect their tone e.g. professional/informal.

For example, a B2B business with a B2B audience would likely use a more professional tone to sell their products, whilst a product aimed at a younger audience such as gen-z might opt for a more informal tone with the use of colloquialisms.

If you don’t resonate with your audience from the get-go, this will reduce your trust and likability factor and in turn, damage or restrict campaign performance.

Crafting Compelling Headlines

The first hurdle of engaging your audience with your ad copy comes with your headline. It’s the star of the show and the most prominent part of your ad, so making an immediate impact and positive first impression comes with ensuring that your headline is crafted effectively.

The Importance Of Strong Headlines In PPC Ad Copy

The headline of your ad is the first thing that users see, which means it needs to eye-catching, compelling, and relevant to appeal to your target audience. Additionally, an effective headline that promotes exactly what you want it to and is relevant to the accompanying landing page can show authority and begin to build trust with potential customers.

Ultimately, weak headlines aren’t going to resonate with your target audience, which means they likely won’t read the rest of the ad.

Writing Persuasive Ad Descriptions

Standing out from your competitors isn’t just based on who can bid to rank highest – it also comes from your ability to effectively persuade your audience to buy from you, rather than your competition.

Include A Clear CTA

The purpose of your ad is to get customers over the line to purchase your product – so tell them to do that!

There’s a limited number of characters you’re able to use in your headlines, so make including a clear CTA a top priority, and demand action from your audience.

Chances are, if the right person sees the right ad at the right time, they’ll do it!

Other Tips/Tricks/Insights

What makes you different from your competitors?

In order to stand out amongst competitors selling the same or a similar product or service, focusing on your USP can help you to turn considerations into conversions.

Whether it’s price point, product quality, or customer reviews – use this to your advantage and make sure it’s included in your ads.

Another huge selling point that is a USP for many businesses is free or fast delivery, especially during peak sales periods.

My final tip when it comes to persuasive ad descriptions is leaning on your existing customers. If you’ve worked hard to gain trust and prove authority in your sector, then it’s likely you’ll have the reviews to reflect this, and you can use these to your advantage!

Using Keywords Strategically

Strategic keyword placement is crucial when it comes to ad copy, as they are the component of your ads that put you in front of the right audiences.

Why Keywords Matter In PPC Ad Copy

Keywords are a huge component of your PPC ad success, and work by triggering your ads to appear when users perform certain search queries. Essentially, you’re trying your best to match your keywords to what your target audience are most likely to search.

If your ads are using irrelevant keywords and aren’t being triggered by user search terms, your ads won’t show.

There’s so much more to consider when it comes to keyword optimisation for your PPC ads – download our comprehensive guide to keywords here.

Ad Copy Testing and Optimisation

Continuous improvement across your campaigns is important to remain not only at the forefront of search engine updates and market changes, but also to continue to engage and excite your audience in a way that resonates with them.

A/B Testing Your Ad Copy

The best way to figure out what works best for your account is to test!

By testing different variations of your ad copy, you can identify the ads that perform best, and look at how your audience interacts with alternative:

• Pinned headlines and descriptions
• CTAs
• Tone of voice

Testing can also help you to recognise the iterations of your ads with the highest CTR and CVR and see where changes can be made to improve QS. In return, this can lead to reduced CPCs and increased ROI.

Optimising Your Ad Copy For Success

Remember: once testing has helped reveal your best performing ads, you can optimise other areas of your account/s with tried and tested activity that you know drives success.

The market is constantly changing to adhere to consumer behaviour and purchasing habits, so continuing to test and make changes as a result of the outcomes will help you to keep your audience engaged, and your ads effective.

Keeping It Concise And Clear

The average human brain needs just milliseconds to process visual information and identify a word, so it’s important to curate clear ad copy that makes the most of such a short amount of time.

Why Less Is More In PPC Ad Copy

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to writing concise and effective ad copy is staying within the character limit. There’s only 30 characters in a headline, and 90 in a description, so making sure your ad copy not only fits these requirements, but does so whilst effectively communicating your message, is crucial

Users are likely to skim read content and want to know the key points to stay interested in what you’re advertising – never mind clicking on your ad and potentially making a purchase.

If your ad copy if too long or beats around the bush and avoids the key purpose of your ad, then you could risk losing a potential conversion. Clear, concise language that presents exactly what your brand message and particular ad purpose is will garner better engagement and more conversions.

Avoiding Jargon And Complex Language

It’s important to resonate with the language and tone of your target audience, however jargon or overly complex language can put the user off reading further if they don’t immediately recognise or understand your content.

By using simpler, more consistent and digestible language in your ads, your audience can quickly see your key points and rather than losing interest and moving onto a competitor ad, remain engaged with your ad and become one step closer to converting.

Common Mistakes To Avoid In PPC Ad Copy

For everything you should be doing in your account, there’s also something you shouldn’t be doing. Here are some of the most common mistakes that people make when it comes to writing ad copy:

Using Too Many Keywords

When it comes to keywords, it’s important to focus on quality over quantity. If you’re using too many keywords, that aren’t all relevant, this can lead to lower CTR and decreased CVR, consequently affecting overall performance.  

Relevance is also a huge factor when it comes to quality score, which we know impacts ad rankings, so remaining relevant should be a top priority. Additionally, the character limit in ad headlines and descriptions is restrictive, so you don’t want to use this up with ineffective keywords that will damage your messaging.

Vague Or Weak CTAs

Yes, it’s important to use a CTA to effectively inform your audience on how you want them to take action. However, vague or weak CTAs aren’t going to have the desired effect or give a sense of urgency to your audience.

Instead, a weak CTA could even cause a drop in engagement from potential customers, with in direct, broader CTAs driving a loss of interest.

Failing To Align Ad Copy With Landing Page Content

Your ad copy and landing page content should be aligned to best increase your campaign performance, as without this alignment, your online reach could be reduced due to low quality scores and in turn, rank lower on the SERP.

Failing to effectively align your ad copy with the content on its accompanying landing page could also be seen as mis-leading, both damaging your brand’s creditability and trust and ranking lower due to a poor QS from lack of relevancy.

Advanced Tips For Effective PPC Ad Copy

There are a lot of advanced tips that can help you improve your PPC ad copy even further, with some more relevant during specific seasonal periods or to drive traffic to particular pages on your website.

Use Of Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI)

When it comes to sales or promotional periods, you can use DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion) in your PPC headlines to add a countdown timer, which automatically counts down the days in your headline to reflect when your sale ends. This can create a sense of urgency and excitement amongst your audience and push them to make a purchase.

Important to note: the countdown timer might look long, but it only uses 8 characters, so make sure you are effectively utilising the rest of the space in your headlines.

Incorporating Ad Extensions

Ad extensions can be an effective addition to your ad copy to drive users to specific pages on your website, without them having to navigate throughout your website to do so. This makes the process of getting to the right page quicker, easier, and ultimately, ensure that the customer journey is as short, smooth and seamless as possible.

Final Thoughts On Perfecting Ad Copy

The most important part of writing effective ad copy is defining and understanding your target audience. Once you’ve discovered how your audience communicates, you can begin to work on crafting ad copy that best resonates and in turn, helps to drive conversions.

Let’s recap our key points:

1. Define your target audience and use audience insights to inspire ad copy.
2. Craft compelling and relevant headlines to grab attention.
3. Write ad descriptions that include a clear CTA and highlight USPs.
4. Use keywords strategically throughout your ad copy.
5. Test different iterations of your ad copy and use the results to optimise.
6. Keep your ad copy concise to best utilise the character limit.
7. Avoid too many keywords, weak CTAs and landing page misalignment.
8. Incorporate DKI or ad extensions to drive traffic during peak times.

By following the above steps as you put together your ad copy, you’ll be well on your way to reaching your target audience and driving conversions with your PPC efforts.

For more on ad copy alongside all of the other steps you need to ensure your PPC account is healthy and effective, download our whitepaper here.