PPC - Writing a Killer PPC Ad

In today’s world of internet marketing, the advertisers are in a fierce race of grabbing the space on webpages to put up their ads. When thousands of advertisers compete, only those who create the most effective and catchy ads stand out from others and help accelerate the seller’s business.

Creating a PPC Ad

Refer the diagram shown below. To create an effective and compelling ad, the following methodology is helpful:

Market and Audience Research

Research the market. Answer questions such as:

• How many people are using product or service that the seller is selling?
• How many people use various parallel products?
• What is the budget for the ad?
• What does the user want?
• What is user’s motivation?
• Why does the user need this product or service?
• What words are going to resonate with each group of keywords?

Keyword Research

Find out the following:

• Which are the products searched by the users in the seller’s business domain?
• Who are looking for the products similar to those offered by the seller?
• What is the cost to bid for PPC ad on relevant searches (keywords)?
• What keywords the competing advertisers are using?

Build Pay-Per-Click Ad

Build the PPC ad. Put groups of related keywords into one ad group. Create multiple ads and split-test them for each ad group.

Build Landing Pages

Build the respective landing pages combining aesthetics, art, and technology.

Track, Measure, and Report

Monitor and measure the following:

• Impressions (how often your ads appear),
• Click-through rate (how often your ads are clicked on),
• Response rates (how often people respond to what website offers) for various keywords, ad groups, and ads.

Optimize the Ad

Optimize the ad as follows:

• Using the monitoring data, refine and improve the keywords, ads, and landing pages as and when required.
• Make sure all the changes are implemented and performance is trending in the right direction.
• Remove non-working words, images, links, and move on.

Elements of a PPC Ad

Refer the following image to understand the elements of a PPC ad.

• Headline - This is the main title of the ad. It must be magnetic, crisp, and compact.
• Display URL - This is the link of the relevant web page where the prospects will be taken onto. It is not required to be the exact landing page but it should be relevant. You can, for example, include your website with the top keyword in your Ad Campaign.
• Description Line 1 and 2 - This is the body of the ad. It describes the product or the service the seller is offering.

Creating a PPC Ad Using Google AdWords

A well-written, persuasive, and concise copy can make a difference between success and failure in a PPC advertising campaign.

Step 1: Know the Rules of Framing an Ad

If you use Google’s AdWords, this is how you should frame the PPC ad:

• Headline: Catchy, Correct, Informative, Crisp, 25 characters long.
• Description: Two lines description of product or service, 35 characters long.
• Display URL: 35 characters long. If you run out of description size of 35 characters, do not continue the description text into the Display URL. For example, do not frame the second description line such as "Visit this site:" or "Learn more at...".
• Do not use the Display URL field as another line of ad text.
• Do not make the ad text appear cut off abruptly or incomplete.
• The Display URL is required to be on the same domain as the real URL.
• Pay due attention to the grammar.

Step 2: Identify True Competitors of Seller

Identify who is competing with you in bidding for your target terms and who is consistently getting the top ad rank. Based on this insight, you can find out the companies and their ads. You also need to consider the advertisers who are completely irrelevant to your business; treat them as competitors, as they are also going for the same share of your prospect attention.

Step 3: Identify Seller’s Assets, USPs, and Your Credentials

Go through the product or service offering of the seller and identify his online assets. What can you offer to the prospective user?

• Testimonials - What are the user reviews of this product or service?
• USP of the seller - Unique selling proposition (USP) is a factor that differentiates a product or service from a competing product. The USP includes:
  • Cost of the product, value for money
  • First of its kind product in market, innovative
  • Quality of the product
  • Additional offers along with the products
• Seller’s Credentials - Has the seller won any awards? Is the seller proven to be the best in his domain industry?
• Show Off to Your Prospective Customers - Have you work with any well-known brands? Then this is a good time to show off your credentials. This way you stand out from your advertising competitors.

Step 4: Create an Effective Call-To-Action (CTA)

Ad Copy is your only opportunity to convey your audience exactly what action you want them to take, once they reach the website. For example:

• Direct Response Phrases - Call, Register, Purchase, Checkout, Download, and Donate.
• Lead Generation Phrases - Contact us, Request a Quote, Start, Verify, Access, Receive, Fill, and Enroll.
• Engagement Phrases - Watch, See, View, Read, Discover, Uncover, Check Out, Visit.

Step 5: Write Your Copy of Ad

As an advertiser, you write for your audience, not for yourself. Think of the intentions your user is searching with. Think how accurately your ad copy can answer their questions or help them.

• Use numbers and exclamation marks. They capture user’s attention.
• Use abbreviations if they are well known and non-ambiguous. They save space.
• It helps increase Click-Through-Rate (CTR) if you capitalize each word besides the articles in your copy.
• Use your keywords in the headline. Google makes them bold, which automatically makes the ad prominent.

Step 6: Add Extensions

Another way to increase your click-through rate is to add extensions to your ads. Add contact numbers, location information, well-organized site links, reviews and testimonials about the product or services for the positive aspects given below:

• Contact numbers and location extensions boost conversation.
• Site links help users to get what they are looking for on the website with just one click. Site links appear in ads at the top and bottom of Google search results.
• Reviews and testimonials build up confidence about the product or service.

Step 7: Repeat Keywords on the Landing Page

The keywords used in your ad should be repeated on the landing page. It helps the prospect feel reassured of visiting the right place for his requirements.

Step 8: Test

Use AdWords Experiments (beta) to test different versions of your ad. If required, refine them based on the judgment of what works best for your ad and what converts.

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PPC Setting Location and Market

A pay-per-click ad that targets mass market is seldom successful. Setting appropriate target locations for advertising allows an ad to reach the consumer precisely with specific needs and demands. In the long run, it benefits the business, as it allows to take better strategic marketing decisions.

For higher number of impressions, more CTC, and in turn higher ROI from the PPC ad, you need to analyze the target locations beforehand.

A target market can be segmented on the basis of:

• Geographic location of users
• Demographics of users
• Language of users

Geographic Location of Users

Publishing an ad for the customers where they are located elevates the popularity of the product and the possibility of higher ROI.

The method of determining the geolocation of the visitor with respect to country, state, region, IP address, or device ID of the user’s device, and showing ads as per the user’s location is termed as Geo Targeting.

The geographic location can vary from within a few kilometers distance from the seller’s business to faraway countries. If the business serves in several areas, the seller might wish to create separate ads for each location to track the performance separately.

Demographics of Users

User demographics are an important factor while targeting a market. Demographics include age, gender, income, occupation, marital status, literacy, and lifestyle of the ad recipients.

You need to consider the following demographics while creating an ad:

• Age - Users’ needs and demands change with age.
• Gender - Male and female users react differently towards consumer products, jewelry, magazines, etc.
• Income - Users’ affordability varies depending upon their income levels.
• Occupation - Users’ occupation affects their lifestyle which in turn affect the product or service they opt for.
• Marital status - Experts say, single customers buy a specific product frequently than those who are married. Also, married people are inclined to pay more price. Marital status is an important factor.
• Literacy - Awareness and comfort level of the users with handling internet activities affect PPC ads and in turn the seller’s business targets.
• Lifestyle - The acceptance of a product is highly driven by the people’s day-to-day lifestyle.

Language

You might get into a tough situation if the ad itself falls short of conveying the right message across its consumers. In case of PPC advertising, you want the ad to show up for the customers who can comprehend and convert them.

Language targeting allows to choose the language of the websites that you would prefer the ad to appear on. For example, if an ad is in French, you probably would want it to appear it on French sites too.

For creating an ad in a target language, you need to:

• Analyze the local terms, phrases, and dialects of the language.
• Have access to the translators and native speakers.
• Keep a list of carefully researched English keywords, but use them only as a starting point.
• Brainstorm with translators for alternative keywords and test the effectiveness of those keywords using the keyword suggesting tools.
• Keep a dictionary handy but get to understand the context and culture of natives beforehand.

Every foreign language PPC campaign has its own unique challenges. With a little anticipation, caution, and planning, it can increase sales and can tap into new foreign markets.

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PPC - Creating Keyword List

Keywords are the primitive entities of PPC ads. Choosing a correct and relevant set of keywords can help design a crisp and persuasive ad to fulfill the sole purpose of increasing the number of clicks on the ad.

Various keywords have different meanings and intents. Some keywords are typically used by general users who are into early research phase and some keywords are used by expert researchers.

Categorizing the Keywords

Keywords are categorized and arranged on the basis of their potential effectiveness in an ad. Refer the following target model for creating appropriate keywords.

This model shows generic keywords or phrases used by the users to describe their demand on the outermost section. The keywords or phrases become more specific as you go towards the center of the diagram.

The keywords can be categorized as follows:

User Phrases

Impression volume on these words is vast. It is based on the interest and pastime of users. These keywords generate lowest conversion and highest CPA for all the keywords. These terms depict that the user has no intention of searching for a particular product.

Product-Complementary Phrases

These are the terms the users use along with the main product. They can be someone else’s product terms. For example, “Kindle Sleeves” in case of “Kindle Fire HD Tablet”.

Competitor Phrases

Earlier, competitor phrases were next to the brand terms in order to get a high CPA, but recently, it is not possible, and it is not a good practice to use competitor phrases.

Product Phrases

This is a list of the products or services offered by a business. It can be as lengthy as all the range of products or services. The CPA on these terms is higher than that on the brand terms. The users searching for these terms are in a decisive frame of mind.

Brand Phrases

The users who use these as keywords are easy to convert. These keywords might not produce impressions or page views in terms of volume but these phrases produce the best conversion rate.

Building a Keyword List

You can use the given target model for keyword research and building a keyword list. The basic steps of building a keyword list are:

• Create a basic list (Seed List) of usual business terms
• Expand the list using keyword research tools
• Refine the list of keywords

Let us go through the steps in detail:

Creating a Seed List

A seed list is nothing but the initial set of keywords of the seller’s business. Write down the six keyword categories in columns. Use a combination of brainstorming and investigation for categorizing the keywords into these six groups by keeping the brand and the product terms at the center of attention.

You need to build this list thoroughly, keeping in mind all the features of the product or service the seller is providing. You need to ponder and create a list of words about what all problems this particular product or service can solve.

• Research the Audience - Take the help of Internet to research and find out the following:
  • What are the terms your audience uses for describing the product or service?
  • What are the other day-to-day terms they use for the ones you created?
• Research on Search Terms Used Currently - Use your analytics tool, Google Webmaster tools, and your weblogs to find out what search terms people are using currently to reach to the seller.
• Research on More Suggestions - Make use of keyword suggesting tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner or an autocomplete tool,Soovie. Keyword planner suggests more options of keywords. Soovie lets you enter a keyword and find out what the top autocompletes are for a number of different search engines and other sites. You can try a couple of keywords to see if you missed anything.
• Research the Competitor Briefly - You can see what the competitors are bidding on using tools such as SpyFu or SEM Rush. It can be helpful to put in a few competitor names or key terms to see if there is anything you missed out.

A thorough research builds a good list of keywords.

Expanding the List

Initially, you need to think of only a few dozens of keywords, then expand, and finally refine. While expanding, you can add new potential keywords in the existing list so that the list is always up-to-date. For this, you need to:

• Review the seller’s website for new or upcoming products or services.
• Understand how people talk about the product and its features.
• Identify unique and well-performing keywords that need to be added in the list.
• Use keywords research tools for various suggestions.

Refining the List

While expanding, you may have added non-value adding or non-interesting keywords. Now it is time to refine the keywords list by eliminating the less interesting keywords and keeping only the best ones. There is no hard and fast rule to do this. Refining the keywords list is vital, as you need to take care not introduce any negative effect on the present list.

Here are some factors to consider while refining a list of keywords:

• Use keyword categories to get an idea of intent of search
  Maintain a good proportion of audience keywords and product keywords by dropping some of the less interesting audience phrases. Focus on the categories closest to the product and services.
  For example, if the seller is offering a B2B financial product, then “financial management” is a potential product phrase, but “financial management jobs” is a user phrase and therefore less interesting.
• Participate in Google Keyword Competition
  In the online tool, Google rates keyword competition from Low to High. These tools can help you find words that you might have an easier chance of winning.
• Check for the results relevance
  Enter some of the most important terms into the search engine and see what suggestions come up. You can drop the words and phrases of ambiguous meanings and make a list of potential negative keywords for any out of the topic results you may find.
• Group the Keywords Semantically
  As you go through the list of your keywords, create a column to group them semantically. For example, the phrases such as “tablets”, “tablets for sale”, and “tablets for kids” should be grouped under “tablets”. The tightly-connected groups of words can be used as the PPC ad groups. If a group is too lengthy, you can drop some of those with a lower search count.

How Long Can the Keyword List Be?

The length of a list of keywords entirely depends upon:

• The complexity of seller’s business
• The complexity of the product or service the seller is offering.
• The range of the products or service the seller is offering.

It need not be huge, unless you are developing a keywords list for a large enterprise that goes around thousands of keywords.

Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research tools help you to expand the list of keywords in most relevance of the seller’s product or service. These tools suggest numerous variations of the words from which we can select the appropriate one.

These tools include:

• Google AdWords Keyword Planner
• Word Tracker
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tools
• Keyword Discovery
• SpyFu

Keyword Match Types

Keyword match types determine how closely a user query matches with the keywords provided by the advertiser.

The keywords are matched irrespective of their case. That is, “perfumes”, “Perfumes”, and “PERFUMES”, all are treated the same.

The following table shows the keywords match types from broad match tonarrow match:

Match Type	Symbol	Example Keyword	Triggering Queries of the Ad	Example Queries
Broad Match	None	women's perfumes	They are any word in your keyword, in any order, including words closely related to the keyword, misspellings, synonyms, acronyms, split-words, and blended-words.	buy ladies perfumes
Broad Match Modifier	+Keyword	+women's +perfumes	They contain the modified phrase (or near variations, except synonyms) in any order.	perfumes for women
Phrase Match	"Keyword"	“Women’s perfumes”	They are the keywords followed by the phrase or near variations of that phrase.	perfumes for women
Exact Match	[Keyword]	[women’s perfumes]	They are the exact phrase and near variations of that exact phrase.	women’s perfumes
Negative Match	-keyword	Women	Any searches without the keyword.	Amouage Epic Man

Using keyword match types, you can help control the searches that can trigger the ad. More precise is the keyword-query match, higher is the conversion rate.

Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are an important part of the keywords list.

They make sure that an ad appears only for a particular product the seller sells. They serve as ad filters. A negative keyword ensures that an ad does not appear for that particular term and reaches only the best potential audience.

For example, here is a list of typical negative keywords for books and manufacturing:

• Books - Download, Audiobooks, Kindle, eBooks, Films, Movies, DVDs, and CDs.
• Manufacturing - second-hand, used, rental, rent, hire, repair, and service.

Negative keywords can:

• Prevent the users from browsing for other products the seller is not offering.
• Help avoid paying for useless clicks.
• Reduce average Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and increase return on the investment (ROI).
• Increase overall Click-Through-Rate (CTR) of the PPC account in the long run.
• Help create more relevant keyword groups with higher CTR.
• Raise the Quality Scores.
• Lower the investment cost.

Adding negative keywords is an important task in PPC strategy, which is scheduled once in a month. It is scheduled even more frequently, in case of large ads.

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