Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Writing Good Quality Copy For Your PPC Ad

By Brian Basch

There are lots of different ways to make your PPC ad campaign work. Start by picking keywords, bid for them, then make sure your ads are working and making money for you. However, the way the ad reads is very important, too. It's the component that convinces the customer to click.

You will have a sum total of three lines worth of text to sell your site to customers. It has to be good, or else people will read it and forget it in an instant. To get noticed you need to encourage people to read your ad. Then you need to encourage them to click on it. PPC ad campaigns can fail so easy.

Conventional marketing does well using long copy, and framing the product in a story. Unfortunately, this method doesn't work when all you have to use is three lines. You'll have to attract attention and get a click with very few words indeed. That means that all of them have to be good ones. If you want to make your PPC campaign work, one of the most important things is understanding how to make those lines do their job. Go from writing sales novels to ad haiku!

Like many other situations, the 80/20 rule applies. Here, it means that the majority of an ad's effectiveness is in the headline - about 20% of the ad itself. This is true in other forms of writing, and it's definitely true in a PPC ad campaign. In fact, in a PPC campaign, this is even more true, since there's no way to make up for a bad headline.

Be sure that everything about your ad is appealing. Trying to get the right words is a chore, but you can do it with some careful thought. Good spelling and punctuation is a good start, there's nothing more unappealing than an obvious mistake in advertising. It just cries out for the customer to turn away fast. It's almost like a form of shame.

Make sure you get attention first. There will be more ads than just yours in the search page sidebar. If you want to get customers, you'll have to stand out. Make your headline and copy appealing and attention grabbing. If possible, pique the viewer's curiosity - make him or her want to know what's behind that ad.

Keyword placement is important, too. Use your keyword phrase (or a variant of it that makes sense as a sentence) in the headline itself. Then, make sure your next line is relevant and eye-catching. Don't use meaningless phrases such as "quality service" or tell the customer how long you've been in business. Even if you offer great products and services, viewers need something that will make you stand out from the rest.

The last line is important, too. So use it to tell the customer why your product is the best, or give them an offer they can't refuse like a special. This really does increase the chances of an eventual sale. Don't use deceptive wording, it might get you more clicks, but you've little chance of converting the click to a sale.

PPC campaigns aren't easy to write and require some careful thought Make sure your ad gets attention by following these guidelines and you'll be seeing lots of clicks in no time.

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