Lead generation is one of the tougher challenges among paid search advertising. An even bigger challenge lies within generating qualified leads. This tends to be a problem within PPC because we know the more traffic we drive to our clients’ sites, typically the greater our chances are of obtaining leads. But obtaining the most leads isn’t worth spending money; generating qualified leads is. One way to qualify customers to your site lies within your ad text. By first qualifying people to your site through your ad text this increases the chances that someone that does turn into a lead is a qualified lead.
Below I’ve listed 4 ways to make your ad text qualify customers to your site.

1. Tell people what you want them to do. If you have a form you want a user to complete then say so. If you want them to download a pdf or whitepaper, then say so. If someone doesn’t want to download a whitepaper or fill out a request form, they won’t click on your ad. Don’t make these actions the main focus of your ad text, however, be sure to give benefits first and foremost. You can keep your action requests to a minimum, and say Request Info Here, SignUp Today, Download Whitepaper, etc.

2. Include Price Points: Another way to qualify your customers is by adding price points into your ad text. I usually will add these in the last line of my text or if I have room, in my ad text title. If someone is looking for a gift for Christmas and only wants to spend $50, and your item is $200, perhaps think about putting that price point in your ad. Of course you’ll get fewer clicks – but the clicks you do get should be people who are willing to pay $200.

3. Announce Your Target: If you’re a B2B (business-to-business) or a B2C (business–to-customer) then say so in your ad text! Many times I put in my ads that ‘we work with large companies’ or ‘customized solutions for companies’ so that smaller companies don’t click-through my ad. If your client sells or buys something and works mainly with customers, say something like, “We Buy Artist Paintings” or “We Sell Artist Paintings.” Be clear, concise and to the point.

4. Avoid ‘Disqualifying’ People: Don’t get in the mode where you’re taking up most of your ad text trying to disqualify customers. For one of my clients, I could easily say, we work with large companies, no job seekers please (since we tend to get job seekers fill out our forms). But adding ‘no job seekers’ takes up too much space in your ad text and doesn’t allow enough room to engage the potential customer about your business/service.

I’m not sure there is a client out there that can’t somehow use these qualifiers in their ads to weed out non-qualified traffic. Think about your target audience, and think about the people you don’t want to your site. Try to avoid sending mixed messages to customers or business’ about your services or products. Don’t be afraid to highlight exactly what you’re looking for in your ad text.

When you load new keywords into your campaign, what is your initial bidding strategy? There has been some recent discussion on the best practices for setting bids on brand new keywords and I thought I’d throw in my two cents. If you want to quickly determine the keywords that will best enhance your PPC efforts, I suggest hitting the ground running, rather than limping.

There are a number of reasons to hit the ground running, and here are just a few:

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Low Click-through Rate

Before you can worry about your conversion rate, or the quality of your conversions, you first need to get users to click on your ad! The realty on SERPs is getting more crowded each quarter, and drawing a user’s attention to your ad, and inspiring them to take action (i.e. click on your PPC ad), is one of the core challenges of pay-per-click management. If your CTR isn’t soaring like it should, here some quick fixes:

1. Write new ad texts! I know that may seem obvious, but it needs to be said. Take your best performing ad text, pause the rest, and use this remaining ad as your control ad. Ask yourself a few questions: what made your best ad successful; why did the the other ads fail? Also, don’t forget to review your competition to see how you can differentiate your message, and call-to-action. Determine which phrases, benefits and headlines work best, then write those new ad texts.
2. Once you’ve inserted your new ad texts - get to testing! For successful split testing you need to set your ad serving option within AdWords to Rotate (show ads more evenly). Within Yahoo you need to set your match to ‘Advance’ rather than ‘Standard.’ If you do not choose these setting, AdWords and Yahoo will determine and display your best performing ad texts.

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When managing pay-per-click accounts, there is one activity that will improve your performance more easily than any other – effectively managing ad texts. Some would argue that bid management, optimizing for Quality Score or a myriad of other activities would take the cake. However, it is imperative that you have a strong first impression with searchers.  Consider the following:

"Ad copy is the only part of your PPC campaign that a searcher actually sees. A searcher does not see your keyword list, bids, day parting settings, or daily budget. Those precious few words that make up your ad copy are the only insight into your offer that a searcher uses to make the decision to click on your ad."

Within this frame of reference, ad texts essentially become the “lowest hanging fruit” within your PPC accounts. So, how do you take advantage of this to improve your performance? Follow these simple steps:

1. Place Keywords in Your Ad Copy. This is the obvious one! Having your keywords within the headline and/or the body of the ad will increase click-through rates. Doing this will also further your efforts to increase your Quality Score in Google and amplify your overall relevancy.
2. Test, Test and Test Again. Split testing of ad texts is one of the most valuable tools of the various PPC services. AdWords, MSN adCenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing all allow for split testing of ad copy. To improve your PPC performance, you can test every aspect of your ad copy: messaging, calls to action, headlines, even URL’s! Any of these pieces of the ad text could potentially boost your CTR and conversion rate. According to my Google representatives, most advertisers don’t take advantage of split testing within AdWords. Their straight forward recommendation was to have at least 3-4 ads in active rotation at all times.
3. Write Compelling Ad Copy. If you write in generalizations, you will forever be your own worst enemy. Be as precise as possible considering the keywords in your ad group. And beyond merely being precise, you must be compelling. PPC is a competitive business and your ad has to stand out. Write benefit driven ads. In other words, are you the answer/solution to the searcher’s needs? If you can’t answer that question, write a new benefit driven ad and test it out!

There are countless other techniques and nuances to managing PPC ad texts, but these 3 steps will get you well on your way to improving performance. Remember that ad copy is the only part of your campaign visible to your potential customers. Because of this fact, effectively managing your ads can easily and quickly create positive change for your ongoing PPC efforts.

Google recently declined some of my ad groups because the display and destination URLs had different domain names. However, the two URLs lead users to the same landing page. The unfortunate side to this is that I received an e-mail from Google telling me that some of my ads had been declined one full day after I had added the ad groups. Therefore, those ad groups were turned off and I missed a full day’s worth of traffic.

The point of the story?

Lesson 1: make sure your display and destination URLs are of the same root address;

Lesson 2: check back frequently on any changes you make to your ad text or you could lose potential traffic.

Using negative keywords in your campaigns allows you to filter out unwanted or irrelevant traffic to your site. Negative keywords eliminate the chances that your ads might show up for a keyword that you don’t offer. Negative keywords can help you control the clicks you receive, so they remain relevant clicks, and you’re only paying for relevant traffic.

Of course, you don’t want to overdo your negative keyword list; therefore, it is important to do a little negative-keyword research first. In Google, under the Keyword tool, you can enter keywords for your ad group that are relevant, and if you click on the drop-down “possible negative keywords,” then run your search, it will bring up possible negative keywords for your keyword search.

Here is an example: If you’re an e-commerce site selling only women’s shoes and someone types in kids’ shoes or men’s shoes, you want to make sure that one of your ads are not triggered by these keywords. So you would add “kids” and “mens” to your negative-keyword list.

Also, there is a pool of general negative keywords that would be applicable for most campaigns. Here is a short list to consider:

free
discount
cheap
reviews
history
definition

We have found that users who are searching for “free” or “cheap” tend not to be the highest-converting traffic.

How to Add Negative Keywords to your Campaigns

In Google it’s really easy. Click on the campaign to which you want to add negative keywords. Under the tools link, click on the link that says Edit Campaign Negative Keywords. At this point you can then simply add your negative keywords into the box that says Enter Words Manually, and then click Add Keywords.

The Yahoo! keyword tool works differently from Google’s. They do not necessarily have a negative-keyword generator, but they have alternatives to this.

When building your keyword list, you can insert a small sample list within the Find Keywords field. You can then use the field Specify Words That Must not Appear in Any of the Keywords, and your negative keywords will not appear in your keyword list. For example, you could type in “used books” within the Find Keywords field, and then you can type in “rare,” “audio,” and “technical,” and these words will be excluded from your list.

Also, you can do the opposite with your keyword research: you can use the field Specify Words That Must Appear in Each Keyword. When you choose this option, your keyword list will contain keyword variations with only your required phrase. For example, within the Find Keyword field you can type in “publisher,” “book publisher,” “literary publisher,” and within the Specify Words That Must Appear in Each Keyword field you type “children.” Here is your keyword list:

child book publishing
child book publisher
publish child book
child book
child publisher
child book publishing company
self-publishing child book
story for child
child book printing
self-publish child book
child picture book publisher
the child
publisher of child story
child author
child picture book
gift for child
child story book
child storybook
Christian child book publisher
how to write and publish child book
how to get a child book published
child literature publisher
child publishing

Within Yahoo!’s interface, if you know the list of negative keywords and you want to insert them directly into your ad group, you can just go into your Tactic Settings at the ad group level and set your “excluded keywords” on the right side of the page.

Over in PPC Discussions an interesting question regarding dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) was posed:

“What I want to know is this - since having the search term in your advert improves its relevance (particularly in the headline), does DKI ensure a very relevant advert, or the opposite (does Google penalize you or reward you for using DKI to put the search term in, rather than writing a genuinely relevant advert)?”

Good question. There are two topics to touch upon here: dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) and quality score (QS). DKI within your ad does not directly affect your QS (positively or negatively). Your QS is determined by the relevancy of your ad text, keyword, and even ad group, to the user. This relevancy is derived from your ad’s click-through-rate (CTR). As long as you are improving your CTR, you are improving your QS. If DKI does this, then keep doing it!

However, here’s a rule of thumb (and I called Google to confirm my suspicion): if your ad group is set up so that it contains related keywords you, should be able to compose relevant ad texts that do not need to utilize DKI. If you find yourself having to use DKI in order to get every keyword in your ad group within your ad text, then you may have too many keywords in your ad group. Google rewards specificity and relevancy within ad texts with a higher QS. Perhaps you could take that one ad group, find themes among the keywords, and break it down into two or three ad groups? Then you wouldn’t need DKI. And if you wanted to, you could run A/B testing within each of these ad groups to see if DKI actually does increase your CTR. It’s an idea.

With the new algorithm changes from Google and Yahoo!, having a good quality score is an added challenge in the PPC world; and your ad text is a big part of having a great quality score. Here are five tips I have used personally that helped me gain control of my accounts through ad text testing.

1. Call to action: Speaking with Google and Yahoo! frequently, they suggest that when leading customers to a page where they need to fill out a form or download a whitepaper, tell the customers they also will do this in your ad text. For example, “Download our whitepaper on e-mail marketing today.” That way, users know what they’re getting into before they click. I think it’s a great idea if you’re working for conversions; if you’re just driving clicks, it may turn someone away. Use your “calls to action” wisely. This test seems to be working on some of my accounts. Nothing dramatic yet, though.

2. Keyword smothering: Yahoo! has been adamant about having your keywords smothered in your ad text title, short description, long description, and URL in order to get a great quality score. These guidelines make it harder to get creative and pull people in. I tested Yahoo!’s theory on keyword smothering. In one instance, I cleared stats for all three of my ad texts for one ad group. The first one had my keyword in every line of my text, including my URL. The second had just one instance of my keyword. Number three had the keyword in only the title and URL. The results? Strangely enough, the third ad text had a click-through rate (CTR) of 1.19%. The first ad text, with the keyword smothered, had a CTR of .93%. The second, with only one instance of my keyword, had a CTR of 0.55%. Since this seemed to prove Google and Yahoo! wrong for the time being, I will be testing this theory more in the future. But it’s something to try for yourself.

3. Dynamic ad text: Make sure you learn how to use dynamic ad text correctly before putting it into place or your ads could look strange to the user. If you have a lot of different types of keywords within one ad group, this is the best time to use dynamic ad text testing—although if you have many different keywords in one ad group, they should really be broken out into separate ad groups, but that’s another discussion. In four out of five cases in which I have tested dynamic ad text, it proved to work better than non-dynamic ad text—although I don’t usually use dynamic ad text in the descriptions, only in the title. I feel the user may catch on to our logic, and then be turned off.

4. Get creative: Take a look at your competitors’ ads. Are they just like yours? If you’re testing, you shouldn’t be afraid to get creative. You want to find the ad that works best, right? Use punctuation if you can, such as question marks or exclamation points. But most of all, get into your customers head and think of some words that might catch their attention. Marketing studies show that men tend to follow high-tech buzz words, while women are looking for deals.

5. Numbers: I’ve heard this has worked for some people but not others. Putting phone numbers in your ad text just might help your click-through rates. Some people may be looking online just to find a phone number. This might catch their attention and they may possibly click through. Or the number might just catch someone’s attention more than another ad does. You can also put in percentages or money values. I have an ad that consistently performs better and the text goes something like this: Over 40% of e-mails don’t reach the in-box. If something is on sale, put the sale price in the text. For example: Personalized Vases on Sale, $24.99. You get the point.

My point overall is that perhaps smothering your keywords in your ad text won’t always do the trick. In my experience, when I get creative is when I see the majority of my ads performing better.

One of the best features of pay-per-click advertising is the ability to test. There are numerous tools and options in AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and adCenter that allow PPC advertisers to test nearly every piece of their account. But, admittedly, this barrage of bells and whistles could make the average-Joe-PPC-beginner go crazy – or worse yet, abandon PPC altogether! I would recommend to any advertiser interested in testing their PPC variables to begin with ad texts. As such, today’s PPC primer is on learning the basics of testing ad copy.

Why Should You Test Ad Copy?

Many of you reading this post will already know the answer to this question, but it never hurts to have a reminder. Testing ad copy will allow you to incrementally experiment with variations in your messaging to determine which ad texts have the highest click-through-rate (CTR) and/or conversion rate. This process is often referred to as A/B Testing or “split testing” and is extremely important to the overall health and growth of a PPC account.

How to Get the Most Accurate Results

Ensuring that your PPC account is operating with the correct settings is very important to obtaining accurate results from your testing. What this means in terms of testing ad copy is that you must have your ad delivery options set to rotate evenly (all ads in a test will accrue the same amount of impressions). In Google AdWords, this is quite simple. Enter one of your campaigns and click on “Edit Campaign Settings.” From here, scroll down to the “Advanced Settings” section and click the radio button next to “Rotate.”

This setting will now rotate your ads evenly over time. The alternative is to let Google determine the best ads in your ad groups by CTR alone – which takes all control of an accurate test away from you!

Yahoo! has a similar feature with their “Optimize Ads” option. To get accurate testing results: enter one of your campaigns, select all of your ad groups and click the “Optimize Ad Display” button. This will bring up a dialogue box with the options of saying yes or no to optimization. Just say no.

This is the simplest way to adjust the Yahoo!’s ad delivery options. However, you can also access this feature through each ad group’s settings.

MSN’s adCenter is a step behind when it comes to testing ad copy. At this time, adCenter automatically optimizes your ads based on CTR. There is not an option to turn this off.

How to Get Started

Let’s assume that you only have a single ad in your ad groups – this will become your control ad with which to test against. Use the control ad as your starting point when writing new ads. If I can make one point clear it would be this: test one change in ad copy at a time. If you want to update the headline, change only the headline. If you want to update a call-to-action in line 2 of the description, change only the call-to-action, etc. Making incremental changes will allow you to quickly make the right decisions based on the outcome of your split testing. In this example, I am testing the effectiveness of my headline:

What Should You Test in Your Ad Copy?

The list of ad text variables is quite extensive and can vary dramatically depending on the product, service or niche an ad is written for. To get you thinking about what kinds of things to test, here is a great list from the AdWords blog:

• Different emphasis: product description, call-to-action, or promotional offer
• Including the brand name versus simply describing the offering
• Including the price in ad text versus including a discount or other special offer to differentiate your business
• Including an audience-specific message such as ‘Perfect for Couples’
• Placement of certain messages in your ad text: headline, line 2, or line 3

When to Determine a Winning Ad

As a rule of thumb, I typically wait until both ads (or however many ads are being tested) have all generated at least 30 clicks. This is to ensure that each ad has had equal opportunity to be displayed and will therefore provide accurate data. For those who are more statistically inclined, there are other options. For one, you can use the Teasley Statistical Calculator which will give a much more accurate depiction of your split testing endeavors.

When you’ve determined a winner in the testing of your ad copy, it isn’t time to quit and move on. No sir – it’s time to write a new ad and test another variable in your ad text! Make testing ad copy a priority on your PPC management task list. Keep up-to-date on your tests and consistently try to out-do yourself in terms of creativity and trying to think like your customers. Good luck, and happy testing!

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