Google AdWords: How to Write Effective Ads

Target your audience. Exclude sectors of the population based on language, location and even weather or rural/urban, depending on what you are marketing.

Narrow the field. Make sure your ad is only being shown when the keywords typed in are specific to your site. If you sell dog sweaters, you don’t want the ad popping every time someone pops the word sweaters – you want to clarify with ‘pet’, ‘dog’ or ‘puppy’.

Test your ads, in fact, test several. This will allow you to compare different approaches and find the one that works best. You want the highest click through ratio followed by the highest conversion.

Track your results assiduously. You are the one in control, so take control! Monitor your click through ratio, your conversions and take the time to spot where customers go once they hit your site. Is a particular inner page showing a lot of traffic? Maybe it deserves to be a landing page in its own right.

Include your keywords in your ad for higher visibility. Also use ‘hook’ words like ‘get’, ‘learn’, ‘best’ and ‘new’. If you are having a high click through and a low conversion, make sure you add your price (it can be your rock bottom price, without add-ons, shipping or handling) to your ad. This will cut down on visitors clicking the ad simply to surf, and wasting your pay per click budget.

Use a call to action. Buy Today, Save Now, Download for Free. Encourage people to act on your ad, not simply look at it. Here is where you can sell the benefits of your product or service. Tell them what it will do for them, and make them visualize it!

Explain why you are the best bet among all your competitors. You have to be the biggest or the best; have the highest quality or the lowest price. Don’t get beat out by your rivals simply because they write better ad copy than you!

Link to the best landing page for ROI! This is where that tracking comes into play; if you can ascertain what product people who enter your site through that ad tend to purchase. Then you can optimize a landing page particularly for that item, and promote an up-sell as well!

Learning how to word your ads can make all the difference in the world! The main thing is to keep your eye on the prize, which is to say, sales. You need to optimize for click through first, of course, but your ROI is the main point here and you will need to ensure that all click-throughs are potential customers.

Next you will move on to your landing pages, which we will cover tomorrow!

Happy clicking!