Paid Search, or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can be a very effective way to drive targeted traffic to your website.  We often recommend short-term PPC campaigns to attract traffic to new website which have not yet built up their organic search ranking.  It is also useful to drive traffic to your website for a specific promotion or event.

The wording you use in your PPC advertisement is critical to its effectiveness.  A poorly worded ad, with no calls to action is unlikely to deliver the results you are looking for.  Getting the ‘copy’ right is therefore essential and because you are restricted in the number of characters you can use, this can be quite a tricky problem. Even if  you are used to preparing copy for print writing, corporate copywriting or even online copywriting, you might still find it quite challenging to create attention-grabbing ads in such a small space.  Of course WSI IMS can help you set up your PPC campaigns effectively but here are a few tips to help you on the way:

PPC copywriting tips

• Don’t force yourself to use up all the permitted characters. Whilst there are only a small number of characters available for PPC ads, it is often possible to say what you want to say in a ‘punchy’ attention grabbing manner using less than the character limit – If you can, then do it! By trying to pad out your ad, just to use up the space, you can dilute the effectiveness of your message.
• Be specific with your copy.  Avoid using wooly phrases such as ‘best price’, instead say ‘from under £25’.  If you are clear in your message you are less likely to get ‘wasted clicks’.   People know what ‘from under £25′ means, whilst ‘best prices’ doesn’t mean anything and if you are over the visitors price budget, their visit has cost you money with no return!
• Check out the competition – what are your competitors saying in their PPC ads offering the same products or services as you?   These can give you an idea of both what to include and what to avoid.
• Use your keywords or keyword phrases in your ads. Try to target your exact keyword phrase and use the phrase both in the title (headline) of the PPC ad and also in the first line (if you can).
• Use capital letters and exclamation marks  – but sparingly. If you’ve done your homework in terms of competitor research and you’ve established that you will be using similar wording to that of your competitors,  you can try to capitalise the keywords to differentiate your ad but never write the entire ad in capital letters.
• Don’t use words which do not mean anything or are intangible.  Everyone says that their product or service is ‘the best’ or ‘the cheapest’ but what does that mean exactly?  Don’t fall into the trap of using the same words that you see (and ignore) every day in countless ads, both online and offline.  Make your ad different and make it memorable.  If you’ve got a celebrity client or work with a major brand then by all means do some name dropping both to reinforce your credibility and to draw some interest to your ad.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment below or visit WSI IMS – WSI Digital Marketing Services for UK Business.