There is most definitely an art to creating effective AdWords adverts. In my opinion the business owner needs to be heavily involved in the writing of adverts, as they better understand the products and services they sell. It is essential to fully understand a USP before creating adverts, in order to make yourself stand out from competitors.
Creating AdWords adverts takes time to perfect, and you should ideally be reviewing your existing adverts and subsequently creating new adverts to split test on a monthly basis. You willcertainly find that your skills improve over time, as will your Click Through Rate(CTR) – which is the percentage of people viewing your advert that choose to click it and visit your website.
When creating an AdWords advert, it is important to remember you have very few characters to work with. The headline of the advert needs to be up to 25 characters and the remaining 2 lines of the advert and the “display URL” need to be up to 35 characters long. This really is not a lot of space to work with!
An important point to note is that whenever a word in your advert matches one of the keywords your potential visitor has entered into the Google search box, the word appears in bold. This has the effect of making the advert stand out more than the surrounding adverts which do not have bold. Therefore your aim is to ensure you have as much of the advert as possible in bold to capture attention.
Headline
The headline of the AdWords advert needs to closely match the keywords your potential visitor will have used when searching. These keywords should match your product or service.
For example:
Bristol Bouncy Castles
Hire A Bouncy Castle From £45
Many Different Sizes Available
Castles.BristolPartyHire.co.uk
In the example above the headline matches the keywords Bristol Bouncy Castles, which we are imagining someone has typed into Google in an internet search. You will note that every time Google finds the word Bristol, Bouncy, or Castles it will also put this into bold too.
A very common mistake is to put the name of the company in the headline. The advert is not about you, or your company. The visitor wants to make sure that they will be taken to a website that matches what they are searching for! Make sure your advert heading matches the keyword the visitor is searching for, as closely as possible.
Advert creation
When creating the main 2 lines of your advert, you need to capture their attention with a compelling message. Here are some tips for writing effective messages:
These are the most powerful words in the English language (according to a Yale University study) so aim to include one or more of these if possible:
- You
- Money
- Save
- New
- Results
- Easy
- Health
- Safety
- Love
- Discovery
- Proven
- Guaranteed
Include figures wherever possible. For example, are you a locksmith who is available 24 hours per day? Then write in your advert “Call 24/7”. Do you offer free 24 hour delivery? Then include this in your advert! However a common error I see is to include the telephone number in the advert – possibly in the hope that people will just call immediately rather than click the advert first. This is unlikely to work, and uses valuable advert space.
Prices
A useful tip is to include the price in your advert if you might otherwise attract the wrong type of visitors. For example, if a company only offers Excel courses during the day and not evening or weekend classes, so we include the price of £225. Visitors seeking the evening and weekend classes are put off by the price as they are usually seeking cheaper college courses. They therefore do not click the advert, which saves money in the long term.
Consider asking a question which conceals a benefit. This will increase your Click Through Rate (CTR) hugely! For example
Excel Courses
Did You Know Attending Our Excel
Courses Can Enhance Your Career?
ComputerTrainingSolutions.co.uk
Split Testing
Write multiple adverts to test against each other. For the same set of keywords, ensure you create between 2 and 4 adverts. This will allow you to test different messages and appeal to different personality types. Run them against each other and see which advert performs best. As soon as you identify the worst performing advert (which will have the lowest Click Through Rate), delete it and create another one. You should always be aiming to beat your currently best performing advert!
A common mistake is to leave the adverts running indefinitely against each other. Ensure you monitor the adverts on a regular basis – at least monthly and ideally weekly.
Using the Display URL
The display URL is the web address where you will be sending people. It is worthwhile capitalising the first letter of each individual word within the URL e.g. ComputerTrainingSolutions.co.uk. This ensures each word stands out, and it also helps to build brand awareness for your name even if the potential visitor does not click on your advert. Additional tips including using subdomains which are based on keywords. Subdomains are folders or different areas within your website. An example is www.Castles.BristolPartyHire.co.uk where the word Castles has been added as a subdomain
Do come and share some of the adverts that have worked well for you!
