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PPC Me Now: Basic Components of a Paid Ad
For our last PPC Me Now blog, we covered AdWords bidding and Quality Score. Today, we’ll cover the basic components of a paid ad.
Paid text ads within AdWords are fairly simple. At a very basic level, a paid ad has five components (aside from Ad Extensions, which will be covered in the next lesson):
1. Headline
2. Description Lines
3. Display URL
4. Destination URL
5. Landing Page
Here is what an ad (also known as ad copy) typically looks like:
And here is an illustration of the elements listed above:
Let me go into more detail about each part of the ad.
Headline (25 Characters)
The headline is the clickable portion of the advertisement and is also larger and more distinct than the rest of the ad copy, so it’s important to make it relevant to the searcher. And remember, you only have 25 characters, so use them well!
Generally, you want to make the headline title case. This means that you want to treat it like it’s a title of a book (e.g. The Adventures of PPC.
Let’s say someone was searching for “custom green t-shirts.” Here is a sample headline that I would make:
Green Custom T-Shirts
Ideally, like in the example, you could capture all of the keywords within the search query. This ensures that those words are bolded and more likely to grab the searcher’s attention. Unfortunately, this is not always possible. If someone searched for “green t-shirts” and the same ad happened to be triggered by AdWords, this is what the searcher would see in the headline:
Green Custom T-Shirts
AdWords uses the words within your ads to determine its relevancy to the searcher and bolds the most relevant words, grabbing the searcher’s attention.
Description Lines (35 Characters Each)
The next two lines are the description lines. On a typical text ad, you put a benefit statement on the first description line and then a call to action on the second one.
Description Line #1 – Benefit Statement
A benefit statement is something that makes the client worth someone’s time. What do they have to offer the searcher? It could vary from being a locally-owned business to free shipping or even a discount.
Description Line #2 – Call to Action (CTA)
A call to action is telling the searcher what to do next—you’re telling them to do a specified action so they are not confused. This could be something like “Contact us today” or “Call us today” to “Add to Cart” or “Subscribe Now.”
Note about mobile ads: In some mobile-preferred ads (advertisements targeted towards mobile users), the second description line may disappear—add a call to action on the first line of the ad. Additionally, in mobile ads, many people are looking for geo-qualified terms (like Maryland). Use these terms in your ad copy.
Display URL vs. Destination URL
Destination URLs and display URLs are different from each other.
Display URL – what is seen within the advertisement. It is no longer than 35 characters long.
Destination URL – the website where the advertisement is actually directed to. This CAN be longer than 35 characters. The destination URL directs to a landing page:
Know that destination and display URLs do NOT have to be the same when you are doing a text advertisement.
Landing Pages
Landing pages are the pages that your destination URL directs to. This is the actual website that the destination URL sends people. This website NEEDS to be relevant to the ad and the keywords.
If it is NOT relevant, this will be reflected on the Quality Score as well as the conversion rate (they will both be low) and will increase the bounce rate (the percentage of users who leave the website without visiting another page) for the webpage.
Optimizing Your PPC Ad Components
1. Have keywords that you are targeting in the ad group in the actual ad copy. Having keywords in the ad text will not only increase Quality Score, but it will also show those keywords in bold.
2. Stand out from your competitors. What do you do that they don’t? What is the audience that you want to reach? Keep these questions in mind.
3. Use statistical significance—make sure that you have enough data to reach your conclusion when testing new ads.
4. Test only one thing at a time. The possibilities are endless—from different headlines, descriptions, or display URLS to various capitalization and punctuation.
5. Always test new things. Don’t stop testing your ads!
More Advanced Ad Creation
{Dynamic Keyword Insertion}
Dynamic Keyword Insertion, or DKI, is a more advanced, tricky thing that you can do with online ads. It utilizes the keywords you are bidding on (not what is actually searched by the user) within an ad group in order to trigger it on an advertisement. Let me walk you through setting up a DKI ad.
1. Have a list of keywords. Here is an example list:
[blue corona]
“marketing at blue corona”
“blue corona marketing”
“blue corona internet marketing”
+blue +corona +ppc
“bleu corona”
“blue coronas”
2. Ensure that these are grouped together in a logical sense. In this example, it all has to do with Blue Corona and internet marketing.
3. Next, make sure that these make grammatical sense—are there any spelling orders? Does the phrase make sense? Did you use a plural that may be incorrect? The keyword “bleu corona” is a misspelling. Either pause this keyword or do not use this Ad Group. The keyword “blue coronas” is a plural that should not be dynamically inserted into the ad.
4. Now that you know about the grammatical nature of DKI, know that if the phrase is too long, then it will trigger the default text (the text found after the “:”).
5. Now that you have a good list of keywords combined, you’re ready to learn how to actually create the DKI feature. Let’s go over the structure of it for headlines:
- Use these brackets {} when utilizing DKI.
- Use the word “keyword” in order to determine how the text in your ads will appear.
- You can use DKI before or after a word—just remember the character limitations!
- Here’s a funny example of when DKI has been used poorly, but it shows that you can use DKI in several places within the ad: • This is the basic code that you want to enter within the ad in order to do DKI: {Keyword: defaulttext}
- {KeyWord: Blue Corona} – Keywords will be in title case because the K & W are capitalized. Below is an example of how a headline would show up (when “marketing at blue corona” triggers the ad): Marketing at Blue Corona
- {keyword: Blue Corona} – keywords will be in lowercase, unless the triggered phrase is too long; then it will trigger the default text, “Blue Corona.” If it is triggered by “marketing at blue corona” here is what will appear: marketing at blue corona
- Here is how to use different capitalization styles within the DKI. You use the same code above, but the capitalization styles are different for:
- keyword – No DKI capitalization within the ad copy—all lowercase
- Keyword – The first DKI word is capitalized
- KeyWord – Every word within the DKI text is capitalized
- KEYword – Every letter in first word of the DKI text is capitalized
- KEYWord – Every letter in the first word and the first letter of the second within the DKI text are capitalized
- KEYWORD – Every letter is capitalized in the DKI text
For example, given the keywords and the ad text below…
You can see that the ad copy is different for each different query:
While it shows up for the first two keywords, the last keyword, “gourmet chocolate truffles,” is too long to be in the headline. Therefore, the default word, “Chocolate,” appears instead.
DKI can be applied throughout the ad copy—the headline, description, and even the display URL.
Ad Customizers
This can be found in the “Shared Library” portion of Google AdWords under “Business Data.”
In order to create the ad customizers, you’ll need to define the attributes that you want to use. Google provides a template that you can download. There are many attributes that you can use for this data and many different snippets that you can include in order to customize it to your business’s needs.
For instance, you could have a sale that lasts a certain amount of days. Instead of updating your ads every day during the sale period, you can save time and use an ad customizer. Once you add a snippet to your ad within the same brackets you use for DKI {}, you can use a function in order to automatically display the number of days left in the sale.
Overall, ad customizers allow for easier, more dynamic ads. You can have a tailored message, countdowns, and more!
Looking to get more leads with paid search advertising? Whether you’re looking to fine tune your existing paid search campaign or you’re starting from scratch and need a complete campaign setup, the paid search specialists at Blue Corona can help with every aspect of your PPC campaign management.
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About The Author: Blue Corona's Editorial Staff is determined to help you increase your leads and sales, optimize your marketing costs, and differentiate your brand by passing on our tribal knowledge. The team vigilantly stays on top of the latest in digital marketing, bringing you the top insights with expert commentary. Want to see something on our blog you haven't seen yet? Shoot us an email and our marketing team will get to work.
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The information on this website is for informational purposes only; it is deemed accurate but not guaranteed. It does not constitute professional advice. All information is subject to change at any time without notice. Contact us for complete details.
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