8 Steps To An Effective Pay Per Click (PPC) Advert

Pay-per-click adverts look simple but the best examples use every trick in the book in order to stand out. Business writer Rachel Miller explains how a simple title, copy and link can become a powerful advertising tool

Pay-per-click ads are also known as sponsored links. They appear next to search results on Google and Yahoo — on the right hand side of the search results page and sometimes also at the top.

Pay-per-click adverts have three main components: a heading, a short piece of copy and a link. Despite their apparent simplicity, each of these elements must work hard to ensure the advert stands out from the rest.

1. Use keywords to show relevance

Make sure your ad uses your keywords in your ad title and text — preferably at the beginning. If you haven’t chosen your keywords, then do this first — it will help you write your ad.

There are two good reasons to include your keywords in your ad — firstly, it makes your ad look relevant. So if someone has searched for oak flooring, they’ll look for the ad that has that phrase in the title rather than a general flooring company. Secondly, if the words used in the search are in your ad copy, then they will appear in bold, making your ad stand out.

2. Write a compelling heading

Most people look at the heading first so it has to be good. Headings are usually descriptive phrases that highlight your product or service, such as "Edinburgh Double Glazing". However, the heading can also convey benefits, such as "30% Off Sofa-Beds" or "Award-Winning Italian Restaurant".

If you’re looking to build your brand or have a well-known company, it could be worth putting your company name in the heading — "Laptops at John Lewis", for example. However, it’s usually best to avoid using your company name in the heading. Firstly, your company name already appears in the URL at the bottom of the ad and secondly, most searches are for products and services, such as “plumbers in Leeds”, rather than specific company names.

3. Have a clear call to action

A call to action encourages people to click on your ad. Compelling words and phrases include: "Buy now", "Sign up today", "Order" or "Get a Quote". This gives people a clear idea of what they can achieve when they click on the link that will take them to the landing page on your website. Your call to action should be compelling and specific — "50% Off All Children’s Shoes"; "Buy Valentine’s Flowers"; "Cheap Cameras & Camcorders".

4. Include key information

It’s worth including some key offer details in your ad. By including prices in your ad text, for example, you know that anyone that clicks through is interested in your product at that price. As a result, more clicks (which you are paying for) become customers.

5. Stand out by being different

It’s vital to differentiate yourself from your competitors. Highlight your unique selling points — the products, prices or services that make your business different and better. Analyse your competitors’ ads to ensure that you stand out from the crowd.

6. Exploit the power of capital letters

Using capitals on the initial letters of every word can make your advert stand out. “On Sale Now”, for example, is more noticeable then “on sale now”. This applies to the link as well as the text. By capitalising the first letter of each word in your link, your web address instantly becomes easier to read. For instance, www.FlowersOnTheHighStreet.com is much clearer than www.flowersonthehighstreet.com.

7. Link to a relevant landing page

Many online advertisers spend a lot of time developing a great pay-per-click campaign, only to neglect their own website. Pay-per-click advertising is about taking potential customers through key steps — the search, browsing the results, clicking on the link, taking action on the company’s website — and each one is equally important.

Your website landing page — the destination for anyone that clicks on your ad — must be relevant to the ad and must encourage visitors to take the next step. That could be making an enquiry, signing up to a service or putting in an order. One click should take prospects to the right place, so don’t link to your home page.

8. Test your ad copy

It’s hard to predict how effective different advertising messages will be. So it’s worth testing different titles or calls to action. If you are advertising on Google AdWords, for instance, you can run three or four different ads in one ad group and AdWords will rotate your ads, analyse your 'click through rate' (CTR) and highlight the best performing ad.

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Pay-Per-Click Advertising Tips

There are several ways to go about attracting traffic to your website; Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose from, along with developing an SEO, or search engine optimization campaign.

Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. One of the differences is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign versus months for a good SEO campaign.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that
most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires a bid for a “per-click” basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site.

There is the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results of other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective.

One of the greatest advantages is that you never have to tweak your web pages to change your position in
search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO
campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click
campaign is pay a fee.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you’re up and running. It doesn’t demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier – and more effective – the process will be.

The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain your position – which can obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site is worth.

You can compute this value by dividing the profit
you make on your website over a given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same time period.

For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were 25,000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50 cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which
your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click.

Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost
considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way
around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual hit.

The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can about search engine keyword research. The good news is there isn’t a limit to the amount of keywords you can add to your bid because additional keywords do not add additional cost.

This translates into a lot less hassle for you because there is no need to optimize your site to index a particular set of keywords.

Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than others are, but they will not cost you anything except time to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid.

Of the popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one now called Microsoft Ad Center/Yahoo provides an online tool that will give you the data on how often particular keywords are entered into their search engine.

I have effectively used Microsoft Ad Center to get instant results and generating hundreds of leads and sales using this method.

I highly advice in investing in a training course or membership that offers you a step by step training that walks you through the setting up and placing your PPC Ads because if you don’t know what you’re doing you can easily blow your entire budget and not get results!

They also offer suggestions for keywords after you enter a description of your site.

Number one crucial part of your pay per click ad is, ” Your Headline “. If your headline is not enticing enough then they will not bother reading the rest of your Ad.

I have tested this extensively to tell you without a doubt that your headline needs to have to right message to attract people to read more.

In pay-per-click, the written description is also crucial. You must understand that the objective of your description is not to generally attract visitors, but to be as specific as possible so that only those visitors who are likely to buy your service or product go to your site.

You must use expert marketing copy to guarantee that your description is both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal candidates to your site. This description is your most powerful tool to insure that your bid is profitable.

Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you constantly monitor your bid. It is very important that you bear in mind that the results of the top search engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are Microsoft and Adwords, usually appear on other popular search engines.

Because of this, the competition for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click to yield a profit.

If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on
that particular keyword and try another one.

Remember: when you pay too much per click to make a profit, you are in essence losing the bidding war.

Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in
place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least on a daily basis until you have a winning keyword that is profitable for you and your business.

Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis of visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends.

Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and will also insure that your pay-per-click campaign is a success.

It is also important to know what’s working now in pay per click whether you are using Facebook PPC or Microsoft Ad Center to place your paid advertising.

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