Is Your AdWords Ad Really Getting the Message Across?

Given the ever-increasing complexity of the AdWords platform with new(ish) reports such as dimension reporting, ad extension performance, device segmentation etc. it’s easy to spend all of our time looking at the in-depth details of our data…. But, what about the basics?

Your AdWords ads are the very first representation of your business that users see. Your adverts are the deciding factor on whether a user will be exposed to your website or simply move on to one of your competitors without giving you a second thought. Because of this, it’s extremely important to ensure your ads are set up in a way that tells users exactly what they need to know to:

a) Decide whether you’re offering the service or product they’re looking for.

b) Identify whether your product or service is appropriate for them personally.

c) Sell them on the fact that they should do business with your instead of your competitors.

In order to ensure you’ve got all of the above covered, here are some things you should always be sure to keep in mind when putting together your AdWords messaging:

1) Ensure “Keyword to Advert” relevancy is tight.

This is really a no-brainer, however given that it’s by far the most important point when it comes to writing an advert, I had to include it. Ideally you want to include a user’s exact search query in your advert heading. To cater to this, your AdWords account structure should contain 1 AdGroup for each keyword – or at the very most around 10 keywords. If possible, a mention of the keyword within one of the description lines will help too. This strategy ensures maximum relevancy to a user’s search which holds 2 benefits; You’ll see a strong CTR (“Click Through Rate”) meaning more traffic to your website, and you’ll also obtain a strong quality score for your account meaning lower CPCs (“Cost Per Click”) in the long term.

2) Highlight your points of difference.

Even if you have an advert that is perfectly relevant to what a user is searching for, chances are that the user in question has a Google search result page full of other relevant ads from your competitors. The key to incising users to click on your ads instead of your competitor’s ads is to offer them something that your competitors do not. Whether it be free delivery, a 20% discount, a particular accreditation or a money back guarantee, mentioning a point of different can have massive impacts on your advert CTR and even on your final conversion rate. Ensure all ads mention a point of difference!

3) Mention service and/or delivery location.

Mentioning service and/or delivery location in your advert is extremely important for 2 main reasons. Firstly, it makes your message more relevant to a user who is within your service/delivery range meaning people who can use your service or product are more likely to click your ad, and secondly it qualifies your traffic, potentially stopping people who do not reside within your service/delivery range from clicking your ad and thus wasting your marketing budget.

4) Constantly test different ads.

Once you’ve got all of the above points covered off, it’s important to create different variations of your ads to see which format your audience responds to best. For example, you might find that the ads which mention your point of different in description line 1 perform better than mentioning location first for a particular keyword, and vice versa for another keyword. In order to ensure that your ad format is set up in an optimal way for each AdGroup, It’s best to create at least 3 different ad variations for each AdGroup so that you can test their performance against each other, and then pause any of the under-performers.

Now that you’ve taken care of the above fundamentals, it’s really a matter of testing different things, such as use of particular symbols (e.g. “&” instead of “and”), explanation points etc. to see what best captures the attention of your audience.

If you’ve got any other ideas on how to improve AdWords ad messaging, feel free to let us know in the comments section!