A title, description and display URL packed into about 70 characters—that's the extent of a paid search listing. Differentiation within these tight boundaries is tricky, to say the least. That's why the best place to start when developing paid search ads is inside searchers' heads.
"Search is a tool for goal completion. As a searcher, I'm focused on what I'm looking for and little else," says Craig Greenfield, director of local marketing solutions at Performics, a Chicago-based search engine marketing firm. "I only read the headline and the URL, and if it doesn't capture the intent of what my search was, I'm not reading the copy that's in the ad unit."
As the paid search environment gets more crowded, marketers must adopt tighter practices and more targeted strategies to continue to drive ROI. Let's explore some of those tactics as they relate to ad copy.
Keying in on Keywords
To deliver on searchers' expectations—as well as search engines'—ad copy needs to, at minimum, repeat the keyword in the title and, if possible, in the description, says Patricia Hursh, president and founder of SmartSearch Marketing, a search engine marketing firm in Boulder, Colo. While she notes that every tactic is worth testing to see if it holds true for your program, she believes this practice works due to Google's use of bolding on keywords in search results. "It just kind of highlights the relevancy," she explains, allowing people to quickly pick out pertinent listings on the page.
To get more bolded keywords, and hopefully clicks and even conversions, marketers can leverage dynamic keyword insertion tools created by the major search engines. Using keyword insertion, marketers can develop
one-size-fits-all ads with placeholders to tell the search engine where to insert the keyword(s) being bid on.
"Many people think that it's the Holy Grail of writing ad copy, but I think you really need to test it," says Hursh. "I've seen lots of situations where a keyword insertion ad doesn't do as well as an ad where you've actually written the title." For example, she points to the once ubiquitous eBay paid search ads that claimed to sell everything and anything a searcher typed in. "Like ‘Divorce Lawyer. Find your divorce lawyer on eBay,'" Hursh laughs.
Greenfield agrees that poor use of keyword insertion can generate search results pages where all the listings look the same—not a very good outcome for advertisers trying to differentiate themselves or do more than drive clicks. More savvy marketers test a combination of keyword insertion and fixed text in the listing. "Along with the keyword there might be the word ‘buy' or the [marketer's] location. Lots of testing is required to determine the best approach, and that testing includes the body copy within [an] experimental design framework," Greenfield explains.
Obviously, keyword insertion is not a good fit for every paid search program. "If you have a really granular campaign with tight, small ad groups, you don't need that. In order to make the ad copy relevant, you have to have very small, tightly aligned ad groups. You don't want to have 150 different keywords all associated with one set of ads, mixing apples and oranges in one ad group," says Hursh.
Get a Better Body (Copy)
Apart from emphasizing keywords to demonstrate relevance, your ad copy needs to accurately convey the contents of the landing page connected to the paid listing—and it should align with the keyword. According to Ashley Bruce, search engine optimization specialist at Spring Park, Minn. search engine marketing firm TopRank Online Marketing, ad copy should describe the product or service offered, taking care to promote its benefits in comparison to other products or services likely advertised for the same keyword just a few inches away.
Going back to Greenfield's point about searchers' tendency to skim rather than read listings, George Michie, principal of search marketing at The Rimm-Kaufman Group, a paid search and e-commerce consulting firm in Charlottesville, Va., further explains that this behavior also leads people to scrutinize the words at the beginning of an ad, or a sentence fragment in the ad, more carefully. So, while it might be tempting to start your ad copy with "free"—as Michie points out, we're all suckers for that word—to scoop up more clicks, you'd better be able to follow through on your promise. "We're big believers, because the economics encourages it, that truth in advertising is what you're after," he states.
What's in a URL Name?
As searchers get smart about the connection between URL structure and where that link is likely to drop them off in a marketer's Web site, the importance of the display URL in a paid search listing increases.
In effect, says Bruce, it can act like a "third line of ad copy," especially if your company or product name is well-known with respect to your targeted keywords.
Hursh also has seen strong performance from descriptive display URLs. "If you can repeat the keyword in the display URL, that's great. So instead of going with just ibm.com, [you could try] ibm.com/laptop or something like that," she offers.
In fact, Greenfield says display URLs are not tested as much or as often as they should be. "While marketers can't test different domains, there's nothing that says they can't test the URL structure in the display ... as long as it fits within the character limitation and you have a relevant landing page for it," he says. (The reason marketers can't test domains is Google's stronger enforcement of its policy that requires display URLs and landing page URLs to match exactly. So, the fictional Everything Sweaters wouldn't be allowed to run a paid ad with the URL affordablecashmere.com that then links to a landing page with the URL everythingsweaters.com/cashmere. The goal, as always, is to ensure search results are accurate and relevant to the search terms.)
But the kind of testing that Hursh and Greenfield refer to can help marketers differentiate their paid ads from start to finish. A more specific display URL tells the searcher that this ad is more likely to meet his search intent, says Greenfield, much the way the physical locations in the display URLs of ads on Google local search results pages tell searchers which businesses are in their neighborhoods. And, he adds, because searchers tend not to scan the copy of the ad unit until the title and display URL meet their parameters, a more tightly aligned URL can pull people into the body copy.
Message Strategies
Just like fishermen use different bait to reel in different types of fish, marketers should employ different ad copy to attract different audience segments. Depending on a firm's business objectives, its ROI might be driven by getting as many clicks as possible or by narrowing its focus to generate more qualified traffic.
For example, says Greenfield, a conservative bank that doesn't want to draw subprime customers would not benefit from using copy like, "Free loan consultation." A better strategy, he offers, would be to stress its private client services, performance track record or some other feature that appeals to a more financially secure consumer. "And then you line this all up with the landing page ... ultimately understanding on the back end what [copy] had the higher yield in terms of loan originations or lowest cost per loan origination," Greenfield says.
In competitive, niche sectors such as IT services, Hursh points out that click costs can be expensive—as high as $20. At that price, marketers don't want just anyone to click on the search ad, so Hursh gets very specific in the ad copy to try to prequalify the clicks.
"So you might write in the description something like, ‘IT outsourcing service for firms with 30 to 200 users.' You're wasting a lot of valuable ad space talking about specifically who should click on that ad, right? If you're smaller than 30, don't bother; if you're bigger than 200, we're probably not a good fit for you. But that's the kind of ad copy we found we had to write to get the right kind of clickers to get the conversion," Hursh explains.
Targeting via ad copy doesn't come without risk. The search engines score ads for ranking and pricing according to algorithms based on criteria like clickthrough rates, relevance of the keyword to the ad group and a host of other factors. The more specific your ad copy, says Hursh, the lower your score will be as less people click on your ad—and the less money the search engine makes on your ad, incidentally.
"So it's a little bit of a controversial approach, but I still believe that if you're an advertiser with expensive click costs and you only want to reach a specific audience, you do want to write your ads in a specific, discriminating way—even if it means you're taking a hit in quality score. Ultimately, your ROI is going to be better if the people who actually click on your ad are the ones that are likely to convert once they get to your Web site," she states.
In general, Michie reports, offers that are relevant to the particular product category and displayed in a percentage-off discount tend to be eye-catching. And head-to-head tests show that common offers like free shipping win time and again.
"But [offer strategy is] definitely it's own little art form," he adds, noting that not all marketers can compete on price. "If everyone else's offer is free shipping and your free shipping is on orders over $100, maybe you shouldn't talk about free shipping but focus on something else," he advises.
"Search is a tool for goal completion. As a searcher, I'm focused on what I'm looking for and little else," says Craig Greenfield, director of local marketing solutions at Performics, a Chicago-based search engine marketing firm. "I only read the headline and the URL, and if it doesn't capture the intent of what my search was, I'm not reading the copy that's in the ad unit."
As the paid search environment gets more crowded, marketers must adopt tighter practices and more targeted strategies to continue to drive ROI. Let's explore some of those tactics as they relate to ad copy.
Keying in on Keywords
To deliver on searchers' expectations—as well as search engines'—ad copy needs to, at minimum, repeat the keyword in the title and, if possible, in the description, says Patricia Hursh, president and founder of SmartSearch Marketing, a search engine marketing firm in Boulder, Colo. While she notes that every tactic is worth testing to see if it holds true for your program, she believes this practice works due to Google's use of bolding on keywords in search results. "It just kind of highlights the relevancy," she explains, allowing people to quickly pick out pertinent listings on the page.
To get more bolded keywords, and hopefully clicks and even conversions, marketers can leverage dynamic keyword insertion tools created by the major search engines. Using keyword insertion, marketers can develop
one-size-fits-all ads with placeholders to tell the search engine where to insert the keyword(s) being bid on.
"Many people think that it's the Holy Grail of writing ad copy, but I think you really need to test it," says Hursh. "I've seen lots of situations where a keyword insertion ad doesn't do as well as an ad where you've actually written the title." For example, she points to the once ubiquitous eBay paid search ads that claimed to sell everything and anything a searcher typed in. "Like ‘Divorce Lawyer. Find your divorce lawyer on eBay,'" Hursh laughs.
Greenfield agrees that poor use of keyword insertion can generate search results pages where all the listings look the same—not a very good outcome for advertisers trying to differentiate themselves or do more than drive clicks. More savvy marketers test a combination of keyword insertion and fixed text in the listing. "Along with the keyword there might be the word ‘buy' or the [marketer's] location. Lots of testing is required to determine the best approach, and that testing includes the body copy within [an] experimental design framework," Greenfield explains.
Obviously, keyword insertion is not a good fit for every paid search program. "If you have a really granular campaign with tight, small ad groups, you don't need that. In order to make the ad copy relevant, you have to have very small, tightly aligned ad groups. You don't want to have 150 different keywords all associated with one set of ads, mixing apples and oranges in one ad group," says Hursh.
Get a Better Body (Copy)
Apart from emphasizing keywords to demonstrate relevance, your ad copy needs to accurately convey the contents of the landing page connected to the paid listing—and it should align with the keyword. According to Ashley Bruce, search engine optimization specialist at Spring Park, Minn. search engine marketing firm TopRank Online Marketing, ad copy should describe the product or service offered, taking care to promote its benefits in comparison to other products or services likely advertised for the same keyword just a few inches away.
Going back to Greenfield's point about searchers' tendency to skim rather than read listings, George Michie, principal of search marketing at The Rimm-Kaufman Group, a paid search and e-commerce consulting firm in Charlottesville, Va., further explains that this behavior also leads people to scrutinize the words at the beginning of an ad, or a sentence fragment in the ad, more carefully. So, while it might be tempting to start your ad copy with "free"—as Michie points out, we're all suckers for that word—to scoop up more clicks, you'd better be able to follow through on your promise. "We're big believers, because the economics encourages it, that truth in advertising is what you're after," he states.
What's in a URL Name?
As searchers get smart about the connection between URL structure and where that link is likely to drop them off in a marketer's Web site, the importance of the display URL in a paid search listing increases.
In effect, says Bruce, it can act like a "third line of ad copy," especially if your company or product name is well-known with respect to your targeted keywords.
Hursh also has seen strong performance from descriptive display URLs. "If you can repeat the keyword in the display URL, that's great. So instead of going with just ibm.com, [you could try] ibm.com/laptop or something like that," she offers.
In fact, Greenfield says display URLs are not tested as much or as often as they should be. "While marketers can't test different domains, there's nothing that says they can't test the URL structure in the display ... as long as it fits within the character limitation and you have a relevant landing page for it," he says. (The reason marketers can't test domains is Google's stronger enforcement of its policy that requires display URLs and landing page URLs to match exactly. So, the fictional Everything Sweaters wouldn't be allowed to run a paid ad with the URL affordablecashmere.com that then links to a landing page with the URL everythingsweaters.com/cashmere. The goal, as always, is to ensure search results are accurate and relevant to the search terms.)
But the kind of testing that Hursh and Greenfield refer to can help marketers differentiate their paid ads from start to finish. A more specific display URL tells the searcher that this ad is more likely to meet his search intent, says Greenfield, much the way the physical locations in the display URLs of ads on Google local search results pages tell searchers which businesses are in their neighborhoods. And, he adds, because searchers tend not to scan the copy of the ad unit until the title and display URL meet their parameters, a more tightly aligned URL can pull people into the body copy.
Message Strategies
Just like fishermen use different bait to reel in different types of fish, marketers should employ different ad copy to attract different audience segments. Depending on a firm's business objectives, its ROI might be driven by getting as many clicks as possible or by narrowing its focus to generate more qualified traffic.
For example, says Greenfield, a conservative bank that doesn't want to draw subprime customers would not benefit from using copy like, "Free loan consultation." A better strategy, he offers, would be to stress its private client services, performance track record or some other feature that appeals to a more financially secure consumer. "And then you line this all up with the landing page ... ultimately understanding on the back end what [copy] had the higher yield in terms of loan originations or lowest cost per loan origination," Greenfield says.
In competitive, niche sectors such as IT services, Hursh points out that click costs can be expensive—as high as $20. At that price, marketers don't want just anyone to click on the search ad, so Hursh gets very specific in the ad copy to try to prequalify the clicks.
"So you might write in the description something like, ‘IT outsourcing service for firms with 30 to 200 users.' You're wasting a lot of valuable ad space talking about specifically who should click on that ad, right? If you're smaller than 30, don't bother; if you're bigger than 200, we're probably not a good fit for you. But that's the kind of ad copy we found we had to write to get the right kind of clickers to get the conversion," Hursh explains.
Targeting via ad copy doesn't come without risk. The search engines score ads for ranking and pricing according to algorithms based on criteria like clickthrough rates, relevance of the keyword to the ad group and a host of other factors. The more specific your ad copy, says Hursh, the lower your score will be as less people click on your ad—and the less money the search engine makes on your ad, incidentally.
"So it's a little bit of a controversial approach, but I still believe that if you're an advertiser with expensive click costs and you only want to reach a specific audience, you do want to write your ads in a specific, discriminating way—even if it means you're taking a hit in quality score. Ultimately, your ROI is going to be better if the people who actually click on your ad are the ones that are likely to convert once they get to your Web site," she states.
In general, Michie reports, offers that are relevant to the particular product category and displayed in a percentage-off discount tend to be eye-catching. And head-to-head tests show that common offers like free shipping win time and again.
"But [offer strategy is] definitely it's own little art form," he adds, noting that not all marketers can compete on price. "If everyone else's offer is free shipping and your free shipping is on orders over $100, maybe you shouldn't talk about free shipping but focus on something else," he advises.
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The Secrets of Paid Search
