OneSearch

I just read a column about paid search from Search Engine Land. The article asks you to think about paid search and how you would describe it.

In paid search, every minute counts. Every day, every hour, every minute matters and costs money. It forces search marketers to take advantage of everything they can—ad copy being among the most important. Is your ad copy being fully capitalized on? If not, this article suggests “kicking it up a notch.”

Ad copy is the most important aspect of paid search. Once you’ve got it down and mastered, you’re good to go. If you don’t have it down pat and you fumble it, your competitors could be given the advantage over you—definitely not what you want!

Many search marketers seem to rush into ad copy and come up with text that is lacking—even though they know how important it is. Why do they do this, you ask? Do we really know? Maybe it’s because they feel comfortable and at ease using the medium, and they are just trying to get something done and “out there.”
Whatever the reason is for the rush to come up with ad copy—the result is that “sub par ad copy can only lead to one thing: sub par campaign performance.”

But not only can it affect your campaign performance, poor ad copy can also affect your quality score which can end up costing you more money.

Nowadays the relevance of your landing page and ad copy, along with the click through rate of your ad all factor in to your quality score (determined by whatever engine you are using). This can affect quite dramatically how your campaign performs, and in the end drive your costs up.

So, it’s important—now more than ever—to get your ad copy right!

Some tips the articles offers to help improve your ad copy:

1. Define your audience. As relevance plays a huge role in how well your paid search campaign performs, it is imperative to know and define your audience and what language they speak. Consider that you have to map the keywords you have chosen to the landing page you have created, and then create ad copy that maps the two together. Make sure you choose the most relevant keywords possible. Use relevancy as your ultimate judge on whether or not to target a keyword if you are ever in doubt.

2. It is critical that your keyword, messaging, and goal are aligned. Make sure that your keywords are in line with your message, and that it is aligned with the buying cycle of your prospects.

3. Leverage other channels. Look beyond search to improve your ad copy. Choose the keywords, copy, and messaging that generate the best response rates, and then use them in all your online channels. If you are finding that some keywords or messaging are resonating better with your audience in your paid search campaign, work that into your offline messaging, as research shows offline channels are a powerful driver of search. Leveraging keywords and messaging from other channels will provide help improve your quality score and ensure consistent messaging.

4. Test and refine. Testing is vital to improving your ad copy, so you need to have a strong and sound testing and refinement plan in place. There are several tools available to help with testing. But whatever test you choose to use—A/B testing or multivariate testing—make sure you have appropriate control groups set up to compare against, and create a testing calendar. Testing quickly and your ability to act on the results can have an enormous impact on how well your campaign performs.

Many factors can affect how well your paid search campaign performs, but ad copy is at the top of that list. You should be fully capitalizing on it—especially in today’s super-competitive marketplace. Check out your ad copy in your campaigns and figure out whether yours needs to be “kicked up a notch.” It could help you immensely.

Good stuff!!