Writing Killer Ads
A Google Adwords (or "Yahoo AdWords" if you will...) ad comprises of five main components, the Headline, the Description
line 1, Description line 2, the Display URL, and the Destination
URL. Let me break each of them down so you and walk you through
an example.
Martial Art for Children
Engaging Activity for Mind & Body.
Disciplined & Friendly Environment!
www.CompleteMartialArt.com/Kids
In our example, we are marketing children’s martial art…
to parents. We are placing ourselves in our market’s minds
and answering the questions they may have regarding a martial art
place for their kids.
- Headline
The headline is the ad for your ad. When your ad shows up, your
headline is the one that is linked and put in blue. This is the
first line that users will notice which places that much more
importance on it. This will determine if the user will continue
reading the rest of your ad.
The key question you should be answer with your headline is, “What
is your ad about?”
Do your best to make your keywords (which I will go in greater
details later) appear in the headline. Keywords that the user
searches which also appear in your ads are automatically highlighted
by Google, therefore making them more visible.
In our example, our market is martial art for kids and one of
our keywords is indeed “Children’s Martial Art”.
- Description Line 1
Your first description line should describe a benefit
that your user should care about; as a matter of fact, that’s
the benefit your user came on the search engine to search for!
In our example, it lists one of the possible reasons why parents
look for marital arts for their kids – to engage them in
an activity and get them off of the couch in front of the TV.
Note here that the ad distinguishes itself from the other martial
art ads by making a point of
mentioning the mind which ties in with the next line…
- Description Line 2
Your second description line will be a feature of what
you are offering. It should answer the question, “What should
the user expect to get from your offer?”
Before I go on any further, let me explain the key but subtle
difference between a feature and a benefit. A feature merely describes
to a user what the product itself can do while the latter takes
that a step further and describes how it may impact the user in
a positive way. A feature is a factual and logical argument, where
as the second one is emotional and psychological. “And when
it comes to salesmanship, emotional arguments work much better
than factual arguments”1
Simply put, “features tell, benefits sell.”
Therefore, it is important that the first thing that your audience
sees after being drawn in by your headline is a benefit. Then
you may objective your ad with your second description line to
add more tangible value to your ad.
As I mentioned above, our ad distinguishes itself from the other
martial art ads that are merely about kicking butts. This was
accomplished by mentioning “mind” in the first description
line. This sentiment is continued in our second description line
with the mention of “discipline” as part of a feature
that sets us apart from our competition.
- Display URL
The last line that your audience will see on your ad is your web
address. Depending on your actual URL, you may use this line as
a continuation from the line above.
Note that some of our keywords appear in our URL (Complete Martial
Art); this makes that part of our URL also highlighted and therefore
attract more attention.
Finally, we add a subdirectory that specifically describes our
martial art in way that it caters to parents looking for martial
arts for their kids. This is better than dumping the parents onto
a generic page which may cater to adult martial arts but is irrelevant
to kid’s martial art.
- Destination URL
There’s nothing special here, just the actual link
you want to send your visitor to. Note that this link is not visible
on the ad that the visitor sees.
Some key points you should bear in mind when writing your ad which
will help make it stand out more from the crowd:
- Capitalize the first letter of most words
- Capitalize the first letter of each word in the URL
- Do your best to use the keyword in the headline
- Use emotionally valuable words such as free, secret, reveal,
new, success, instant, fast, exclusive, etc.
These techniques, while they may seem trivial at first, can and
will improve the performance of your ads through making them stand
out more from the crowd.
Now that you have written your ad, it’s time to set a budget
and bid on your keywords that will ultimately determine the market
you will be targeting. Click here:
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Researching Your AdWords Keywords
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