How to Write PPC Text Ads

No more reasoning and guesswork. In this post, we’ll lay out only practical tips. We’ve prepared the detailed guide on how to write PPC text ads. It includes Google and Facebook requirements and recommendations. Also, we’ll tell how not to write PPC ads. So take your seat and enjoy the reading. 

1. Where to start 

Determine the factors your advertising depends on:

• the platform where you want to advertise.
• your target audience. For example, British women from 18 to 25.
• the main goal. For instance, you want to inform people about new low-calorie breakfast cereal.
• the message. E.g. “Low-calorie breakfast cereal helps stay fit and healthy”.
• the list of keywords. They have to fully describe your product/service. Google Adwords Keyword Planner Tool or Serpstat can help you find right keywords.

The keywords should directly describe the product. Otherwise, you can get a junk traffic. When auditing one project, Customer Success Manager at Ringostat found out a high bounce rate. It turned out that this company (SPA salon) launched PPC campaign for fish pedicure Garra Ruffu and “fish Odessa” was one of the keywords.

2. Requirements for ads in different services

Google Ads

• headline 1 and 2: 30 characters
• description: 80 characters
• path (2): 15 characters each.

To learn more about Google Adwords requirements, read AdWords Help.

Facebook  

• text: up to 125 characters
• picture: 
  • recommended resolution: at least 1,200 x 628px
  • Images that consist of more than 20% text may experience reduced delivery.
  • file type: 1,200 x 628px

• headline: 25 characters
• description: 30 characters

Instagram Feed 

• a caption may include up to 2,200 characters but it’s being cut after 125 characters. That’s why 125 characters are the optimal caption length to be fully displayed on the smaller screens.
• image:
  • 1200 x 628px but you can choose another format.
  • file type: jpg or png.

3. Ad components

Headline and description

1. Include the name of the service or product in the headline. Although it may not be present in the ad, the main thing is to make a profitable offer that will attract the client.
2. Use the keyword in the headline.

Give a preference for declarative sentences. Google says that ad copy with a question in the headline often underperforms, while ads that offer answers typically receive more attention.

Call to action

Include active verbs in your ad copy. For example, use words “order”, “get”, “learn”. According to the research, they perform better and sound more dynamic. When writing your ad copy, imagine your clients are saying “I want” and complete the phrase.

Word counts for Facebook and Instagram

Despite the post may include up to 125 characters, try to make it even shorter. Facebook posts with 40 characters earn 86% more engagement than longer posts. Jeff Bullas research shows that posts with 80 characters or less receive 66% higher engagement.

4. How to complete PPC ad copy

How not to write PPC text ads

Avoid a blind repeating after competitors. Thus, your ad copy won’t stand out. Before you create advertising, analyze what your competitors write in their ad copies.

Here’s how you can do it. Open Serpstat and go to the Keyword Research — PPC Research — Ad Examples. Then enter the keyword that describes your product or service. Serpstat will show ad examples that include this keyword or its synonyms. 

Also, you can search by competitors by entering the necessary address instead of the keyword and pressing “With subdomains”.

Then you can upload results to the spreadsheet and group them. Additionally, you can calculate the percentage of use of a certain ad message.

Shorten or get rid of not common messages. Thus, you can write persuasive and solid ad copy instead of trivial phrases about guarantee and quality.

Pay attention to recommendations

Google doesn’t recommend to use:

• ads or extensions that don’t use commonly accepted spelling or grammar;
• exclamations marks in the headline;
• symbols, numbers, and letters that don’t adhere to their true meaning or purpose, such as using “@ home” to mean “at home”;
• non-standard symbols or characters, such as asterisks;
• bullet points and ellipses;
• capitalization that is not used correctly or for its intended purpose, such as the following: FLOWERS, FlOwErS, F.L.O.W.E.R.S;
• omitting a space or adding extra spaces.

Perry Marshall doesn’t recommend to use aggressive or provocative ads. Also, his research shows that product benefits must be put first after the headline in an Adwords ad. The features of the product will probably be best shown on line 3.

“Benefit” answers the questions, “What do I get as a result of having this product/service?” or “How will I live, think, act or feel different once I have this?”

“Feature” answers the questions, “What is this product/service actually made up of?” or “What’s in the product?” or “What special bells or whistles does the product have?”

Matrix for writing ad copy

This tool helps simplify the writing ad copy, create a few examples very fast, and conduct A/B testing to choose the most effective option.

This way of writing is very simple. The powerful advertising should consist of three components:

• product feature;
• benefit;
• CTA. 

Benefits (Features) Matrix allows to combine all these components.

How to work with matrix

1. Type the names of the product features or tools to the first column. For example, in Ringostat case, the tools are callback widget, virtual PBX, and call tracking.
2. In the second column type the benefits which clients get by using each tool or feature.
3. Then add CTAs. 

5. How to analyze results

After you launched ad campaigns, you need to check advertising effectiveness and optimize ineffective campaigns. There’s no a certain time period when you have to do it so wait until the sufficient amount of data is collected. You can compare two ad examples with different CTAs two weeks after the launch. However, if you want to get detailed data on all ad campaigns, you have to wait at least a few months. 

If you test different ad copies, compare the following metrics:

• traffic volume;
• CTR and CPC;
• CPA;
• the number of goal completions;
• conversion rate. 

Don’t forget to test keywords to understand which are (or aren’t) profitable. You can do it with Google Analytics report on keywords effectiveness. If more than 30% of clients make phone calls to your company, call tracking is the essential software for you. Learn more about in the post How to leverage call tracking to make PPC more effective.

Remember that writing PPC text ads is just a beginning. To improve the advertising, you have to analyze and optimize it. Ask our experts and we’ll share our knowledge with you.