Writing PPC Ads

Pay Per Click success can hinge on the copy you use in your advertisement. Use these tips to improve your pay per click conversion.

Title
The ad title should be clear and when possible should include the keyword. Studies show that there is a higher incidence of click throughs when the actual keyword or keyword phrase is used in the title. Using the keyword in the title can increase clicks by as much as 50%.

Description
The ad description should be accurate, using the term free might bring traffic, but it will not generate traffic that converts to a sale.

The advertisement should be used as a filter, so that you are not paying for clicks that are not going to convert to a sale or the action that you desire.

Example Ads:

These Ads were produced when the keyword "software" was searched on in Google.

This ad clearly filters users who are interested in purchasing software and will only garner clicks from users interested in reporting software piracy.

This ad will likely result in a lots of very generic click throughs. The ad gives no indication as to the type of software available.

These Ads were produced when the keyword "software" was searched on in Yahoo.

This ad will only direct users looking for Point of Sale Software

This ad will likely have a very low click through rate and low conversion. As the ad is not really related to the original search term.

Landing Pages
While landing pages do not affect your click through rates, they will affect conversions: the number of people that take the action that you would like. Landing pages should have a direct relationship to the original keyword that the visitor entered in the search engine.

In other words, if you serve an ad promoting point of sale software, the user clicks through and the landing page is all about music software, you will not generally make the sale.

According to Yahoo, research indicates that 96% of customers prefer a specific landing page to a general page. Many advertisers direct users to their main page rather than a specific web page. This could result in lost sales.

Developer Resource contains a large collection of software marketing tips.