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What Keeps Someone From Clicking on Your PPC Ad?Posted by Joe on November 10, 2009 in Ad Texts, Advanced PPC Strategies |
Sure, paid search ad copy contains only 25 characters for the headline (in AdWords) and 70 characters for the body copy, but this small space can be very complex to utilize optimally.
Within the confines of a PPC ad text you need to be relevant to your keywords, list as many benefits as possible, be unique and stand out from your competition, and include a clear call-to-action. As you strive to to incorporate all of these tactics into your ad texts you shouldn’t loose site of the fact that you’re trying to connect with real people.
While monitoring your click-through rate and conversion rate, also the time-on-site, pages per visitor, percent of new vs. return visitors and a plethora of other available stats, you need to remember that these numbers represent people. These stats are numerical representations of how well you have connected with your target audience, and the individuals who make up your audience.
Paid search marketing, and marketing in general, is all about making the right connections with the right people. People have hopes, dreams, needs, fears, likes, dislikes, and the list goes on and on. Your PPC ad texts should address these core concerns.
Often, when writing PPC ads, we focus on why some should click on your ad. A core concern/emotion that is often neglected is fear (or perhaps apathy). You should also take into consideration why someone wouldn’t click on your ad. What keeps someone from clicking on your ad?
This is the great thing about search marketing: someone is searching for you (or someone like you). Don’t take this for granted; you have to take the next step to convince them that they’ve found exactly what they’re looking for.
When optimizing your ad text performance you should think about this: if a user searches on a keyword that is relevant to your products/services, and they see your ad copy (which is keyword-focused and benefit-driven) but they don’t click on your ad. Seems like everything should be in place. So, what fears or concerns is holding a user back? Unfortunately, I don’t have a magic ball to tell you why a specific user, or group of users, aren’t attracted to your ad.
Of course, the best to way find out what works is to split test your PPC ad copy. However, before you write copy to test, you need to meditate on what your audience is looking for. How does your product/service solve their current problem and what can you say in your ad text that will talk to your audience’s core concerns?
The answers to these questions will be different for every advertiser. However, once you have developed a few ideas, molded them into new PPC ad texts, then I wholly suggest that you split test your ads to see if you’ve addressed these issues.
This brings us back to stats. Yes, that which I earlier suggested you step away from to get some perspective, I suggest that you turn to when learning if you’ve improved ads. This is the best way to know if you’ve enhanced your messaging. So, this is a rough outline of the process:
- Think about your customer’s core emotional concerns
- Review the ad texts you have running now
- Meditate on why certain ads have the best response rate
- Meditate on why certain ads are failing
- Think about why someone would *not* click on your ad
- Review your competitors’ ads
- Write new ads that address these concerns
- Launch your new ad texts
- Monitor the performance of your ads
- Repeat the process and continue to refine your messaging
And the same goes for your landing page. We haven’t even touched on landing pages! You should think in similar terms for your landing pages as well. But that is another article for another time.
It could come down to the fact that your competitors are talking to your audience with more success. Reviewing your competition to see what they have to say could be very enlightening. And it could be that the majority of users aren’t finding what they want at all.
The 95 characters within a PPC ad text (not including the display URL) can be very complicated. The success of your campaign hinges on your ability to appeal to your audience on numerous levels. Be the solution to your audience’s problem/query, address their concerns, and you’re well on your way to success.
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November 10th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Hey Joe,
Too often when writing ads we think in a strategic manner instead of asking the question you pose in your entry. Do I have the targeted keywords in the ad copy? Do I have a clear call to action? Is my headline enticing enough? These are all questions that we as PPC specialists have to answer. It can be a challenge to set aside what we know and think as a user would. You do a good job of setting aside the numbers and bringing the human factor into play.
-Matt
November 11th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Hi,
Great article Joe! Just a quick question regarding PPC ROI. If i’m spending $50,000 per month on PPC and bring in $56,000 in total revenue ($6000 profit), is that a good return? What ROI should i be aiming for?
J.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
@Matthew: Thanks! Yes, I think sometimes people forget the human element of PPC management. Don’t get me wrong; I love stats. But you gotta keep grounded in humanity.
@James: The ROI that each PPC campaign is going to vary. It depends on what YOU want out of your campaign and works for your business. Right now, it sounds as if your campaign isn’t knocking it out of the park. You’re basically breaking even, with a small return. $50,000/month is a good-sized budget and I am sure you can enhance your ROI. However, I don’t know your account so I can’t give specifics, but with this monthly budget, you should be seeing a higher profit.
November 14th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Joe:
Great post.
I’m lucky in that I sell houses and just ONE sale pays for everything and then some. I’ve got friends in other web based businesses that sell flowers, widgets, etc., and they have to be very careful with their ROI numbers.
Even so, I am very conservative with my CPC and am constantly tweaking the entire machine to find the right balance between all the variables.
One thing I’ve been bad about though is testing Ad copy. Currently my CTR is somewhere between 0.6% and 1.0% and I would like to double that.
With 10k impressions per day and a CPC arounf $.08 this is all working fine, but I would like to double my CTR.
Are there any historic “good” or “bad” CTRs or is it all based on industry and what one is selling?
November 16th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
The key to this whole process is putting yourself in your customers shoes (or more importantly, their mindset). Often this is difficult because we know much more than the customer or we are just too close to the situation. Either way, taking the time to follow this process will yield improved results. Great post Joe.
PS David Szetela mentioned your blog at PubCon.
December 15th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
You are absolutely right, it is too much difficult to write add text. If we are not able to create wisely add text, then our add will fail to stand in crowd and nobody will visit or click our add. The title and body should be relevant, Add text should be most relevant in landing page otherwise we are able to loose visitors faith as result we will loose traffic and also money
December 15th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
If you just stay true to the entire intent, CTR should not be an issue.
If you are offering what they are searching for and your AD reflects this, that’s as good as it gets and or needs to be.
RM