One of the best features of pay-per-click advertising is the ability to test. There are numerous tools and options in AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and adCenter that allow PPC advertisers to test nearly every piece of their account. But, admittedly, this barrage of bells and whistles could make the average-Joe-PPC-beginner go crazy – or worse yet, abandon PPC altogether! I would recommend to any advertiser interested in testing their PPC variables to begin with ad texts. As such, today’s PPC primer is on learning the basics of testing ad copy.
Why Should You Test Ad Copy?
Many of you reading this post will already know the answer to this question, but it never hurts to have a reminder. Testing ad copy will allow you to incrementally experiment with variations in your messaging to determine which ad texts have the highest click-through-rate (CTR) and/or conversion rate. This process is often referred to as A/B Testing or “split testing” and is extremely important to the overall health and growth of a PPC account.
How to Get the Most Accurate Results
Ensuring that your PPC account is operating with the correct settings is very important to obtaining accurate results from your testing. What this means in terms of testing ad copy is that you must have your ad delivery options set to rotate evenly (all ads in a test will accrue the same amount of impressions). In Google AdWords, this is quite simple. Enter one of your campaigns and click on “Edit Campaign Settings.” From here, scroll down to the “Advanced Settings” section and click the radio button next to “Rotate.”
This setting will now rotate your ads evenly over time. The alternative is to let Google determine the best ads in your ad groups by CTR alone – which takes all control of an accurate test away from you!
Yahoo! has a similar feature with their “Optimize Ads” option. To get accurate testing results: enter one of your campaigns, select all of your ad groups and click the “Optimize Ad Display” button. This will bring up a dialogue box with the options of saying yes or no to optimization. Just say no.
This is the simplest way to adjust the Yahoo!’s ad delivery options. However, you can also access this feature through each ad group’s settings.
MSN’s adCenter is a step behind when it comes to testing ad copy. At this time, adCenter automatically optimizes your ads based on CTR. There is not an option to turn this off.
Over time, adCenter will automatically display the better performing ads more frequently, which can help boost the performance of your ad group.
How to Get Started
Let’s assume that you only have a single ad in your ad groups – this will become your control ad with which to test against. Use the control ad as your starting point when writing new ads. If I can make one point clear it would be this: test one change in ad copy at a time. If you want to update the headline, change only the headline. If you want to update a call-to-action in line 2 of the description, change only the call-to-action, etc. Making incremental changes will allow you to quickly make the right decisions based on the outcome of your split testing. In this example, I am testing the effectiveness of my headline:
What Should You Test in Your Ad Copy?
The list of ad text variables is quite extensive and can vary dramatically depending on the product, service or niche an ad is written for. To get you thinking about what kinds of things to test, here is a great list from the AdWords blog:
- Different emphasis: product description, call-to-action, or promotional offer
- Including the brand name versus simply describing the offering
- Including the price in ad text versus including a discount or other special offer to differentiate your business
- Including an audience-specific message such as ‘Perfect for Couples’
- Placement of certain messages in your ad text: headline, line 2, or line 3
When to Determine a Winning Ad
As a rule of thumb, I typically wait until both ads (or however many ads are being tested) have all generated at least 30 clicks. This is to ensure that each ad has had equal opportunity to be displayed and will therefore provide accurate data. For those who are more statistically inclined, there are other options. For one, you can use the Teasley Statistical Calculator which will give a much more accurate depiction of your split testing endeavors.
When you’ve determined a winner in the testing of your ad copy, it isn’t time to quit and move on. No sir – it’s time to write a new ad and test another variable in your ad text! Make testing ad copy a priority on your PPC management task list. Keep up-to-date on your tests and consistently try to out-do yourself in terms of creativity and trying to think like your customers. Good luck, and happy testing!
