Pay-Per-Click advertising remains an affordable and effective method of leap-frogging your window treatment competitors in the Google results to drive more traffic to your site. If you’re not already employing PPC ads in a comprehensive digital marketing campaign, I highly advise you to, at the very least, take time to further consider how many leads you’re losing without PPC.
For those of you who already use PPC or want to but don’t know what to do and what not to do, let’s take a closer look at the best ways to boost PPC efficacy.
1. Craft Concise Communication Targeting the User
You only have a finite amount of characters to use in your PPC ad, so you’d better use them wisely. I think most people understand that they need to be concise, but you also need target the potential visitor’s problems, not only addressing them in your copy, but offering a solution as well. It’s generally a bad idea to try to insert words and phrases that have been heard a thousand times over and begin to lose genuine meaning. For instance, if you were writing PPC ad copy for a law firm, it would be a wasted opportunity for your copy to read, “Wills, probates, and trust attorneys with 75 years combined experience,” because it does little to alleviate the user’s pain points.
Instead, the goal is to deliver pertinent information that helps the user solve their problem (be it an antidote for boredom, legal consultation, a product, etc.), or feel like they’re on the right track towards solving it. And you should be able to glean from search terms and demographic information what it is the user is trying to accomplish.
So, for instance, let’s examine two brief lines of copy centered around search terms for a personal injury lawyer:
- Call today for a free consultation
- Claim compensation for your injury and hardships
Which do you think has a greater impact on the user?
2. Transform Copy to the User’s Point of View
It’s also a good idea to transform your copy in such a way that the user feels a personal connection with it, as though they are being addressed individually and not just one of hundreds or thousands of other people reading your ad. Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, is famously quoted as having written, “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
By and large, unless you’re performing direct marketing via email or have some other form of data with which to personalize a message (cookies, profile data, etc.), you’re not going to be able to inject individual names into your ad copy. PPC ads lack the granularity as dynamically generated and personalized web pages, but you can make the message feel a little more personal by polishing your copy. Consider the two following examples:
- Customers can claim a 25% discount until December 1st
- You deserve a 25% discount! Valid until December 1st
Most people inherently have a small degree of selfishness ingrained in their being (others have drastically higher degrees of selfishness), and you can incorporate their sense of entitlement into your ad copy. Clearly, the second version is better for two reasons. First of all, the message feels more personal to the user than the first option, and secondly, it helps to create a sense of urgency, which is the next talking point.
3. Creating a Sense of Urgency
Have you ever wondered why throngs of crazed shoppers stampede through retail stores on Black Friday like they’ve never seen a discount before? What about people The answer really boils down to two things: a finite amount of product and a limited amount of availability (time). When a savings even or opportunity is finite and only available for a limited time, it encourages people to take advantage of it.
However, there is one catch. You have to truly make your savings, product, or offer limited. If you don’t, and repeatedly offer the same opportunity, this marketing tactic loses is potency. If you run through the offer’s cycle too much, your audience will become privy to its availability and be less inclined to take action.
4. Target Common Pain Points in Your Copy
In any industry, someone somewhere has had a bad experience. In fact, the majority of an audience in any field has suffered inherent inadequacies. For instance, in your lifetime, haven’t you ever been subjected to the excruciating pain of obtuse customer support technicians whom you could only reach after a Kafkaesque time spent waiting in a phone queue listening to low quality elevator music? Doesn’t the thought make you want to sigh in exasperation?
You can use these pain points to your advantage, especially in your ad copy. Consider the following two examples:
- Call today for free 24/7 customer support
- Customer support responds within 30 seconds
The second version, while arguably longer than the first, is still more potent. And given the advancements of AI and customer support integration with your site, you can out-market any competitors using the first example in their ad copy. Or, if you offer a free trial of your service, you could write something along the lines of, “Free trial, no payment card data needed,” which eliminates the pain point of risk. After all, if you’re like most people, you have been automatically billed for a service you forgot to cancel.
Final Thoughts
If the in’s and out’s of PPC ad marketing (which are a crucial component of any digital marketing strategy) make your head spin, don’t worry, you’re not alone. There is something of a learning curve, and with investments of time and energy, you can improve your copy. If you don’t have the time to commit to improving your PPC strategies, there is another option: reach out the help of a professional. Whether you choose to forgo the help of a professional or reach out for assistance, I urge you to spend time considering how much traffic PPC ads can drive to your website.
