What Makes a Killer PPC Ad

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an effective strategy for raising brand awareness, generating leads, and increasing downloads or subscribers.

Nevertheless, PPC ads also typically have low conversion rates: 2.70% on average for Google Ads Search Network, and 0.89% on the Google Display Network.

Knowing that you probably want to make sure your PPC ads are the best they can be.

But how do you make a killer PPC ad that gets results?

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While there’s no way to guarantee Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), you can certainly check the boxes on what makes a PPC ad more effective, including:

1. Targeting your Ad

If you want to increase the number of people who click on your ads, then you need to target your ads to the people you want to attract.

In order to do this, you need to know your audience and their problems. Then, you need to write ad copy that acknowledges those problems and responds to them with a solution.

It’s likely your audience can be segmented even further, either by demographics, behaviors, locations, or specific interests.

For example, let’s say you run a landscaping business. Instead of writing just one ad for customers in your local area, you may be able to segment customers by their needs, so you speak to their exact problem.  

Here’s an example of how Toyota is targeting PPC ads for location:

2. Making it Relevant

What information does your audience want to know about you that you can provide in your ad? In Google Ads, you can use ad extensions to give people more reasons to do business with you.

For example, a Google search for “snow removal” brings up this ad, with the ad extensions “Free Estimates” and “Calcium Chloride Services”:

Source: Google Search

Speaking of relevancy, you’ll also want to ensure your landing page messaging aligns with your PPC ad. If you mention a special discount in your ad, then make sure your landing page reflects that language. Otherwise, people will feel like your ad is misleading — or worse, your business is dishonest.

3. Getting Up to Speed

Once someone clicks on your ad, they expect the landing page to load very quickly. Studies show that even a one-second delay can decrease conversation rates by 7%.

With that in mind, it’s obviously critical to make sure your page load speed is as fast as it can possibly be. If there’s room for improvement, you may need to consider who hosts your website, the amount and size of your images, whether or not your pages use custom fonts, and if you have sliders or JavaScript effects that could be the cause of delay.

4. Ensuring it Calls People to Action

In order to make a killer PPC ad, you must have a strong call-to-action (CTA). “Buy now” or “Get download” are some traditional examples, but you can always get more creative with your CTAs to see what works.

Here’s a different take on a CTA from BMW:

5. Doing the Testing

Finally, if you’re investing your time in PPC advertising, then you want to make sure you’re testing ads against each other. See if different ad copy, images, or CTAs are getting better results. This is the only way to improve your ads over time because you can see what is working and what is not, and make adjustments accordingly. This last step is absolutely critical to making an effective PPC ad.

How adept are you with the concept of paid campaigns and their uses? Try answering these PPC Exam Questions and assess yourself!