Take a moment and do a quick search on Google for a product or service you might be interested in, and then see what Google ads come up. What’s the first ad that stands out to you?
Being lunch time for me at the moment, I decided to quickly search for some healthy, local food options ideal for the office lifestyle and online entrepreneur.
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What’s great about this search is that we were treated to one exceptional ad, one ad with great creative but it didn’t rank highly enough to show extensions and 2 very generic ads that command little to no attention apart from ad real estate space.
Now don’t get me wrong, simply being in the second spot, even with an extremely generic ad like the one shown will often get a click, and even depending on the landing page that they get taken to, the user might even convert. However, more often than not, these clicks will lead to a bounce and a waste of money. Sure, a giant brand won’t necessarily worry about this, since branding is part of their overall strategy, and they place a dollar value on every impression on their campaigns. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for most SMBs who need to see some sort of return on their investment or they’ll end up dumping money into a hole until they go broke.
Here are two simple and often overlooked ways that we can make our ad stand out:
1) Use of extensions!
Let’s look at the top 2 ads in the picture. In the first Ad, I’m pointing out the use of Structured Snippets, Location Extensions, as well as Sitelinks & Sitelink descriptions.
Best of all extensions are free! You still only pay once the ad is clicked on, and yet they help increase your overall ad space, convey more trust with a more professional look, as well as provide more information on the product or service being provided.
There are TONS of extensions to be used, and if applicable, please make sure to use them!
Google lists that on average there’s a 10-15% CTR increase in ads that use extensions.
Remember, when your CTR increases, your Quality Score increases, and therefore your Ad Rank, which in the end all means higher position at a lower cost! (Here’s a video explaining Ad Rank just in case you’re wondering how this works).
2) Compelling headlines that match the keyword!
Creative can be used in different ways to try to convey a feeling in a potential customer. Whether it’s a positive, negative or neutral feeling, depending on the industry is the type of feeling that you’d like to convey. When you use keywords to try to match a users search query, you want the Ad text to not only contextually match the keyword, but also match that customers place in the sales funnel.
Now when we look at a Google ad, the largest, most eye-catching, and core component of that Ad; is the headline.
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar”. - David Ogilvy
In next weeks blog post, I’ll talk more in-depth about the different types of emotions that I’ve used or experimented with in Adwords ads in the past, matching them with keywords, and writing compelling attention-grabbing headlines.
For now, let’s take a look at the 2 ads which are boxed in the above image:
Ad #1:
The first is conveying both a 'positive' feeling as well as a 'negative' feeling, but doing so in a balanced manner. It’s very well written and targeted considering the keyword triggered is bottom funnel “Pizza delivery Sydney”.
"30% off Pizza" - positive (money saving, bargain, offer, etc, this tends to be a positive feeling in a compulsive cheap shopaholic such as myself)
"When you order online now" - Negative (urgency, impulsiveness, anxiety, “if I don’t do this now I’ll lose it”, the negative feeling of urgency tends to convey an impulsive reaction which is then countered by the positive feeling of having completed the action.)
Ad #2:
The second ad is purely positive:
“Hot, Fresh, Delicious Pizzas” - Positive (perfect for me at the moment, I’m hungry and this just absolutely hit the nail on the head with what I wanted to buy)
“Order Online Now” - Neutral (generic, regardless it’s good to have a call to action in the headline considering that’s what most people read)
Compared to the other generic ads that we saw, these two definitely stand out more in the creative space. Both evoke an emotional trigger, and both have call to actions to try to influence the user into converting.
Every AdWords agency out there nowadays is offering their 'expert' service, their 'expert' advice, a sea of promises and of course, e-books. Aside from the free e-books coming with the hefty price tag of relentless spam, have you ever wondered, how many actually practice what they preach?
It’s not just about a simple search matching a keyword anymore, consumers are becoming more and more desensitised to generic ads, and a lot more reactive to emotive advertising. At Canny Digital, we take the time to research, test, customise, and analyse your campaigns frequently to ensure the right response at the right time. Get in touch with us for your obligation free consultation.