7 Advanced Strategies for Writing the Highest Performing Text Ads

7 Tips for Writing The Highest Performing Expanded Text Ads 7 The new expanded text ad format was released on the 26th July 2016 as part of Googles most extensive set of updates. They replaced the old advert format at the end of January this year. Google also moved the date forwards several months to give advertisers additional time to make the transition. So what are expanded text ads and how do they differ from the old text ad format that Google has offered for the last 15 years? 4 7:01 1 7:01 Google Google guitars guitars ALL SHOPPING IMAGES MAPS VIDEOS ALL SHOPPING IMAGES МАPS VIDEO Shop Guitars at Guitar Center - Free Shipping, Easy Returns Ad www.guitarcenter.com/guitars Guitars On Sale Ad www.guitarcenter.com All Your Music Needs In One Place. Get Guitars Online Today! All Your Music Needs In One Place. Get Great Deals & Free Shipping on Guitars! Standard Text Ad Expanded Text Ad Tip 1: Make Your Ads Relevant The number one thing that you need to do is to make your ads highly relevant to the search terms that the user is entering. To do this you need to make sure that you contain the keywords that your advert is going to appear for within the advert. A perfect example of this is shown below by "missguided.co.uk". Search Women's Red Dresses Query (Women's Red Dresses- Get Free Next Day Delivery - missguided.co.uk Ad www.missguided.co.uk/Dresses/Red 3.9 *****k rating for missguided.co.uk For A Whole Year - Code: UNICORN – Keep Your Style Game Strong, All Year Long! Sizes 4 - 24 Available · Click & Collect · New Lines Dropping Daily · Free Delivery Available Styles: Party Dresses, Day Dresses, Bodycon Dresses, Mini Dresses, Midi Dresses, T-Shirt Dresses, ... The Result Free Next Day Delivery Peace + Love 25% Student Discount Missguided New In Tip 2: Include a Strong Call-to-Action A strong call to action will direct users to take action and helps increase the CTR and conversion rate of your adverts. Jeff Allen from PPC Hero did a brilliant piece of research on what the best call to action is for your adverts based on the data they had. They picked the wining call-to-action based on a keyword/phrase's impact on conversion per 100,000 impressions compared to the account average over the past 6 months. Some examples of this are shown below: • eCommerce Account Case Study Examples Converstion Rate CTR 1.56% 1.47% 0.52% 0.39% "Free Returns" "Save Big" 1.02% 0.90% 0.84% 0.84% "Today" "Shop Now" • Lead Generation Case Study Examples Converstion Rate CTR 8.33% 6.80% 3.93% 0.51% "Become A" "Apply" 40.00% 15.79% 2.30% 1.65% "Sign Up" "Learn More" Key Insights When it came to ecommerce accounts, PPC Hero found that 'Learn More' had by far the highest conversion rate, however when it came to CTR calls to actions that contained the words 'Apply' had the highest CTR. Tip 3: Localise Your Ads By City Writing location based adverts that contain the name of the location that they are targeted at can be a very effective way to improve the performance of expanded text ads for service-based advertisers. When we changed our national adverts into location based ads for one of our clients we were able to achieve the following results: Decrease in Cost Per Conversion Increase in Number of Conversions 19.11% 45.91% • Location based search query example Search Q Windows in Sheffield Query Everest Windows In Sheffield- Prices Cut - Save £1000s - everest.co.uk Ad www.everest.co.uk/Sheffield Massive Reductions On Our Bespoke Windows. Price Match Promise. Get A Quote Now! Triple Glazing Windows Get A Free Quote · Free Everest Brochure · Speak To An Expert The Result Tip 4: Use Countdown Timers Countdown timers are an incredibly effective tool for creating urgency and driving more sales. When Search Engine Land conduced research into the effects of using countdown timers they found that conversion rates significantly increased towards the end of the countdown. • Conversions vs. Conversion Rate by Days Left Conversions Conversion Rate (%) 8.24% 9.55% 8.93% 10.80% 10.67% 10.29% 700 12.00% 600 10.00% 500 8.00% 400 6.00% 300 4.00% 200 2.00% 100 0.00% 5 Days Left 4 Days Left 3 Days Left 2 Days Left 1 Day Left Day Of 63 136 182 543 597 476 Research showed that conversion rates increased from 8.24% 5 days before the sale was due to end up to 10.80% 2 days before the sale was about to end. This is a fairly impressive increase in conversion rate for simply adding a countdown timer to your extended text ads. Tip 5: Don't Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion Experts have been telling advertisers to use dynamic keyword insertion for a long time to make their adverts more relevant by dynamically changing the headline of your ads to the most relevant keyword within your ad group. Headline Great Prices On {KeyWord:Sofas} Description Line 1 Looking for a new sofa? Description Line 2 Get 20% Off Sofas: Act Today! Display URL www.thecomfysofastore/sofas However when looking at actual data the numbers just don't add up. Single keyword ad groups that use standard ad text appear to outperform ads using dynamic keyword insertion according to data from Wordstream. Ads Without DKI Ads With DKI Average CTR Top 5% Top 1% Relative CTR Tip 6: Use Emotional Triggers In Your Ads Journalists have been using emotional triggers to increase CTRS for years. so why not apply this to your extended text ads to increase your CTR too? Here are 9 emotional triggers that have been proven to increase CTRS: • Laughter • Amusement • Fear • Joy • Empathy • Sadness • Curiosity • Awe • Anger Wordstream ran some tests to see how fear effected CTRS of Adwords ads. They tested two different ad copies, one with a negative connotation and one with a positive connotation as shown below: Breast Cancer Screening Breast Cancer Screening www.breast*****.com www.breast*****.com Negative Positive Only 15% of Women Live 5+ Years With Late Detection. Get Screened. With Early Detection, Survival Rate is 100%. Book An Appointment Today! Wordstream thought about who their target customer was - likely a frightened woman, with kids, a husband, and responsibilities. She was searching something along the lines of "breast cancer symptoms". What did the results show: Positive Twist Negative Twist +125% Screening Appointments Tip 7: Use Title Case Within Your Ads Capitalising the first letter of every word within your extended text ads is a great way to help make your ad stand out without violating Adwords policies on capitalisation. Periscopix conducted a study into the effects of using title case on CTR and found that title case outperformed sentence case. Sentence Case Ads Title Case Ads 8% 8% 7% 7% 6% -- ---- 6% 5% 5% 4% 30/12/2013 06/01/2014 13/01/2014 20/01/2014 27/01/2014 03/02/2014 10/02/2014 We have seen that on mobile title case has had a slightly higher overall CTR, this may be due to standing out on a smaller screen or due to being in a slightly higher ad position. Normal Sentence Case Normal Title Case Mobile Sentence Case Mobile Title Case 9.11% 8.17% 5.93% 5.93% CTR Sources www.wordstream.com Glicteg www.searchengineland.com www.periscopix.co.uk www.clicteq.com Image Credits www.adwords.googleblog.com Click Through Rate Relative Frequency