Back to Basics: Create Killer AdWords Copy That Gets Attention

The most popular form of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Paid Search is Google AdWords. Carefully crafted AdWords can be a very cost-effective way of generating quality traffic to your website and boosting your sales. If you do it right, your business can attract a wealth of new prospects. But if you do it wrong, it is just another advertisement that doesn’t work.

If you think your business can’t take advantage of this online marketing opportunity, you might want to think again because this can be the perfect way to draw attention. Because it’s pay-per-click, you pay only if prospects click and visit your website. But, of course, you do want them to visit, so you have to create killer AdWords copy that will really get your prospect’s attention:

1. The headline: This is the first thing that prospects will notice. Although it can contain no more than 25 characters, the headline must immediately grab their attention. You can’t use any punctuation except a question mark, and use of all capitals is not permitted. Try to put one of your keywords right up there in the headline because it will appear in bold and have more chance of motivating prospects to click-through to your website. If you don't use a keyword, remember to keep it relevant to entice prospects to click.
2. Body copy: You have two descriptive lines to make your case for why this prospect should visit your website. Each of these rows can only have up to 35 characters so each word must be strong. Include at least one keyword and highlight what makes your company different. Promote any special offers or pricing. Use a strong call to action like “call today,” “order now,” “sign up,” or “get a quote” to let prospects know what they should do next.
3. Display URL: AdWords lets you choose a brief but meaningful display URL, which can be no more than 35 characters. This may be different from your destination URL, which can be as long as 1024 characters. Make sure that the landing page you take prospects to matches what they saw in your ad.

You can’t just throw one ad out there and hope for the best. You should create three or four ads for each of your ad groups, and use different messages for each. AdWords will automatically rotate ads to show the best-performing ads more often. AdWords works when you have copy that kills - now go out there and knock ‘em dead.