How to Write Text Ads: Tips from 18 PPC Experts

Last year 17 PPC experts and I were asked for our opinions regarding how to write and optimize text ads. Here is how I responded:

What are some of the biggest mistakes people make in text ad testing (aside from only measuring CTR changes)?

Here are three common mistakes I see:

1. Writing an ad that gets a lot of clicks, but is not consistent with the messaging on the landing page. (This disconnect can hurt conversions and profitability.)

2. Writing a winning ad, then letting it run for months (or years) without ever writing a new ad to challenge it.

3. Writing two or three ads for an Ad Group, then letting them run for months (or years) without ever deleting the losing ads.

How do you pick which text ads to test first?

The easiest way to decide is to simply pick the ad you think is most persuasive and test it first. Then test the next most persuasive ad, and so forth.

If you have three ads you want to test, there is no scientific process that will tell you in advance which ad will perform best. So you just have to trust your gut and start testing.

In your experience, what factors have the greatest influence in testing?

If there is a secret to writing winning PPC ads, I’d have to say it’s clarity. In case after case, the winning ads I see use clearer language than the losing ads.

So if there’s a way to clarify your ad — and eliminate any kind of awkward or confusing words and phrases — then this is definitely something you want to test first.

How important is text ad testing in overall campaign optimization tasks?

I believe it’s becoming more important than it’s ever been. This is because Google has been placing more and more emphasis on CTR.

In fact, AdWords experts have recently noticed that Quality Score is becoming less important while CTR is becoming more important.

To increase CTR, you must have a seamless market to message match. The “market” is made up of the searchers who type in the keywords you’re bidding on; the “message” is the ad.

Testing ad text has always been important, but it’s probably more important now than it’s ever been.

Have you had any surprising text ad testing results?

Absolutely. Happens all the time. Although the more I write ads and analyze why one ad won and one ad lost, it becomes easier. You start to see patterns at work, principles at play.

But the surprises never stop. That’s one reason testing is so important. It provides you with empirical evidence of what’s working… right this minute… in your market.

That’s very valuable information to have.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. If you are interested in how the 17 other PPC experts responded, you can download the entire “Text Ad Testing Masters Guide” here.