With headlines screaming credit crunch and job cuts everywhere you look, you’ll probably be demanding a lot more of your pay per click advertising in the next few months. Adverts that you were once happy to run for the sake of brand profiling will now have to pull their weight or be taken down as marketing budgets begin to feel the squeeze.

The first duty of a pay per click advertising campaign is always to support the sales force and drive new business. Now more than ever, these adverts must produce a measurable ROI with favourable conversion costs and a sustainable cost per acquisition.

If your adverts are to successfully turn surfers into shoppers, they must encompass three key elements.

Call to Action

A call to action provokes a favourable response from the reader by encouraging them to carry out a certain task such as visit the web site or enquire about a particular special offer. Google encourages pay per click account holders to include a call to action phrase such as Click here to learn more! Or Sign up today! In the AdWords campaigns and reward this with a higher quality score. The advert and its call to action forms the web user’s first impression of the company, making catchy text crucial to its success.

Substantiate Your Claims

Don’t ever be tempted to over-embellish your offerings for the sake of an eye-catching advert. Not only will be you be wasting clicks on users drawn in by the promise of something that doesn’t actually exist but you will also lose the trust of potential customers who see advert claims that are not substantiated.

The limited text allowed on pay per click ads can make creative copy difficult and with so much to put in, it is tempting to go all out with a wonderful offer, the lowest prices or great multi-purchase discounts. If you can substantiate these headlines, you’re already half way to a sale. By deep linking your pay per click advert to the correct landing page providing all relevant information about the offer, you stand an even better chance of converting those clicks into customers.

Engage With so many internet users and so many rival pay per click advertisers, your advert must engage the right kinds of people immediately if it’s to show its worth. Doing this will trim down your advertising spend and target increased conversions as only those really interested in your product or service will click on your advert.

To make your PPC ad work harder, you must first decide who it needs to appeal to and then set out the advert accordingly. The kind of audience you’re hoping to attract will determine the terminology and tone of the advert text. It will also play a huge part in deciding when your adverts will be shown. Especially important if you’re working to a tighter budget, putting your ads on a time targeting system will cut down the hours the text is active and go some way to ensuring it shows only to the ‘right’ kinds of internet users. If you sell office supplies for example, taking ads off at the weekend will ensure they really sparkle for office workers during the week.

pay per click
search engine optimisation