Explore Computer World: Write eye-catching ads-- Adwords help. Improve your ad, imporve your traffic!

Hello,

Are your ads as attractive to your prospective customers as they could be?

Your customers choose to go to your website over your competitors' based only on what they see in your ads. If your ads don't grab their attention, you could be missing out on valuable sales, leads or traffic.

I don't know what to put in my ad. Help!

As a basic rule, use clear, well-written, and specific ad text to highlight the differentiating characteristics of your product or service. The idea is to attract the attention of those who are looking for your product or service.

Remember to think about your ads from your customer's perspective, the video below will show you how!

Watch the video here!

Tips to create a compelling ad:

Use a strong call-to-action (for example: 'Buy now', 'Call today')
Include prices
Include special offers and unique selling points
Make sure the text is highly relevant to the keywords in each ad group
Use your keywords in your ad
Direct users to the most relevant landing page on your website with a specific destination URL for each ad

What does a good ad look like?

Here are examples of both a good and bad ad so you can learn what works.

The good…

SLR Digital Cameras
Sale Now On. Voted Best After-Sales
Service. 80% Off Most Cameras
www.CameraShopSite.com/SLR

Destination URL:
www.camerashopsite.com/SLR.html

What's right?

This headline focuses on the specific offering and contains relevant keywords (eg. SLR Digital Cameras)
This description details specific product offerings and benefits
This destination URL leads to a landing page related specifically to SLR cameras

And the bad…

online camera store
we sell the main brands
great prices here
www.camerashopsite.com

Destination URL:
www.camerashopsite.com

What's wrong?

This headline focuses on a company description instead of on core selling points and the keywords that trigger it
This description is too general – it would be much better if it focused on specific products or services offered by the company – and it doesn’t contain a call to action
This destination URL leads to the company’s home page, rather than to a page promoting a specific product or service

Please note these examples are fictional and are intended for illustrational purposes only.

I've written a good ad, but is it attracting customers?

You can check your ad performance on the 'Ads' tab in your account. Look at the clickthrough rate (CTR) of each ad to see how many people clicked on your ad after they saw it. Ads that produce a relatively low CTR (e.g. less than 1% on the search network) can often be improved by implementing the tips above and learning from the example.

You can easily test multiple ads in each ad group, each with different offers and call-to-action phrases, to see which ads perform the best. Even subtle differences could have a big impact on your success.

We suggest testing 2 to 4 ads in an ad group at a time. This will help you assess what works, at no additional cost. AdWords will rotate your ads and automatically show the highest-performing ads more often. Then, you can edit or delete the ads with the lowest CTRs and repeat the test to get the most successful ads possible. Learn more about how to assess your ad performance.

You can find all of this information and more in our online AdWords Beginner's Guide.

Sincerely,

Laura

The Google AdWords Team

P.S. Next week we'll cover how you can show your ads on relevant websites using the Google content network!