Writing Pay-Per-Click text in 2017, may seem like a daunting task. A successful ad campaign must be targeted for multiple devices and audiences.
Fortunately, marketing managers can find some help from host platforms to make customizations easier. For instance, AdWords has their “IF functions.” This will enable a user to create one ad that will be adaptable to all device formats – PC, smart phones, or whatever.
It’s a challenge to market toward the younger demographic, those who were practically came out of the womb and grabbed a cell phone first thing. Yet, at the same time, you don’t want to alienate the viewers who prefer the PC or laptop. AdWords allows this to be done with one ad that will customize to the user’s device automatically.
On the other hand, if your advertisement campaign targets a high-mobile or a high-PC viewership then you still have the option of focusing on a device-selective form.
Another key feature to remember in marketing is to put all the important text in the headline along with the keywords,which gives important points in the front page SERP competition. Some marketing forms rely on the dual headline – the main heading, and the subheading. This first lines essentially summarize the page. What comes next is more specific detail for anyone who care enough to read further. Some will barely glance at it.
Lastly, it is important to write to your target audience. If you’re appealing to multiple demographics then ads must be customized to each depending upon age groups, ethnicity, gender, and other factors. Some of the big platforms may have features that will change text to fit each demographic. Some campaigns may require your own personal touch.
Audiences
We’ve discussed why and how you should incorporate mobile messaging, and we’ve gone over the anatomy of a good text ad, but we still need to consider our different audiences.
For the purposes of this post, I’m only including audience targeting on the Search Network, since we’re looking at traditional text ads. These audiences include remarketing and the recently introduced Demographics for Search Ads, where we can set bid modifiers by age and gender.
Ideally, you want to create a different message for each audience. For example, someone who has already been to your site sees one message, and a new searcher sees a different one. For Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA), you can create a new campaign which shows a different message, or you can layer an audience to an existing campaign and bid higher.
Normally, I would recommend creating the new campaign so you are guaranteed to show the correct message and it’s easier to segment your data, but here come those IF functions again.
You are now able to create one ad that showcases a different message for each audience. That user who has already been to your site may be given a “10% off” coupon, while the new searcher views an ad that speaks to the product variety. Therefore, one of the key reasons you would create an RLSA campaign is negated, since the ad is customized for the specific audience.
You could still argue that an RLSA-only campaign allows you to bid on broader keywords, since the searcher has already been to the site. Similar to mobile-only campaigns, the decision depends on the data and personal preference. The takeaway is that it’s now easier to customize your ads per audience.
The other factor you may consider for campaign/ad group segmentation is demographics. You could potentially create unique ad groups per age and/or gender. If you only want 18- to 24-year-olds to see a certain message, you would create an ad group targeting this age range and set a bid modifier of -100% for the other ranges. Your keyword bids would then be unique for that age range. Subsequently, the 25–34 age ad group would have the other age ranges set at -100% and so forth.
There are two issues with this type of segmentation. The first is that you have the potential for many ad groups, to the point where management could get out of control. Granular segmentation makes sense if you have enough search volume or have a specific reason to go deeper, which comes to the second issue.
Google still only captures roughly 50 percent of demographic data. Everything else is classified as unknown. You don’t want to go more granular and make concrete decisions with a limited amount of data. Nonetheless, it may be worth testing with an ad group that has a substantial amount of data.
Final thoughts
Ad-writing isn’t one-size-fits-all. Though different audiences have always been viewing your ads, the options to craft custom messaging haven’t always been available. As these options roll out, we as advertisers need to make use of them to show our searchers better, more targeted ads.
As you are creating your campaign structures, ensure that you are considering the components that will determine if you see better CTRs and conversion rates.
