Paid Search Ad Copy Optimzation

Paid search marketing is a very “hands on” search marketing strategy and having a firm or a in-house person work on your PPC campaign is so much more profitable than allowing the search engines to do it for you. I am a big believer that the keywords you bid on and the ads you use are a key factor in conversions. I will go far and say that your business will not succeed in paid search if your keywords and ads are not optimized to their fullest. Today I would like to talk about ad reads in the home builder industry specifically for the Atlanta new homes term and how to optimize them for great click through rates.

So let’s start off by showcasing a few ad reads that have popped up when I do a search for the terms “atlanta new homes” and see how they can be optimized:

Ad Copy Strategy Using Atlanta New Homes

1. Use discounts or pricing – of course this can be great for any retailer but a great way to use this strategy for our example is to showcase home prices “from”. Something like “Atlanta new homes starting from the low 100′s” or ” Covering up to $10,000 is closing costs”.
2. Using the brand name – this is something that all home builders do very well as they are doing a tremendous amount of  traditional and online advertising. The question comes into play when a builder who is not very well known is using their brand within the ad.
3. Google site links – if you are a premium advertiser, the ads that appear above the natural search results, not alongside them on the left, you can choose up to ten links to appear underneath your main ad – Google will automatically choose four and the settings are applied at campaign level. Many have seen an increase of 30% in their click through rates because of them.
4. Google extended headlines – as I talked in a previous post, Google has been implementing longer headlines in their premium  ads. Ultimately Google will make the call on whether your description line #1 will be moved into the headline of your ad. While you can’t explicitly opt into (or out of) this, you can influence the probability of your ad displaying as such.  By crafting your ad so that each line of copy appears as a distinct sentence that ends with proper punctuation, you’ll at least be in a position to have your ad appear with the extended headline.
5. Urgency/Expiration- I love using this one! Look at every infomercial you see on tv and notice the time remaining or items sold counter? This is exactly what they are doing by relying on your sense of  urgency. Reads for our example can be:
   1. Atlanta new homes – communities are 90% sold out!
   2. We cover all closing costs till July 6th!
   3. Over 4,000 new homes sold in Atlanta!