At some level, there are really only two types of PPC Ads:
- Ads where you have more “reason why” information and deal sweeteners than you have room for — ads where you have to figure out what to include and how much to emphasize each element as well as what to leave out, and
- Ads where it feels like you don’t have enough “reason why” information to even fill 95 characters of PPC Ad space.
So while it can seem like a no brainer tip to write “never settle for adspeak,” that’s only the case for the first type of ads, where you’ve got more to say than space. For the second type of ads, falling into adspeak is a real danger and temptation. Here’s a good example of just that kind of situation:
This is an ad for a dog’s (or cat’s) flea prevention medication, similar to Frontline. The client sells these kinds of dog, cat, and pet medications online for significantly less than veterinarians or pet stores. So the basic information to convey consists of:
- That they have Revolution for sale
- At a significant savings
- And with free shipping
And that’s it! Sure, it might help to quote a percent discount or to say “for dogs and cats” or something, but that’s all the information there is to convey. And both ads get all of that information across within the first line of copy — leaving another 35 characters worth of copy to fill in the second line.
So this second line is where you can see the difference between the professional ad writer, who knows better than to slip into adspeak, and the un-optimized ad (probably written as a collateral duty by an employee) that he was competing against. Better yet, because both ads feature the same headline, first line of copy, and URL, you can see just how much of a difference that second line made!
The winning ad, as you can see, stretched for something worthwhile to say, and ended up with the promise that repeat customers would get “repeat savings.” Whether “repeat savings” represented additional savings exclusive to repeat customers, or simply a repetition of the savings offered to everyone is unclear, but the implication would be that signing up for autoshipment would save you even extra.
In contrast, the losing ad slipped into a sort of chest-thumping adpseak: “[Brand] Saves You Time & Money.” This is the kind of phrase that people automatically tune out and discount. It’s like “fast, friendly service,” and “for all your _____ needs.” We call it adspeak because it’s meaningless chatter than only ever appears in ads.
So how much difference did that second line of copy make? How big of a CTR boost did it cause? 27% increase. Not earth shattering, but solidly better.
And it sort of makes sense, too: if you waste a third of your ad space, shouldn’t you expect performance to drop by almost a third as well? Of course, ad performance doesn’t work that way, as sometimes a very small change causes a big boost (or dop) in performance, but still, why waste valuable PPC Ad Space with worthless Adspeak?
And that’s a Tip From the Boosters you can take to the bank.
