9 ad copy tests that will improve your PPC performance
Ad copy testing is a norm in advertising because it helps make any company’s advertising efforts worthy the money. Not doing copy tests can lead to huge monetary losses.
According to an Unbounce analysis, 98% of ads do not show any return on investment. You can be a part of this statistic if you don’t value ad copy testing.
To help you in your advertising efforts, here are 9 ad copy tests that will help improve your PPC performance:
Full numbers vs. abbreviated numbers
Numbers are a huge part of digital advertising. They are used to give people quantifiable information. They show prices, discounts, inventories, and a lot more. There’s no doubt that numbers are significant parts of ads. The only question left is whether you should use full numbers (i.e. 1,000,000) or abbreviated ones (i.e. 1M). Testing how your audience responds to each approach will give you the answer that’s specific to your business.
Exposing prices upfront or not
There are good reasons why you should put prices on your ad copy, but there are also reasons why you shouldn’t. Cheap pricing is highly likely to attract customers. But then again, showing the price, no matter how cheap, can also remind them that they need money to buy your product. This can stop them from clicking on your ad.
The rule of thumb is that if your product is competitively priced, using ads with prices can be a good idea. If your product is not the cheapest in the market, it’s better to highlight its other desirable traits aside from its price.
Moreover, you also have the option to generalize the price or to simply show a price bracket. Examples are “Price Starts from $4.90” and “Prices as Low as $4.90”. This can attract customers to your website without intimidating them with the higher prices.
How promotions are quantified
How you phrase your promotions can also affect the performance of your ads. Sometimes, saying that your site is having a sale is not enough. You also have to tell people how much the discounts are.
This brings in the question of how you are supposed to quantify your discounts on your ads. Here are some ways you can do that: “Up to 60% Discount on Baby Onesies”, “Baby Onesies Now Half-Priced”, “Baby Products as Low as $3”, “Buy One Get One on Baby Clothes”.
Formal language vs. emotion-triggering language
Speaking of phrasing, advertisers also have to choose between formal ads and emotion-triggering ads. Depending on your product, sometimes, formal ads can bore the audience.
Appealing to your target market’s emotions is a good alternative. You can try to resolve a problem that they are facing and give them solutions. You can also amuse them, surprise them or empathize with them.
Using symbols and punctuation
One of the simplest ad tests you can conduct involves the use of symbols and punctuation marks on your ad copy. Depending on your product, you can use different punctuation and symbols such as exclamation points, question marks, percentages and different currency symbols.
Capitalizing your ad copy
Capitalizing the words in your ads also matters. Some can perceive non-capitalized ads as unimportant. And these ads can easily get outshined by the other ads surrounding it.
Of course, you also have to be careful not to overdo it. Making your ad look prominent is one thing, making it look too demanding is another. Just stick to capitalizing each starting letter and avoid overusing all-caps on words.
Calls to action you should use
The words that you use in your CTAs also have an impact on your PPC performance. CTAs often offer extreme levels of reactions from target audiences. You can either attract them or shoo them away. There are CTAs that can appear manipulative and people usually don’t like that. There are also CTAs that appear casual and trustworthy – this is the kind of CTA you want.
Needless to say, there are different possible CTAs. They usually start with words such as Book, Order, Call, Reserve, Join and Subscribe. How you use these words can affect your ads’ performance. “Buy Now” can have a different click-through rate than “Order Now”.
Including your brand name on your campaigns
Including your brand name on your ads can also help your business. It can give your product an identity instead of it just being a random merchandise from an untrustworthy company. It’s hard to trust ads nowadays, so making yours appear trustworthy should be a top priority.
Including your brand name on your campaigns can also help you gain the popularity that you need in the industry. Seeing your name across the web can help people develop a sense of familiarity that can eventually lead to trust.
Testing landing pages
Landing pages are a fundamental part of advertising. It’s where ads lead people to so that they can further decide whether or not they are buying a product. Because of this, advertisers must also test their landing pages so they know what works and what doesn’t.
Some of the ad tests you can do include: linking to the most popular product from the category you’re advertising, linking to the category page, using different sorting methods on the category page, and linking to your homepage.
Before you apply the tests listed above, make sure you don’t just go around testing ads just for the sake of testing them. Have a ready strategy depending on how your ad tests turn out. This will help you improve your ads’ conversion rate.
Keep track of all the data you gather. You’ll need those in the future, especially if you want to closely monitor your progress. This will ultimately help you in achieving your goal of increasing your performance.
Lastly, don’t keep your tests running indefinitely. Tests are meant to have an end. Without a set time frame, you will not be able to get reliable data and your tests will not be useful in the long-term.
Callum Mundine is part of the marketing team at oneegg.com.au. He is an Amazon marketplace & white hat link building specialist, and has launched multiple successful brands on Amazon.com. Callum like his eggs boiled.
