![](https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/assets-hub/images/module-resource.png)
Study Notes
Download pdf 2 MB
12 years delivering excellence
Join a global community
Globally recognised
Toolkits, content & more
As copy and what we say to the consumer are extremely important. When people search, they have a need or want, they ask a question, and we return a response. This is our ad.
Ad copy can be rendered in different ways on mobile and on desktop.
We have character limits. So organic results tend to be a lot longer and bigger, but they’re less controlled. The challenge for us as marketers is to work around the character limits of the paid search ads.
These are the character limits:
What I recommend with those is inserting relevant keyword ideas into your Path 1 and Path 2, just to make it appear more relevant to the searcher.
Ads are linked to ad groups, and that means they’re linked to list of keywords. So the closer your keywords are, the more relevant your ads can be.
Well-written ad copy can improve the search experience with your brand. It is an experience with your brand. It is that question and answer. It will drive more clicks, and it can increase conversions because you are funneling people into the correct part of the landing page.
We’ve begun with our landing page and our CTA brings them to the next level. So, if your CTA in your ad says “Sale ends Sunday”, something like that can cause what’s called urgency or a click rush and people will dive in. There’s also additional ad features during promotional offers, which’ll have a time limit. Time limits are great CTAs because they encourage action today, quick and fast action. Also, because you’re paying for that click, you want the action as soon after the click as can possibly happen. So having a time-sensitive or a time-impending CTA can drive that click, and then ultimately, drive the action on the web page that you do want them to take.
Structurally, around ad copy, we’ve just got several things we need to consider:
So the core elements of ad copy is relevance, attractiveness, and directional activity around calls to action, or CTA.
Here, we have an example of some copy here that contain our relevance, our attractiveness, and our directional action here.
So the search query is cheap flights to Paris. The ad says, “Compare cheap flights to Paris”. So there’s a comparison aspect which is attractive because I know there’s going to be multiple carriers. I do want a cheap flight. So if I want to compare price, that leads very nicely into my cheap flight search.
The second thing is it’s an attractive offer. It’s an attractive offer to book because we’re able to see every deals. And the fact that I’m looking for a price-sensitive search, I can compare those prices and I can see deals.
The CTA is directional. It’s telling me to compare. It’s telling me how I can find. It’s these types of words because, ultimately, any kind of research-based activity and comparison-based activity we’ll want those kinds of CTAs just to tell them, “Okay, no you can’t compare here. No, you can’t find here”. And we are, again, feeding into that best airfare deals. So this will be a perfect example of relevance, attractiveness, and directional action to be taken within an ad.
The next level is to enhance your ads, with what’s called ad extensions. And we’ve a number of ad extensions available to us. These, on a very basic level, increase the size of the ad.
The most common used extensions are sitelinks, callout extensions, and call extensions. By default, you should probably include sitelinks and callout extensions in all of your ads. Depending on whether you have a phone facility or not, you should include call extension. So sitelinks, callouts, and call extensions will be the three top-tier ad extensions that advertisers should use in all PPC advertising.
This is an example of where they appear. So you can see the callouts are just below the ads there with the structured snippets. And then, we’ve got our deep dive into action using our sitelinks. So this can give just an additional piece of space. As you can see, that ad’s a lot bigger than the other ads on the page. So visually, it takes up more room on the search results page, and can ultimately lead to higher click-through rates.
Back to TopCathal Melinn is a well-known digital marketing director, commercial analyst, and ecommerce specialist with over 15 years’ experience.
Cathal is a respected international conference speaker, course lecturer, and digital trainer. He specialises in driving complete understanding from students across a number of digital marketing disciplines including: paid and organic search (PPC and SEO), analytics, strategy and planning, social media, reporting, and optimisition. Cathal works with digital professionals in over 80 countries and teaches at all levels of experience from beginner to advanced.
Alongside his training and course work, Cathal runs his own digital marketing agency and is considered an analytics and revenue generating guru - at enterprise level. He has extensive local and international experience working with top B2B and B2C brands across multiple industries.
Over his career, Cathal has worked client-Side, in digital marketing agencies and media owners with brands including HSBC, Amazon, Apple, Red Bull, Dell, Vodafone, Compare the Market, Aer Lingus, and Expedia.
He can be reached on LinkedIn here.
Data protection regulations affect almost all aspects of digital marketing. Therefore, DMI has produced a short course on GDPR for all of our students. If you wish to learn more about GDPR, you can do so here:
The following pieces of content from the Digital Marketing Institute's Membership Library have been chosen to offer additional material that you might find interesting or insightful.
You can find more information and content like this on the Digital Marketing Institute's Membership Library
You will not be assessed on this content in your final exam.
ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE
This module begins with the key concepts of paid search and demonstrates how to set up a Google Ads account and create a paid search campaign. It explains how to manage a paid search campaign budget effectively and outlines the different methods that can be used to optimize your paid search campaign. It also covers how to measure and report on the success of a paid search campaign.