So, you have to make your pay per click advertising promotion work effectively for you. The following is a guide on how to write effective pay per click ads.

Guide to writing effective pay per click ads

Before you get down to pen a PPC advertisement, ask yourself: Do you have it in you to write an effective ad? Now, be honest with yourself and if the answer is no, then get a good copywriter to pen the ad for you. Whatever you do, before the ad writing starts, keep the following factors in mind:

• The aim of the ad is to get buyers on your site or convert visitors to customers. You do not want casual visitors or virtual window shoppers.
• Your ad cannot be the "War and Peace" of PPC ads. You need to be brief.
• Though you should employ good grammar, you do not have to get every comma, apostrophe right. And that's OK.
• Target your audience. Do not advertise in countries where English is a foreign language.

Okay, now that we are through with the important basics, let us get down to tips on writing a PPC ad:

• Your ad should focus on the truth and nothing but the truth. Do not describe your product or service as God's gift to mankind. If you do and you product falls short, be ready for black eyes and bruises in your profit statement. Be straight and matter-of-fact in your ads.
• Describe the benefit of your product or service. Examples: "Soothes the skin", "Saves you cash", etc.
• Use enthusiastic keywords to grab attention. Examples of words that spur enthusiasm will be "Time-limited offer', "Special offer"
• Do not use vague language. Do not use terms such as "Free" and "Cheap" because all shoppers know that no businessman is stupid enough to give his products for free or dump them at idiotic cheap rates. Many shoppers may ignore such an ad.
• Do not waste precious ad space by plugging in common words such as "a", "an", "the", etc.
• Do not use capital letters. They tend to irritate people. Using capital letters on the Internet is the equivalent of shouting in real life.
• Get your keywords right. Pen a few specific keywords. For example, if you are selling T-Shirts then keywords such as "cool tees" may be clichéd and passé. You should also employ words such as "niche (or offbeat) tees" or even "custom tees" because for all you know shoppers are already sick of hunting for "cool tees".
• Use short and forceful descriptors such as "easy", "quick". Avoid long preachy sentences such as "The salubrious herb extracts in our cream will nurture your blackheads-fighting mechanism", etc.
• Use square brackets [....] around your keywords. Your ad will show up when the bracketed keyword is searched for. It will not show if the bracketed keywords are searched for along with other words. So, use these brackets only when you are sure.
• Avoid hyped-up language and go for simple words that spell action. For example, "Download" sounds simpler and action-oriented than "try out our
• All shoppers love to save money. So it makes sense that when you want to advertise your product, you should combine it with an offer. And your ad will most probably say "Buy X, get X + Y" or something on those lines. All shoppers like some kind of goodies and offers.
• Think like a shopper does while writing your ad. As you are in the industry yourself, your views will be technical and biased while the shopper will be looking for something simple and unbiased.
• Check out what kind of ads your competitors are releasing. Benchmark their keywords.
• Include prominent keywords in your title. Google, for example, highlights the searched keywords in bold, and shoppers cannot escape looking at these words.
• Write 2-3 ads and release two at a time. Just in case one does not work, the other might. Use two different sets of keywords to write the ads.

Hang on, for you aren't done yet. Every plan has to have a backup plan. Once your ad is published, you must start a testing process. Run two ads for a week and compare their performance on two factors: click-through ratio and cost per click. Discontinue the ad that is not fetching you the returns.

Nothing is perfect, people are fickle-minded, and things may change. So, the beautiful and effective ad you have penned may not work. The trick is to crack what surfers like and the trade is to keep trying till you get it right.