Are you a business that spends a great deal of time, energy and money on your pay per click advertising campaigns wondering why they just don’t return like you would hope for? There are many different factors you should be looking at but once very important factor that is probably the most important is your ad copy.

Ad copy should be unique and compelling. You cannot just slap the same ad copy across every ad group and except to have stellar results. It doesn’t work that way. You should always be writing custom ads with attributes centered around where ever you are sending your visitor. If you are sending them to a page with 50% off blenders than your ad should demonstrate that clearly. Your ads are the gateway to your sales so it is important to take your time and right compelling ads. With a down economy the last thing you want to be doing right now is sending unqualified traffic to your website and burning through your daily media budget with nothing to show for it at the end of the day. In today’s market place all online advertisers need to be 100% confident with how they spend every single dollar they have.

A schema is a concept that is entrenched in the minds of your audience. Say a word and immediately people think of a concept. “Drive”, for instance. Everyone who hears it will automatically think of automobile. But use the word in a different context and you can still play off the old familiar concept effectively: ie. “Drive it home”. Get the picture?

It’s easy to do. Just think of a concept that people in your niche would know and associate with popularly. Use that concept to drive (get it?) traffic to your website using killer PPC ad content.

Suppose you want people to click the link in your ad and download a new software that you’ve developed. Would it be more effective to tell them “download my software” or to say “watch your profits soar!” What is soar and what does it have to do with software? Well, it doesn’t have anything to do with software. Birds soar. Computers don’t. But you want your readers to associate flying high with your software and their profits. So you tie their profits to your software by using the word “soar” in a different context. Believe me, it works.

PPC advertising is all about the looks. An attractive ad will get more click throughs than some staid, boring text ad with no call to action. I’m not just talking about great sales text. I’m talking about visual elements that you can ad to your text ad to make it more appealing. The bottom line is to make your ad stick out in a sea of advertisers. Here are a few ways to do that better:

• Bold Text – Bold text can make your ad stand out. But don’t bold the entire ad. Use bold in a limited fashion by using it to draw attention to a very important word or phrase. That word will stick out and so will your ad.
• Capitalize Letters – Or even whole words. NOT the entire ad. You don’t want to come across like you are shouting ad the searcher. You just want to draw emphasis to a certain word or perhaps one line by capitalizing the first letter of each word. Use this in moderation, but use it to great effect.
• Exclamation Marks – Done once it can be very effective. Done twice or more and it has a detrimental effect. Like capital letters, it can seem like you are shouting. So don’t! Just go easy and use it when you need it.
• Ampersand – The little ampersand does more than save space. It sticks out like a sore thumb & draws attention to itself. You may not want to use it every time in lieu of the longer ‘and’, but it can help make your ad more visible.
• Other Special Characters – Use whatever you can to make your ad stand out. Numbers. Symbols. Whatever. Just stand out.

Is your PPC ad visual? It should be.

Here’s an idea I haven’t thought of:

(Source) 4. Writing compelling descriptions: PPC can be used to test different versions of ad copies and their corresponding click through rate. The best performing ad copies, based on their click through rate, can then be improvised to develop Meta descriptions that are likely to attract more clicks.

Meta descriptions are used to show searchers what a particular web page is about in the SERPs. That and the meta title go a long way to ensuring that a searcher clicks on the SERP listing and visits your web page. So why not use your pay per click campaigns to test versions of your meta titles and descriptions.

If you have a higher than average pay per click advertising ad that just gets the click and seems like magic, it’s because it is a well-written ad. It’s not magic. It’s just effective copywriting. So re-use it. Take the title and description and make them meta data for a web page that you optimize for the same keyword. Almost seems like a no-brainer now, doesn’t it?

The No. 1 rule for any advertising is to stand out. It’s no different with PPC. You want your ad to stand out in a crowd. How do you do that?

There are several strategies that work to make your ad stand out. No one strategy is THE strategy for every advertiser. But there are strategies that you can learn from and implement to suit your own personality, style, company, and brand.

Standing out in the PPC crowd is simply a matter of writing ad copy that gets searchers’ attentions. But to truly stand out it helps to know what your competition is doing. Are they all using special symbols? Then you shoudn’t. Are their ads all based on one keyword? Maybe you should select another keyword or slightly vary the one they all target. The key is to be different. Do they use dollar signs? Leave the dollar signs off. Or advertise your free giveaway instead.

Be different. That’s the key to winning the PPC advertising game.