Nailing your headlines is crucial to PPC advertising success.

To put this into perspective, five times as many people read the headline than the body copy. If it doesn’t grab their attention, they will keep scrolling until they find one that does. It’s the ultimate decision-maker between them visiting your website or not.

Ready to get started? Here’s everything you need to know about creating red-hot headlines that are guaranteed to increase your click-through rate (CTR).

The basics

PPC ads have similar layouts and restrictions on all search engines.

For this example, we’ll look at the one that receives a massive 3.8 million searches per minute – Google.

Google Ads are made up of three elements:

• Your headline. This is where you captivate your audience with the most engaging benefits of your business. You’re allowed up to 3 headlines of 30 characters, all of which can display a different perk or offer.
• Your description. This is the small text that goes underneath your headline, giving you more space to highlight the best parts of your product or service. Here, you’re allowed two descriptions of 90 characters.
• Your display URL. This isn’t as important as the first two but can be used as an opportunity to clean up any odd numbers or words and show that you’re a real business. For instance, https://www.adzooma.com/offer/today12345?=clicktoday/ could become https://www.adzooma.com/Free_Offer.

To put your headlines into perspective, I’ve already used 38 characters at the beginning of this sentence. It’s not a lot – but it won’t be long before you’re an expert in writing short and snappy copy.

While you spend time doing this, the Adzooma platform can take care of the rest of your advertising campaigns. It will analyse your accounts 24/7, flagging underperforming ads and generating suggested improvements you can action in seconds.

Better yet, it’s free.

5 steps to writing killer PPC headlines

1. Choose your keywords

Your keywords are the foundation of your ads.

They determine where your ads will show up when somebody searches for something. Selling high top trainers? Then choosing “buy high top trainers” as a keyword might be something to go for. Keywords are the first step to making your PPC ads work – before we focus on the smaller details.

If you aren’t sure which keywords are best for you to use, Google’s Keyword Planner does the research for you. It’s a way of uncovering data about potential keywords before you use them so they’re more likely to gain better results.

You can also find useful metrics such as:

• Average monthly searches
• Competition
• Bid estimates
• Related keywords
• Projected clicks
• Projected impressions
• Projected clickthrough rate

Using this data, you will be able to narrow down your keywords for each campaign and write more straight-forward, relevant headlines.

2. Think about your USP

If you want people to click on your ads, you need to think about the unique selling point of your business.

This is the thing that sets you apart from your competitors and makes your product or service better than theirs. What do you offer that they don’t?

Whatever it is, put it in your headline. Use as few characters as possible to make it exciting and memorable, focusing on the benefits of your business rather than the features.

Take a look at these two examples.

A:

B:

At first glance, the headline in option B doesn’t tell you anything.

Option A is much more benefit-driven and gives the user a reason to click. It outlines their amazing delivery loud and clear, showing that their service is faster and more convenient than their competitors.

But, even this one can be improved. If you carefully pick and arrange beautifully hand-tied bouquets, don’t just say ‘Flowers Nottingham’. Yes, it’s a keyword, but adding the word ‘beautiful’ in front will earn you more clicks.

3. Focus on emotion

Emotion is the driving force behind everything. Your ads aren’t an exception, and won’t perform without it.

Make your audience care by telling them how much you can help them, how impressive or beautiful your product is, or even how fast and stress-relieving your service is. Assure them that you can solve one of their problems. They won’t click on your ad if they aren’t convinced.

One of the best ways to do this is by asking a question. If it’s strong enough, you won’t need to include anything else – it will do all the talking for you. It’s basically a matter of the strongest question wins.

This works particularly well for services in the insurance and divorce industries, as the situations you’re solving are much more personal to the user.

For example:

Headlines like this often perform much better than ones with more traditional language such as ‘take control of your claim’ as they make people think about their personal circumstances.

On the other hand, you should also make the most of descriptive text by including powerful and captivating adjectives. Remove dead words like ‘the’ and ‘and’ to make room for words and phrases like:

• ‘freshly handmade’
• ‘expertly crafted’
• ‘super-fast delivery’

Don’t be afraid to write with full stops to save characters. This will help you to remain concise and include as many benefits as possible.

Something as simple as ‘Freshly Made. Expertly Crafted. Buy Today’ will make your headline clickable.

4. Use simple language

Use simple language to get your message across clearly.

Why? Because people like to know exactly what they’re getting. They aren’t going to trust your website if your PPC headlines are full of buzzwords.

In addition, if you write your headlines as if you’re speaking to an expert, you will never get to the core benefits of your business. You’ve got to be nuanced.

For instance, take this example:

This headline tells us everything we need to know.

Now, take this one:

This headline assumes the audience knows what a ticketing tool is, which instantly discards the people who don’t. Something more universal would have worked better, such as ‘Highly Rated IT Tech Support’.

If you aren’t sure how to get the balance right, do a quick Google search for the products or services you offer and see what your competitors are doing.

Or, if you think you’ve gone a little overboard or lost the essence of your ad, there are opportunities within the Adzooma platform to help you make fast improvements.

For example, you might be alerted to ‘Try New Advert Headlines’, where you input some text and Adzooma will generate the ad for you. It will also spot any spelling or grammatical errors in your ads, which saves a lot of time when you’re adding a ton of new headlines.

5. Include specific numbers or statistics

Using numbers and statistics is a great way to stand out on Google. They add credibility to your brand, help to build trust, and make people want to find out more.

In fact, headlines with numbers tend to generate 73% more social shares and engagement.

It’s the reason ads like this do so well:

The more specific you are, the more clicks you’ll receive. It’s the easiest way of getting more traffic to your site.

If you’re a hairdresser with 6 years’ experience, put that in your headline. An arts and crafts business offering 25% off any handmade prints over £33? Shout it from the rooftops.

Boost your profits through PPC ads

By following these simple steps, you should be on your way to creating excellent PPC headlines in no time.

If you’re in doubt, remember to keep it simple. Figure out your USP by thinking about the things that would impress you the most, and stick to the keywords and phrases that you know your audience wants.

Better yet, use your competitors’ headlines as inspiration – particularly if yours aren’t performing. It’s all about testing.