How to Set Up Google AdWords: Step 6
Create ad and keywords: Create an ad
Now that you’ve got your advanced settings all in order, it’s finally time to create your first ad!
First things first: you can create a variety of ads in AdWords: text, image, video, or mobile. Each has a variety of techniques, and I’m only going to go over the text ad, as it’s the most popular.
You’ll see five lines of text in the ad manager:
- Headline: The blue hyperlink to your landing page; total of 25 characters.
- Description Line 1: 1st line of black text; total of 35 characters.
- Description Line 2: 2nd line of black text; total of 35 characters.
- Display URL: The green text displaying your landing page; total of 35 characters.
- Destination URL: The actual destination landing page (that must match the display URL domain); total of 1024 characters.
The wrong way to write an ad
Below is an example of how not to write an ad. It’s vague, not overly enticing, and most importantly: there’s no call to action!
The right way to write ad
Here are some of the pointers Google AdWords Help gives for optimizing your ads:
- Make your ad simple and enticing.
- Have a sale or promotion? Include it! Free shipping – add it! Price, as we all know, is a huge differentiator.
- Call-to-action. Have one. ‘Nuff said.
- Include the keywords you’re bidding on in the text.
- Choose the best destination URL – more often than not, it won’t be the homepage.
- Test multiple ads. You might be surprised about which one performs better.
With a purpose in mind, I set out to try again:
Remember: you’ll want to have tested the keywords you use in the ad beforehand (which I haven’t with this example), but you get the idea.
Congratulations!
You’ve created your first ad! Tomorrow, we start on keywords.