June 20, 2016: This month, Microsoft’s Bing posted a terrific Slideshare presentation — “The Art and Science of Ad Copy Testing” that’s packed with useful tips about how search marketers can create better copy in their ads.
The presentation is long (154 slides) but lively and informative, providing an excellent top-level view of the psychology of search-based decision-making, and plenty of specific recommendations, including the directive that search marketers appeal directly to searchers’ “reptilian brains” (amygdalas) by leveraging pain, emotion, fear, ego, and the desire for comparison in their search ads.
For example, by creating time-limited search ads (“Sale ends in 4 hours”), user fears of missing out (FOMO) can be exploited; as the presentation notes, in tests, CTR rates triple as the clock counts down. Similarly, by combining an incentive with an appeal to anxiety (“$300 of Free Ads: Avoid missing another new customer”), CTR rates and campaign performance will both improve.
Naturally, the only reliable way to determine which psychological “buttons” to push is through A/B or multivariate testing – the basic mechanism that allows marketers to see which copy resonates (and converts) best for each audience. Both Google and Bing offer this functionality as a core element in their ad platforms – unfortunately, what can make things dicey for marketers seeking to optimize campaigns on both of these engines is that tests must be run in parallel, and a campaign optimized perfectly for Google may not work identically on Bing, given that Bing’s audience has its own special characteristics and quirks. (Hence the need for 3rd party SEM agencies whose software can be used to run tests across both engines).
Check “The Art and Science of Ad Copy Testing.” Even if you’re not buying clicks on Bing right now, the insights into searchers’ motivations are spot-on and you’re more than likely to pick up some insights that can inject life and value into your PPC ad copy.
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