The evolving, dynamic, often misunderstood, and murky world of the Google Quality Score algorithm has several key components. Digital Marketers know of these components because…. erm basically because Google has told us!

However, there is one Quality Score component is continuous and obvious; click-through-rate (CTR). It is the basis on which any PPC audit, analysis or measurement is based. Some digital marketers measure the success of a PPC campaign on impressions (& impression share), CTR and Cost-Per-Click (CPC). This is a very dated means of PPC measurement, ignoring the customer journey right through to sale/action or the relevance of the web traffic.

Imagine Belfast Widget Company Ltd sells widgets. They could place a PPC ad with the ad title “Cheapest widgets in the world” and advertise internationally with Dynamic Keyword Insertion on high-volume generic search keywords. They could have an excellent CTR and a low CPC, however if they are directed to an irrelevant page, or if they don’t sell the cheapest widgets in the world, or they don’t even sell widgets internationally, or even have an eCommerce platform, then what is the point? Ah but some digital agencies will state “but look at the extra traffic we have directed to your site… think of the branding value…” etc. Nonsense.

Blue Shark Digital is always committed to measuring online advertising through to conversion. However, CTR remains crucial. Let’s for one moment think about the emotives in a PPC ad copy. What entices someone to click on an ad?

Blue Shark Digital has been managing an online campaign for one of our clients, who offer nutritional advice, customised food plans and a range of healthy food products and supplements. With the huge increase in online trends in January towards healthy-eating and dieting etc, the PPC market in very competitive. In order to stand out, to have a high CTR and ultimately, to drive conversion, we are using advertising emotive as the basis of the campaign.

There were three main considerations when creating the emotional PPC ads:

1. Who is the customer? Primarily woman who are concerned about their weight and excesses over Christmas period.
2. Tone of the advertisement. We chose to focus on disgust and guilt. Playing on these emotions over a six week period immediately prior to and after Christmas. Approaching February the emotive target will change to focusing on feel good factors and positivity.
3. How to write emotionally-charged ad copy that would drive clicks. By analysing search trends and competitors, our ads achieve stand-out recognition because of our emotive focus. 95% of competitor’s ads are almost identical. The same old generic phrases based on high-volume search terms and bland calls-to-action.

In order to dominate PPC, using emotive ad copy to drive a higher CTR can help you out-perform competitors with a higher quality score and a larger budget. Using the example above, there are other emotions that we can play on to drive engagement and response through PPC, including of course, display.

• Fear – we could play on the health fears of excess weight and the long-term consequences.
• Affirmation – We could utilise customers newly-found determination to lose the excess weight.
• Anger – we could use the underlying self-loathing and anger that is associated with seasonal weight gain, with ad copy such as “Why did you do this to yourself” “Fat people don’t get promotions”, etc. 

The main things to consider when using emotive copy is how this fits with your customer base or target customers, your brand and your online goals. L’Oreal aren’t going to start calling their customers ugly to entice purchase of their products, for example. However our client’s brand is very emotive and gritty and they believe nutritional advice needs to be direct and forthright. This has given us the scope to run this campaign.

For more information on how your business can benefit from a Blue Shark Digital-managed PPC campaign contact us below.