Promoting your contest or sweepstakes with a PPC ad campaign is one of many ways to raise awareness of your promotion and attract a larger audience beyond your immediate customers.

If you’ve determined that PPC ads make sense for your promotional mix, your next step is to create a compelling ad campaign that works to drive traffic to your promotion. According to WordStream, the typical small business spends $1,200/month on PPC yet wastes more than 25% of this investment, partly due to ads that aren’t converting.

The first step to creating an ad campaign that pays off is to write compelling ad copy to ensure your ads drive traffic to your contest or sweepstakes page. Here’s a look at how to be the Don Draper of PPC ads.

Get the Reader’s Attention

PPC ads show up in search results when prospective customers are looking for something specific. They can also show up on websites with content that’s related to what’s in your ad. If you use the same keywords in your ad copy that your potential participants are searching for or reading about, they’ll be more likely to notice and click your ad because it’s relevant to their needs.

In fact, PPC ads use a very specific format for your copy. The first line is your headline, which is also the link people will click through to your promotion. The first line is often what determines whether or not people click, so it needs to catch the reader’s attention, ideally by using the keywords for which they searched. Then, the follow up line needs to use a compelling call to action to get the reader to click.

For example, this ad from a Honda dealership comes up when you search for “Honda” in Google (in the Vancouver area).

OpenRoad Honda Specials - openroadhonda.ca‎
Bring Home a Honda at 0.99%
Finance Offers end Dec 31 - Visit us now

Notice that the word “Honda” is in bold? When you use keywords in your title and ad copy that match the words the reader used to search, they’ll stand out as they scan the screen.

Next, a good ad focuses on benefits. The Honda dealership notes a promotion – “specials” and offers a discount on financing. The use of the expression “bring home” plays on that great feeling shoppers get when they feel they’ve gotten a big shopping win.

The ad also provides a compelling call to action. It incents the reader to “bring home a Honda,” sets a deadline to prompt quick action and encourages the reader to visit. The use of “visit us now” cleverly encourages both a click and an in-store visit.

Your compelling call to action matters. In the second and third lines of your ad, you need to expand on why people should click on your ad. For example, say you’re targeting people searching for gym memberships in Toronto. Try an ad such as:

Toronto gym holiday contest

Win a 1-year membership
Enter now to get fit for free!

This ad reinforces an offer for gyms in Toronto. It lets people know there’s a contest offering a free one-year membership. So we’ve told them what it’s about and what’s in it for them. We’ve got their attention, cultivated interest, fostered a desire to save on their fitness and, when they click, we have their action. Those four points – known as AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) in marketing – form the basis of a great ad.

Review, Revise and Revisit

With PPC ads, you can easily see what works and what doesn’t by monitoring your click-through rates. Try changing one word and see if the click-through rate changes. Even something as simple as adding or deleting a period may affect results. Allow your ads some time to circulate, but, once you’ve established a baseline, make small changes, review results and prune anything that lags.

Create a Complete Strategy and Campaign

Remember, great ads make up just one part of an effective pay-per-click campaign. You need to make sure you’re targeting the right people, at the right time, with the right keyword search terms and through the right PPC networks. The next step is to ensure you’ve got a great targeted landing page that further stimulates your target market’s desire to enter your social contest and engage with your product and brand.

We can help you get your contest or sweepstakes started! Our social promotions platform makes it easy to generate leads and engage with customers. Contact us for more details.

Andrea Coutu, a Vancouver marketing consultant and business plan writer, runs Trustmode Marketing and is the founder of Consultant Journal. She has also written a series of books on consulting, including her most popular on consulting fees.

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