If you’ve ever written a pay-per-click (PPC) ad, then you know how hard it is to cram an eye-popping, attention-grabbing, conversion-cranking message into a tiny, little space

The 25-character headline and 70-character description space doesn’t seem so small until you try to insert your text into Google and run over the character limit!

Writing successful ad copy is one of the most important factors of a successful PPC campaign. Here’s a few things that I have found to be the most effective from my experience with PPC marketing, especially within the higher education PPC advertising space:

• Include keywords in your ad that relate to what was searched for – a person expects to see results relevant to their search query
• If your brand is well known, try to include branded terms if they don’t take up too much space
• A strong call-to-action such as “sign up now” or “learn more” are classics that never stop producing results
• Utilizing time sensitivity prompts such as “sign up today” or “download now” can trigger a sense of urgency and clicks
• Use numbers – pricing, dates, percentages – these tend to jump out and numbers allow you to get specific in your ad text

Bottom line – you can consult with Google PPC reps and read numerous articles on the best text ads to use, but the best resource is always testing your own specific performance. It’s important to test and figure out what works best for your own brand.

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