One of the best ways we’ve increased sales for our music and entertainment clients is by running effective PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ad campaigns. We can improve engagement in PPC campaigns by reaching the very people who are searching for your artist or related artists, events or film releases.
Google search can be a very cost-effective way to drive sales, but there’s only so much information you can convey with a 25-character headline, 70-character body, and a hyperlink. In this post we’ll explore how to increase engagement in PPC campaigns with 5 tips we’ve used to drive sales for our music and entertainment clients.
1. Capitalize!
First things first. Ad copy written in ‘title-case’ is statistically proven to generate higher Click-Through Rates (CTRs) than non-title-case ad copy. The professional look and feel of a title-case advertisement increases trust with the viewer and facilitates engagement.
2. Include a “Wow!” Statement.
This can be tricky as we only have 95 characters to get our point across, but including a “Wow!” statement within the ad copy can substantially increase CTR and conversion to sale. For example, “Led Zeppelin’s new album includes 3 previously unreleased tracks.” That needs to be part of at least one version of ad copy.
3. Incorporate Artist/Band/Album/Event/Sponsor keywords as much as possible.
When you are trying to increase engagement in PPC campaigns, it is best practice to include your ‘key’ keywords in your ad copy and display URL. Why? Doing so increases your Google ‘Quality Score’, which in turn, allows your ad to be shown more often. Also, as an experienced Google searcher would know, keywords that have been searched for show in bold in the ad copy, effectively drawing attention to that specific ad.
4. Test the Creative.
Try A/B or multivariate testing. In A/B testing you are testing two or more distinct versions of creative against one another and in multivariate testing you are testing one creative with multiple combinations of elements.
By testing creative you can quickly identify which headlines, copy points, and call-to-actions are resonating best with your consumers and driving the most engagement.
For example, try testing a few different headlines with similar body text and identify which ad performs best. For our music and entertainment campaigns we A/B test our headlines with the artist name and album name from the start and then proceed with the top performer. After you’ve nailed down the best headline, try testing different offers or calls to action and use the results to build the perfect advertisement.
5. Use “Ad Extensions” To Append Product Reviews.
Google’s “Ad Extensions” allow for the addition of subtitles, reviews, maps, phone numbers, etc. to the standard SEM advertisement. Adding these extensions automatically increases your ad’s quality score – and even better than that, it allows more space for getting your point across. If available, we always append album reviews to our SEM ads to increase engagement and probability of a sale.
But these are just a few of the best practices we have in our toolbox. There are other ways to improve PPC campaign performance and our team is available to discuss how to best deploy this type of campaign.
