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The following post is an excerpt from an internal workshop on writing effective ads. It builds up a case to look at both “relational relevance” and “necessity relevance” when writing ads for PPC campaigns.

Introduction
How does one write ad copy that goes beyond keywords and gets to the intent and motivation of the searcher? I have used case examples of tests done by a leading marketing research site. The goal was to determine ad performance based on two types of “relevance” parameters, defined later in this post.

Relational relevance
This is identified by search engines through algorithms, matching search terms against ad content. It considers relevance of search terms to ads when making placements (assign quality score in Google Adwords jargon). But is the importance of relevance limited only to ad placement? Here we define necessity relevance.

In the study, when the ad title included the keyword it generated 147% more clicks than those that did not, with CTR almost two and a half times that of the next-highest treatment.

Necessity Relevance
This is primarily relevance of the ad in the minds of the user based on what they are searching for and the benefit the product or service provides to address the need. The study results showed that indirectly related keyword terms yielded an average CTR of 2.23%. However, the conversion rate decreased from an average of 0.8% for directly related terms to less than 0.01%. So, despite increased CTR, the indirect key terms did NOT drive subscriptions.

The real battle is not on the search results page, but in the minds of the user. What is she looking for? What does she want? You may have relational relevance wherein the terms in your headline, the search engine, and the ensuing pages all relate to one another and you receive favorable ad placement and get click-through. But, unless your offer recognizably satisfies the needs of searchers, though, these clicks will not translate to conversions. 

Takeaway tip: Ensure you have a mix of ads that satisfy both the relevance parameters defined above.
Reference: Marketing Experiments

Contributed by Deepalatha Chetty

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Tags: ad writing, PPC, PPC Campaign Management, search engine marketing