PPC mar­keters are expect­ed to be skilled data ana­lysts, math­e­mati­cians, and word­smiths; a daunt­ing tri­fec­ta. We’re so busy that ad copy cre­ation often falls by the way­side, result­ing in lack­lus­ter text ads. These three easy tips will inspire you to step up your ad copy game and cre­ate eye-catch­ing, cre­ative ads!

Recent­ly, the media has been abuzz with sto­ries on the rise of ad block­ers and the rel­a­tive impli­ca­tions to the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing sphere. Inter­net users have not hes­i­tat­ed to weigh in with their two cents on online ads and the gen­er­al con­sen­sus is that they find them to be dull, preachy, and down­right intru­sive. Many adver­tis­ers ignore this feed­back, adopt­ing the mind­set that ads are ads – no one loves them. I chal­lenge you to think dif­fer­ent­ly. The real­i­ty is, peo­ple love ads when they’re great. Every year, I eager­ly await the Super Bowl – not because I’m a foot­ball fanat­ic (in fact, I bare­ly under­stand the rules of the game!), but because I can’t wait to see the ads shown dur­ing com­mer­cial breaks. Super Bowl ads are in a class of their own – they range from shock­ing to endear­ing, from thought-pro­vok­ing and inspi­ra­tional to slap­stick humor – they take view­ers on an emo­tion­al roller­coast­er through­out the night. The best of the best (think: Lar­ry Bird chal­leng­ing Michael Jor­dan for a Big Mac, E*Trade’s danc­ing mon­key, or Liam Nee­son tak­ing on “Clash of Clans”) are remem­bered for years to come. Mar­keters should strive to make every PPC ad Super Bowl cal­iber. Think it can’t be done in only 140 char­ac­ters? Think again! Here are three, fool­proof ways to cre­ate super-cre­ative PPC ads.

1. Steal Other’s Eye-Catching Headlines

I’m sor­ry to report that con­sumers’ atten­tion spans are on the decline in our dig­i­tal age. In fact, accord­ing to a recent Microsoft study, a gold­fish can con­cen­trate longer than the aver­age human! This doesn’t bode well for PPC mar­keters, who are com­pet­ing with numer­ous ads and organ­ic list­ings to snag a searcher’s atten­tion. Writ­ing a catchy, entic­ing head­line is the best way to cap­ture your audience’s inter­est. The prob­lem? It isn’t always easy to dream up this clever prose. Rather than rein­vent­ing the wheel, check in with your team to see what head­lines are work­ing best for oth­er chan­nels. Chances are, they’ve iden­ti­fied titles work­ing well for webi­na­rs, white papers, emails, and even blog posts that you can adapt for your PPC ads. If you aren’t able to find any gems inter­nal­ly, turn to Buz­zSumo. This plat­form allows you to see which pages of a par­tic­u­lar web­site have had high social engage­ment rates – and like­ly awe­some head­lines. See what’s work­ing well for oth­ers’ in your space and then put a spin on them for your PPC ads!

2. Tap Into Emotions

Did you know that your brain is actu­al­ly designed to feel first, think sec­ond? In fact, accord­ing to Court­ney Seit­er of Buffer, the emo­tion­al part of your brain process­es sen­so­ry infor­ma­tion way faster than the cog­ni­tive part of the brain takes to assim­i­late the same input. There­fore, it’s crit­i­cal to evoke emo­tion through your mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als. To cre­ate emo­tion­al ads, I often turn to Per­ry Mar­shall’s absolute­ly genius “Swiss Army Knife” brain­storm­ing hack. With this tech­nique, all you have to do is make a list of your cus­tomer, his best friend, his worst ene­my, some­thing he loves, and some­thing he hates. As you con­sid­er the rela­tion­ship between these items, you’ll start to devel­op the sto­ry for your ad. For exam­ple, imag­ine that you’re run­ning a paid search cam­paign for a divorce lawyer and you’re tar­get­ing the wives of cheat­ing hus­bands. The Swiss army knife activ­i­ty might inspire you to write an ad that looks some­thing like this: This ad is sure to res­onate with scorned wives and will def­i­nite­ly stand out in a sea of mis­er­ably bor­ing ads for attor­neys.

3. Get Your Mind in the Gutter

Ear­li­er this year, the Word­Stream team post­ed an ad on mul­ti­ple chan­nels to pro­mote a guide called 69 Cre­ative Mar­ket­ing Ideas to Boost Your Busi­ness. This ad KILLED it – it raked in a 60 per­cent high­er than aver­age click-through rate on Face­book alone. We were thrilled by its pos­i­tive per­for­mance, but also thor­ough­ly per­plexed. It was a good guide, but it cer­tain­ly wasn’t the most ground­break­ing infor­ma­tion we had ever pub­lished. And then it dawned on us. One thing was cap­tur­ing our read­ers’ atten­tion. SIXTY-NINE. This com­plete­ly unin­ten­tion­al, vague­ly sex­u­al ref­er­ence was attract­ing loads of clicks! Now, the notion of using sex in adver­tis­ing is cer­tain­ly noth­ing new. We’ve seen it for decades. In fact, it dates all the way back to the late 1800’s when Pearl Tobac­co fea­tured a naked maid­en on the cov­er of their pack­ages. This strat­e­gy was so suc­cess­ful that var­i­ous tobac­co com­pa­nies emu­lat­ed it and even began includ­ing trad­ing cards fea­tur­ing beau­ti­ful, nude women in each pack of cig­a­rettes. It wasn’t long before oth­er indus­tries hopped on the band­wag­on. That said, sex­u­al ref­er­ences seem to be under­uti­lized in the paid search space. We gave it a shot ear­li­er this year with a weight-loss client, Selvera. Rather than stick­ing with a super-bor­ing, gener­ic ad, we spiced it up with this copy: It’s sub­tle, but it’s cer­tain­ly a lit­tle provoca­tive. When I read it, here’s the image that comes to mind: Com­pelling, eh? Just keep in mind, AdWords won’t let you to pub­lish overt­ly sex­u­al ads through its plat­form. Stick with cheeky hints – that’s all it will take to attract your audience’s atten­tion!