by Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Pay-Per-Click ads can be a great marketing tool, there’s little doubt about that.  However, this form of advertising is more difficult than it looks.  Sure, anyone can come up with a slogan, title or headline that they think properly describes their product or service.  But is that really a good and effective ad?  In this post, we will outline the six major reasons why people click on ads and how you can apply this to your own online marketing strategy.

Let’s start out with a small introduction:

So, What is a Pay-Per-Click ad, really?

Well, it’s an ad sponsored by an independent person, such as yourself, that appears on the sidebar or at the top of the results page within relevant search engine results.  The ad will appear when keywords or phrases, that you’ve previously specified, are searched for.  This is a very keyword-targeted form of marketing and is much more aggressive that classic SEO practices.

Okay, that’s the boring, technical version of what a PPC ad is.  But what is it really?

A PPC ad is your chance to catch targeted visitors based on the content you choose to publish.  Unlike SEO, which automatically pulls up relevant links and content according to the search engine “crawlers”, a PPC ad is written and planned by you alone.  This means that the content and keywords chosen for a PPC ad will be the lifeblood of your traffic.

If you want to create a successful PPC ad, it is important to understand why people click on them!  This will help you get in the correct mindset for writing a great ad that will matter to people.  Online marketing specialists have long since studied consumers and how advertising affects them, in order to better market to their needs and wants.

Here are the 6 reasons why people click on online advertisements:

Benefits: Readers feel like they will benefit in some way by clicking on the ad.  Examples include, learning something, gaining something materially, etc.

Brand: Readers recognize the brand.

Differentiation: The ad is different from the others around it and somehow attracts readers’ attention.

Curiosity: Readers want to know more about what the ad implies, claims or asks.

Legibility: The ad makes logical sense to readers.

Call to Action: Readers feel inclined to click on an ad that calls them to action.

Now that you understand the basic motivations behind the clicks you’re paying for, you can begin to discover which motives above would work the best for your ads.  For example, would your particular marketing need benefit from an ad that focuses on curiosity or legibility?  Playing around with these different concepts can not only increase the traffic generated from your PPC ads, but from your other content as well.  These genres of motivation can also apply to your blog posts and titles, greatly increasing your organic ranking through SEO and your Social Media presence as well.