We’re all familiar with the concept of user experience and its importance. Personally, I prefer to think more specifically of user expectation. It somehow seems to stir stronger feelings of personal responsibility.

I’d venture that our responsibility for user’s expectations is something the creative department is more aware of than anyone else. The reason: when you think about ad copy you are forced to think about keywords, ad text and landing page simultaneously. You picture the user, the ad, the user’s decision to click, and the landing page they are taken to. You do this for anywhere between a millisecond and many minutes with each and every ad.

Neglecting user expectation, that is, creating a discord between keyword, ad copy and landing page does serious harm to three important parties:

1. The advertiser is harmed:
User: “Stupid Acme anvils. Their stupid ads don’t work properly.”

2. Google is harmed:
User: “Stupid little ads. I won’t bother ever clicking on them again.”

3. Clicks2Customers is harmed:
Acme Anvils: “Some of our ads aren’t working properly. I thought Clicks2Customers were supposed to be such experts.”

In a nutshell:

Give the right people (keywords) the right message (ad copy) about the right thing (landing page).