Writing Great Text Ads – Our Guide
Creating high-converting, descriptive copy for pay-per-click (PPC) ads is a challenge that can make or break your campaign.
Your goal – to craft effective Google ads that grab a user’s eye, explain your service clearly, and invite them to click.
We’ve laid out 5 steps for you to ensure your PPC ad copy upholds Google’s guidelines and compels readers to click.
1. Become a mind reader
To create your best ad copy, get into the minds of your buyers. What problems are they having? How does your product solve their problems? What questions would they ask about your product?
Don’t make the mistake of asking these questions in your ad. Searchers are looking for answers.
Focus on what your service or product can do for the searcher. Use relevant keywords and a call to action (CTA), and make sure to avoid generic language. Specific language will help searchers feel more engaged with your ad and they will feel you understand them, resulting in a higher click-through-rate (CTR).
2. Make mobile-friendly ads
Over half of all Google searches are performed on mobile devices. Thus, it’s essential your ads can grab the attention of searchers across mobile, tablet and desktop.
Google’s expanded text ads have no device preference, allowing the same ad’s message to display across all devices. Thus, it’s important to optimise your offer and CTA to show correctly regardless of which devices your audiences use.
3. Set up ad extensions
Including ad extensions to appear alongside your ads can help improve your CTR and Quality Score. Consider creating at least 3 unique ad extensions to provide useful information and help you stand out from competitors.
Keyword insertions and ad customizers can help you tailor your ad text while reducing management overhead.
4. Use eye-catching headlines
Using figures and statistics has proven to draw attention to ads and increase CTR. Use concise, compelling statements to advertise a price or a statistic about the customers you’ve already helped.
Utilize your character limit wisely – don’t just repeat the first headline. The message of both headlines in your expanded text advertisement goes a long way to improving the number of users who click through.
5. Test and optimise your ads
Regular testing is a sure-fire way to improve your ad performance. The more data you collect, the more patterns you’ll notice in order to adjust your ad strategy. Focusing on high-value campaigns will reveal the biggest improvements from testing.
Optimize your ad rotation to favour your best performing advertising text, and make sure to include CTAs. Try to avoid cliched call-to-actions such as ‘call now.’
Get creative and design unique CTAs that reflect the tone of your brand. You know what your customers want, so connect with them in your CTA.
What does a standard Google Text Ad look like?
Google has increased the new format to allow more characters to fit into a Google Ads text ad.
A standard Google Ads text ad is made up of three headlines of 30 characters, and two description lines of 90 characters.
Here’s an example of a successful Google Ads text ad:
