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Google Ads is one of the most popular marketing tools that give businesses the opportunity to reach a wide audience through advertising. However, remember that half of the success of your advertising efforts depends on an effective and relevant advertising text. How to write it well and what rules to follow? You will read about it in the following article.
Elements of Google Ads
In Google’s system, ads vary slightly depending on which type of campaign you choose. The most common choice is flexible search advertising. You can safely relate the good practices used for this ad to the other types. What, then, does flexible search advertising consist of?
- Final URL: This is where you provide the address of the landing page you want the user to go to after clicking on the ad.
- Display path: contains 2 fields of 15 characters each, and it’s a good idea to include slogans that will reassure the potential customer that they are going to the right advertiser. For example, if you advertise your brand and provide training, your URL might be “www.jankowalski.pl” and then it’s worth adding “training”/”marketing” to the display path.
- Headers: there are 15 halves available, each with 30 characters. Good advice – use them all! 🙂
- Text ads: 4 fields, each to be completed with 90 characters
- Components (formerly extensions): Good practice says to use all possible ones that are suitable for your business. You’ll read about why you should do this later in the article.
Why is ad text so important in Google Ads campaigns?
Ad text is one of the first things a user sees in Google search results. It is the first contact your potential customer has with your brand, and those first few seconds determine whether he or she will become interested in your offer and click on your ad. Before you proceed, consider a few elements that are worth analyzing.
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Define the objectives of your advertising campaign
To write good text that will attract attention, you need to know what you want to achieve with it. Do you want to increase the number of sales, generate inquiries or increase awareness of your brand? Identifying these goals will help you tailor your ad content to the expectations and needs of your potential customers.
Remember the needs of your target audience
Be guided by the principle that the text of your ad should respond to the needs and problems of the potential customer. Create a marketing persona and think about what issue such a person might be facing, what such a person might be looking for on the Internet. Let your advertising text be the answer to her question!
Show the unique features of your product or service
There is a lot of content on the Internet, and every business also has its competitors. Talking about what your competitors are talking about is not the solution (even if you have the same product or service). Your task at this stage is to break out beyond what’s already on the Internet, because otherwise you won’t catch the customer’s attention. It’s worth spending a little more time on this point and thinking about what unique things you can offer that someone else isn’t doing. And even if your competitors are already doing it, think about how you can communicate it in a different way than everyone else.
Headlines have power!
Here it is worth referring a little to the previous two points. When you know your persona and when you know what questions and problems they may have – use that in your headlines! Headlines are the element of an ad that first catches the viewer’s eye. Additionally, if you include keywords in your headline, they will display as bold and be more eye-catching. It’s a good idea to do a regular review of the keywords in your ads and update your ads and the keywords that users type in (if your product or service provides one, of course). That way, if the next time a user types that phrase into a search engine and you apply it to your ads, it increases the chances that that ad will be displayed.
Apply-match rule
What is it about? In the most general terms – about maintaining consistency. The ad is a foreshadowing of what the user will encounter at the later stages of interaction with your brand. If you want to sell trekking shoes, your ad must talk about trekking shoes, not heeled shoes, for example. The user, encouraged by the ad, will think he has found what he is looking for, and when he clicks on the ad he will see something else. What will be the result? The annoyed customer will quickly leave the site, you paid for his click, which did not turn into any valuable conversion, so the result is a burned-out budget and an unhappy customer. This applies not only to headlines, but also to the ad text itself and targeting on landing pages. If you’re talking in an ad about a 50% discount on the spring collection, the same information should appear on the landing page. Remember also that it must be highly visible. Don’t create a situation where a potential customer will have to look for something on the page, because in most cases, he won’t. He will leave the page and go to your competitors.
Don’t-wrap-in-cotton – people like concrete
Don’t create a situation where your recipient has to guess what the ad is about and what you are advertising. Throw out generalities and empty, meaningless words from your ads. They are probably used by many other advertisers, and your recipient has managed to become immune to them. The texts “Best offer”, “Unique product”, “Only opportunity” don’t sell, and what’s more, there are far too many of them. You yourself can probably point out how many advertisers with such texts you’ve seen already this week. I’ll refer here to the third point and what my mother probably said as a child – “You’re not like everyone else” 🙂 Giving the recipient the specific advantages of your product or service at the start, also has another advantage. It will quickly filter out traffic that isn’t a potential customer, so you won’t lose your budget per click made.
CTA is a mandatory element of your ad
Referring to the previous point – tell the user what to do, what you expect them to do. At first you may think it stiff and incongruous, but believe me, specific messages pass the test. In addition, when you include such information in your headlines or ad text, your ad effectiveness scores will jump up. Sometimes a simple “Contact us” or “Call us” is enough, and it will positively affect Google’s evaluation of your ad, giving you a better chance of being displayed.
Fill maximum number of fields
At the beginning of the article I gave you an overview of the elements that make up an ad, indicating the number of fields and characters. Contrary to what you may think, 30 and 90 characters are not that few at all to convey relevant and effective information about your products or services.
The more components, the better
Similar to the point above – get the most out of your Google Ads tool. Thanks to components, you can include after your ads additional information about your company, the services you offer or list the relevant values of your products. In addition, it’s definitely worth adding components with links to subpages on your site that are also worth directing traffic to. These can be sub-pages with categories of different products, or, for example, the most interesting articles on your blog. On the subject of ad components, you’ll find our individual article, but of the many that are worth adding to your ad is the phone number component. This is especially useful when your ad is displayed on mobile devices, as the user can immediately click on the number and call you.
Advertising components have another great use – they increase your ad space on Google! So if you use the tips mentioned in this article to create them, you increase the likelihood of getting a potential customer. Just remember that extensions don’t show up every time an ad is displayed, and you are only charged for the extension when you click.
Testing ads
Have you created two or three great ads and don’t know which one will perform better and gain more interest? Test it out! Google Ads gives you the ability to create experiments to see which ad creative performs better for your potential customer. It’s worth conducting such A/B tests and implementing changes, because in the end, no one can “tell” you better which advertising message is better than the CTR and realized conversions.
In conclusion, remember that writing effective ad copy for Google Ads campaigns is a key element in the success of your campaigns, and therefore also reflects positively on your business. It is important to focus on strong headlines, clear benefit messages, keyword optimization and content personalization. An effective advertising text engages users, encourages action and conveys brand value. When creating advertising texts, don’t be afraid to experiment and tailor the content to your target audience, and at the end don’t forget to analyze the results and make changes that are more effective according to A/B testing.
