Ad copy can make or break your campaigns.
When it comes to writing your ad copy, even the most experienced copywriters can struggle. So, whether you’re a beginner or an expert looking to refresh your process, here are 5 of our tips for writing good ad copy.
While these tips are orientated towards how to write successful ad copy specifically for Google Ads, this advice is relevant for all PPC ad writing.
1. Understand Your Target Audience
The first step, and arguably the most important, is ensuring you understand your target audience.
Here are a few questions you should consider to make your ad copy as relevant as possible to your target audience:
a. Who do you want to see your ad?
Define who you’re writing your ads for. You can use your customer personas to help inform your understanding of who your audience is.
b. What do you want your audience to do upon seeing your ad?
Make sure your ad has a clear purpose, after all, your ad copy is only as effective as the thought behind it.
c. What problems does your product provide a solution for?
A user only clicks on an ad if it resonates with them on some level. Determining the user intent and defining what they are searching for will make the process of writing your ad copy much clearer. Your ad copy needs to convince them that you can help or provide them with the solution to their question.
d. What are your competitors doing?
If you’re struggling to write your copy, take a look at what your competitors are writing. Break down the message behind their ads and consider how you can learn from and improve on the copy they’re writing to invite clicks.
e. What is your call-to-action?
It’s also important to consider where in the decision-making journey your user is. If you’re writing ad copy for a remarketing audience (aka an audience made up of customers that have previously visited your website without converting), your copy should be adjusted accordingly.
You might want to include a different call-to-action or offer a benefit that is of higher value because they have stronger buyer intent.
Once you have the answers for these questions writing your ad copy should be much less daunting.
2. Focus on the Benefits You Offer
Once you have determined your target audience, it’s time to focus on how you are going to persuade your audience to click on your ad.
A few of the questions you should keep in mind are:
What is your unique selling point?
What makes you different and why should they pick you over competitors?
How will they benefit from your services?
A well-regarded copywriter once said, “virtually all successful copy discusses benefits.”
Use your ad copy to highlight what your audience could gain from you.
Is there a particular feature you offer, such as a free audit or consultation that will benefit them?
If you offer a service or resource make sure you include this in your copy, (especially if it’s free!)
3. Include Numbers and Statistics
If you can, try and use numbers in your ads. While this might not be appropriate for all businesses, experimenting with statistics in your ad copy can help give you an insight into how behavioural psychology can be used to improve ad performance.
For ad copy in general, it’s best to write numbers as figures (4) rather than long-form (four).
Strangely, research has shown that people tend to trust odd numbers more than round numbers, perhaps it’s because unconsciously we think exact numbers are more honest.
These numbers could be the number of years of experience you have in your industry, how many 5-star reviews you have, pricing or time frames.
Do you have 40 years of experience of providing results within 48 hours for the low price of £237 with over 45 five-star reviews? Great, now shout about it in your ad copy.
4. Strong CTAs
Good ad copy is wasted if your users don’t do anything upon seeing it.
A strong CTA can turn user interest into business revenue.
CTAs should be short, sharp, and relevant to what you want your user to do.
Your CTA wouldn’t be “read more” if you wanted people to call you to make an appointment. Once you’ve defined what you want your user to do, encourage them to actually do it.
If you have an offer on – is it time-sensitive? Make it clear how and when you want them to take action, an effective CTA is clear and direct.
5. Test & Optimise
Ad copy is limited to character restrictions. Generally, limits sit between 30 – 90 characters (including spaces and special characters). Headlines in Google ads are cut-off at 30, with 2 additional headlines and 2 character descriptions (90 characters each). Fitting effective copy into such short restrictions is exactly why testing and optimising comes is so vital.
You don’t have unlimited space for your ad copy, and the limits can be hard to accommodate for (and if you have a long business name this can be an even trickier issue).
So, testing how effective your ads are is key to keeping them as effective as possible. Split testing is a great approach to testing the effectiveness of your writing. Create a few different ads, with different copy and see how the results differ. This will help you gain an insight into how different copy can affect the performance of your ad.
Limited characters force you to be creative, so don’t be afraid to play with your copy to fit the tight restrictions.
Once, you’ve tested your ads it’s time to prioritise your best performing copy and get rid of anything that isn’t giving you results.
So what is the secret to writing good copy for Google Ads?
To summarise, writing effective ad copy requires a combination of creativity and technicality.
On one level, you need to be precise and have a deep understanding of the before you even begin writing, and it can become formulaic. However, ads that spark interest and genuine intrigue can take a whole different level of creativity and experimentation.
If you’d like some help or advice regarding digital marketing services such as PPC, SEO or ad copy, don’t hesitate to contact us today to speak to one of our experts.
If you’d like support with your pay-per-click campaigns, please get in touch with our PPC experts.