If you don’t already know, Google Ads is an online advertising platform provided by Google where advertisers pay to have their adverts on the Google search results page. The ads that display in Google look like this:
To reach your customer, you have to be in the right place. You need to appear on what they’re searching for. However, being in the right place isn’t quite enough. You need to be there and be eye-catching, exciting, compelling, great. Here are 9 tips on how to be great.
1. Ad extensions
To make your ad fulfil the criteria of success you should consider using ad extensions to make your ads shimmer with excellence.
There’s a lot of extensions you can add to your ad including, sitelinks, callouts, structured snippets, call, message, location, price, app & promotion.
I went through a lot of the extensions made available here:
As a starting point, sitelink extensions are most commonly used & super simple to set up in Google Ads Editor. In the SERP they look like this. It’s important to implement ad extensions to give you a foot up in using all the real estate provided to you by Google. Take up all the space in the results page that you can!
2. Create a fantastic campaign
A good Google Ads campaign is consistent. By consistent I mean with the keywords, and the ad copy and landing pages. It sounds simple but losing consistency is a trap that a lot of marketers fall into. So listen up!
So, the keywords, ads and landing pages all need to mirror each other with the phrases used and the way things are worded.
Example 1:
Example 2:
It’s worth noting that with both of the ads for Nikes site, I get sent to a different version of the same landing page for each ad so it matches my search query better. So in my Nike Shoes search I got the landing page showing me ‘shoes’ and for my Nike Trainers search I got the landing page showing me ‘trainers & shoes’. Make sure you send your users to the right place so they don’t waste time on your site trying to find the right place and ultimately getting fed up (and leave).
3. Clear call to action
This is one of the most important elements of your ad, this is where you convince them to click. Your ad can be compelling and attention-grabbing but with no direction, your user is likely going to trail off and get distracted by a better ad.
4. Be specific with your ad copy
Ultimately you have one choice as an advertiser, write a good ad and achieve or write a bad ad and fizzle away into the land of no conversions. Your customers, however, they have a whole realm of opportunities, because I promise you, if you don’t impress them, someone else will.
You need to bring all the jazz with you to the table from the get-go, so avoid the frivolous ad copy and get to the point. A.k.a be specific. Get to the gist of why your product or service is excellent with (drum roll please) numbers!
So on the one hand here I’m being told that 80% of leads come from one social media marketing platform alongside a member reach of over 610 million PLUS. On the other hand, I'm being told that I can reach my target audience. I know what ad I’m clicking on.
5. Special offers
It turns out that the stationery market is rife with special offers at the moment. Lets roleplay, get into character, get all your stationery right now and scatter it across your desk. I’ll wait.
Have you got it? Good. So you own this stationery company, your customers are going to see your ads and think ‘£15 Off For New Customers, well I’m a new customer that’s great’ ‘Free delivery?’ ‘Free gift’. Anything for free equals instant excitement for your customers, and ultimately is a more enticing ad to spend your time on.
6. Be emotional
Writing your ads like some sort of corporate robot won’t get you far along the line of tugging at your customer's heartstrings. Use a tad of Psychology to write an ad that your customer resonates with, make them feel something, we’re all human!
For reference, the above ad isn't exceptionally good. There isn't a CTA or many extensions used. They definitely haven't used all the space made available to them. However, if you were looking for a divorce lawyer, the emotional messaging behind this ad would definitely catch your attention.
7. Unique selling points
If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Shout about your USP from the rooftops and the same goes for your ads. Make sure everyone who sees that ad knows why your company are the best at what you do!
8. Keywords & negative keywords
You want your keywords to feature in the ad copy and you want the keyword to mimic the searcher's query so it’s exactly what they’re looking for.
As for negative keywords if there’s something your ads regularly appear for that you don’t want to be appearing for you can make it negative.
For example, you can sell your gold and jewellery online via companies that allow you to send them your gold and they value it and send you money. However if I searched ‘Sell Gold Runescape’ which is an online computer game, these companies that buy real gold and jewellery most likely wouldn’t be interested, similarly, if the user is trying to sell gaming gold, the ad isn’t relevant to them. So I think it’s safe to say that these guys need to do their SQR report.
For example, with companies that you can sell your gold and jewellery for cash to, my search term of ‘sell gold runescape’ isn’t relevant. Therefore if I were to click on that ad, I’d be wasting my time, and the advertiser would be wasting their money.
Bottom line: they should make ‘runescape’ a negative keyword.
9. Ad scheduling
With ad scheduling, you can set your ads to run at certain times of certain days, with the option to also add a positive or negative bid adjustment too. Used effectively, this is a great way to improve your quality of clicks and get better conversion rates.
You should definitely have ad scheduling in place if:
You have limited client service hours - if you work in an office and run ads to encourage users to call. It’d be best to have those ads off when no one is there to answer the calls.
Your users interact with your ads better at certain times - the data will tell you what times your ads perform best. If it’s really expensive and really low performance at 10:00pm on a Monday, don’t have them run then.
So to summarise:
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Ad extensions
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Create a great campaign
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Have a great CTA
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Be specific in your ad copy
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Include special offers
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Be emotional
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Include your unique selling points
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Keywords and negative keywords
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Ad scheduling
Now go, fly free and write the greatest ads mankind has ever seen.
P.S. thanks for reading my blog!
