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Continuing my series on Google Adwords, this time I’d like to give you some best practice tips on writing ad text. It’s not easy writing effective ad text for an Adwords campaign as you’re so limited by the number of characters you can have, but a few guidelines will hopefully help!
Firstly, check out your competitors’ ads. It’s worth finding out what they’re including in their ads, if they include any benefits and calls to action and if they include prices. If your products are particularly competitively priced then why not add them in? Including prices can also pre-qualify visitors who are only looking at buying the cheapest.
Once you’ve got an idea of what your competitors are including in their ad text, then start drafting your own words. Make sure the headline of the ad includes the main keywords you’re targeting, and keywords are also in the description. You get 25 characters for the title and 35 for each descriptive line. I also tend to capitalize the first letter of each word. Here’s an example:
Customer Service Training (25 character title)
Innovative Quality Customer Service (35 character description per line)
Training for Call Centre Staff
Ensure your ads reflect the theme of the keywords in your ad group and write several variations. One ad is not enough to work out whether or not it’s going to be effective, so try at least 4 different ads to start with.
One useful tool is the keyword insertion tool, which means Google will automatically use the query the user is searching on for the headline of the ad, as long as it’s 25 characters or less. If it’s over 25 characters, Google will use the default headline text specified by you. For example:
{keyword:Customer Service Training}
Innovative Quality Customer Service
Training for Call Centre Staff
In this example, ‘Customer Service Training’ could be replaced with ‘customer staff training’ if that’s what the searcher typed in. It’s a very useful tool as people are more likely to click on ad text that relates closely to what they’re searching for!
For more on ad text and the keyword insertion tool, visit the Adwords help centre:
How Much Text Can I Have in my Ads?
How Do I Use Keyword Insertion?
About Sam
Sam McArthur is an internet marketing consultant with 12 years in the industry. She helps professional service businesses with their internet marketing strategy, helping them to see significant results from their online marketing activities, particularly within the search engines. She also consults on the latest internet tools, technology and best practice techniques.
