Creating Successful Text Ads
It’s not easy fitting everything you want to say about your business in just a few words. Start by taking a moment to consider what you want to do with your ad. Then use the six guidelines in this article to create an ad that’s accurate, to-the-point, and engaging – and hopefully brings you lots of clicks!
Highlight what makes your business, product, or offer unique
Free shipping? Large selection? Tell people! Highlight features or areas that make your business stand out from the competition.
Include prices, promotions, and exclusives
If you have something special to offer, make sure your customers see it. People are usually searching to make a decision about something. Give them what they need to help make their decision.
Tell your customers what they can do
Are you selling? Tell them what they can buy. Are you offering? Tell them what they’ll receive. Strong verbs like Purchase, Call today, Order, Browse, Sign up, or Get a quote tell your customers what they can expect to do when they arrive at your website.
Include at least one of your keywords in your ad text
This can catch the attention of the people who searched for the keyword, and show that your ad is related to what they want. Additionally, the keyword you use will appear in bold in your ad, just like it does in the search results, making it more obvious how relevant your ad is. Let’s say you include the keyword digital cameras in your ad’s headline, like “Buy Digital Cameras,” and a customer searches for digital cameras. Your ad’s headline will appear in bold, like “Buy Digital Cameras.” Your ad’s headline could also appear in bold if a customer searched for buy SLR cameras, like “Buy Digital Cameras,” since “buy” and “cameras” match words in the customer’s search term.
Match your ad to your landing page
Take a look at the page on your website that you’re linking to, which is called the landing page. Make sure the promotions or products in your ad are included in that page. If visitors don’t find what they expect to see when they reach your site, they might leave.
Appeal to customers viewing your ad on a mobile device
When customers are on-the-go, certain information might be more useful to them (like your store location or phone number) or a particular message might grab their attention. If you’re running an enhanced campaign, try using call extensions (also known as click-to-call) or location extensions to give customers the information they need to take action while they’re on the move. Also, consider creating additional ads tailored for mobile devices, like text that highlights mobile-specific specials or discounts or a mobile-optimized display URL.
Experiment
Create three to four ads per ad group, trying out different messages to see which performs the best with your customers. AdWords can automatically show the better-performing ads within an ad group more often. This removes the guesswork and lets you build on what you’ve learned from your experiments.
Example
Which ad would you click on if you’re searching for an 8 megapixel camera?
| www.example.com | www.example.com |
| we sell the main brands | 10% off Digital Cameras. |
| great prices here | Free Delivery. Buy Today |
Successful text ads tend to contain words that match a person’s search and tell them what they can expect when they click on the ad. Notice how the capital letters in the “8 Megapixel Cameras” ad make the words stand out.
Refine Location Targeting
Improve your ad performance by location, and focus more of your online advertising efforts in regions where your business is most successful.
Think about your overall advertising goals. Are you interested in more impressions? Clicks? Conversions? AdWords location targeting allows you to target geographic locations for your ads to appear, but it can also be used as an optimization tool to help you increase your return on investment (ROI). Whether you’re advertising to an entire country or just a few cities, you can use AdWords geographic data to analyze your campaigns by market and make improvements.
Here are some tips to help make your ads more effective:
View performance by location
You can use your geographic performance data to confirm that your ads are appearing in certain locations, as well as compare how your ads are performing in different locations. Use this information to pinpoint the areas that you’d like to focus on, and check out the tips in this list to help you make your ads more effective in each area.
Example
You have a campaign that targets the entire country of Japan, but you’re located in a different country. By viewing your geographic performance data, you confirm that your ads are getting impressions in cities throughout Japan. Also, you find that your ads do better in Tokyo and Kyoto, so you decide to come up with a new advertising strategy that targets those areas.
Assign more or less of your budget to certain areas
If your campaign is performing better in certain areas, you may want to run separate campaigns targeted only to the more successful areas.This allows you to increase your keyword bids and budgets to maximize ad impressions in high-performing cities. Likewise, consider creating a separate campaign that targets areas outside of your top-performing cities. You may want to use the same keywords as your other campaigns, but set lower keyword bids.
Example
You’ve been targeting the entire United States in your snorkeling equipment ad campaign, but you sell most of your snorkeling equipment to customers in Hawaii. You create a separate campaign targeting only Hawaii so you can easily see how your campaign performs in that state, and adjust your budget.
Write ad text that stands out in certain geographic areas
Highlight unique selling points of your business, such as certain products or services that are more likely to interest customers in those areas. You can also offer promotions available only to certain areas.
Example
You find that your online clothing store sells the most red mittens to people in the state of Minnesota. To attract customers in Minnesota, you create an ad targeted to Minnesota customers that promotes your red mittens.
Use location-specific landing pages
If you have different landing pages on your website for each region that you serve, send customers to the landing page most relevant to their geographic areas. That way, they don’t have to spend time searching for the information that’s relevant to them.
Example
You’re a real estate agent and your website has listings for apartments for sale throughout Florida. If a customer is searching for apartments in Miami, you’ll want to send them to your landing page with Miami apartments, rather than Orlando apartments.
Use location extensions to highlight your business address
If it’s important for your customers to know where your business is located, it can be helpful to add location extensions to your ads. Location extensions merge your business address and phone number seamlessly with your ad text.
If all of the businesses in your location extensions are in the U.S., you can target a radius around your location extensions to show ads to people located near your business. With bid multipliers, you can also set different bids for these areas.
Example
Let’s say you own a bicycle repair shop in downtown Chicago. With location extensions, a customer near your store who searches for bicycle repair shops can see your ad, along with your full address and phone number — and head your way with his flat tire.
Exclude regions that don’t perform well
If you’re consistently getting clicks with a low conversion rate from certain regions, or clicks from regions where you don’t want your ads to show, consider excluding the regions from your targeting.
Example
If you’ve been targeting the entire United States, but you find that clicks from Wyoming aren’t converting well for your business, you can exclude Wyoming to avoid showing your ads in that state.