Write The Perfect Google Ad Copy Using Review Sites & AI (With Examples)

Google Ads is the perfect blend of marketing and sales. It’s a marketing-owned activity that drives direct response leads - beautiful.

But something I’ve noticed in Google’s results recently is the number of lack-lustre ads, that look more like an afterthought than your company’s digital storefront.

I mean look at this:

Do you think they’re selling a Project Management Tool?

Anyway, it’s easy to get caught up so much in Google Ads structure, keyword research, bid strategy, day-parting, attribution motels etc. that you forget that the ad copy is the only part of the process your prospect actually sees.

While the behind-the-scenes activity is equally important for a high-performing campaign, even the best-optimised account structure can’t generate results if your ad has more keywords stuffed into it than a 2008 blog post.

By leveraging customer feedback, you can create ads that address your searcher’s word-for-word pain points and encourage them to take action.

In this newsletter, We’ll run through how you can use reviews and AI to identify what your customer actually cares about and the best themes to structure your ad copy, we’ll then look into how to use these themes to create Headlines that work to convert.

The Autonomy of A Google Ad

Before we jump into writing Google ads, let’s a quick look at what Google Ad consists of.

1. Headlines *3 (Maximum - sometimes just 2)

2. Description *2 ((Maximum - sometimes just 1)

3. Callouts * 4 (Most times don’t show)

4. Structure Snippet Extensions * 4 (Most times don’t show)

5. Site link extensions *4 (with subsections) p.s (Most times don’t show).

While this seems like a lot to focus on, there is one section where you should be spending most of your time - the Headlines.

As the widely quoted David Ogilvy said:

With this in mind, here’s how a Google Ad copy template should look.

Let’s go through it section by section:

• The first headline is simple - it should closely mirror the search term. For this, you can use dynamic keyword insertion to make it as relevant as possible.

• You then have up to two Headlines. These are the money makers, and what we will be focusing on today.

• After that, you have the description, which is only important if you have a good headline.

• Finally, you have site extensions - these are here to make your ads take up more real estate and maybe even offer a better user experience.

So how do we write great headlines?

Customer Feedback-Loop

Like any good marketing campaign, good messaging can live or die depending on how well you know what your target audience values.

I also understand it isn’t always possible to sit on dozens of client interviews just for the purpose of writing a Google Ad. So instead we go to the next best place - review sites.

Whether you have loads of reviews already, or you have a competitor with loads, go and collect those review URLs.

I like to use sites like Trustpilot as there is no limitation on accessing and crawling reviews (which will be needed in the next step).

For this example, I selected the first company that came up on Trustpilot, which was Coinbase.

(On a side note Coinbase has awful reviews, let’s hope this works).

AI & Sentiment Analysis

This is one of my favourite applications of AI at the moment.

You can use ChatGPT to create a sentiment analysis, which is the process of identifying and categorising opinions into either positive or negative.

So I asked the AI gods to crawl all of Coinbase’s reviews and find the most popular positive themes that users like about the platform:

9K+ reviews were analysed and grouped into positive themes in seconds. Not bad.

While it pulls up someone you could guess like ‘Ease of Use’ and ‘Security’. More nuanced themes like ‘Educational Content’ are interesting topics I would never have thought of including as a differentiator for Coinbase.

So how could we look to craft a highly clickable ad using these themes?

If someone searches ‘buy bitcoin’ here are some headlines:

Headline 1:
Someone is typing in ‘Buy Bitcoin’ we’ve ensured that is mirrored within the headline + a bonus ‘Security’ theme (‘Safely’).

Headline 2:
Social Proof introduces a ‘heard mentality’ reinforcing why the user should trust that it’s safe if 100 Million people also think it’s safe. Another point for the ‘security’ theme as well as a hint of ‘reliability’ is implied with scale.

Headline 3:
Finally pulling in the ‘Education’ theme ‘Learn & Earn With Coinbase’. This can also hit the first theme ‘ease of use’ as it shows that this platform is for beginners.

Overall, this ad copy is a good starting point. But we’re forgetting one thing about ‘responsive search ads’ - you can add loads of variations and test them!

While it’s important to remember to pin Headline 1, you can test a variety of other headlines and see which ones generate the best results. Then using that data to create better ads.

As well as using themes from the review sites, here are other approaches you can use for your ad writing (maybe even overlay it with the sentiment analysis):

• Feature-focused - eg: 1 Click Trades

• Social Proof - Used By {insert brand name}

• Pre-qualification focused - eg: For Companies With 100+ Staff (great for B2B)

• Problem-aware - e.g. No Hidden Costs

• Offer-focused - Eg. 5 Free Trades Per Month

• The differentiator - “Insert what makes your company different”

Final Questions

When you’ve finalised your Google Ad masterpiece, sit back and ask yourself the following questions (and be honest with yourself).

• Would I click on this?

• Does it look like it was rushed or just optimised?

• Does it stand out?

• Does it align with the landing page? (This is a biggie)

If you aren’t getting an honest 4/4, revisit those ads and get re-working.

TLDR:

• A lot of Google Ads suck

• Headlines are 80% of the job

• Make Google Ads resonate by using real-world reviews & pain points

• Use AI to make this process quicker

• Turn the pain points into converting ad copy by layering different approaches

• Test, review & optimise the best-performing ad copy.