40 Battle-Tested Headlines That Will Generate Clicks
How many ads are shown on Google every day you ask?
29.8 BILLION1. YES 29,741,270,774 ads are shown on Google EVERY DAY.
And guess how many of those are clicked?
237 Million. ONLY 237,914,225
And in case you were wondering, what’s the click through rate (CTR), a meagre .80% – not exactly something any AdWords guru or anyone advertising on Google is aiming for.
As business owners and marketing managers, we want to know how we can ensure our ads are those that are getting the most clicks possible.
In this blog, I am going to share with you some ideas that we have battle-tested for our clients at our agency that you can use in your ad headlines, giving you the best shot at getting the clicks over your competitors.
Why the headline you ask and not the whole ad? Because if you are going to make one change, you want to focus on the part that is going to give you the fastest and biggest impact. And in AdWords, the headline is the most prominent and visible aspect of the ad that people click on.
The challenge though is to have an ongoing supply of new headline text ideas for your ads. So to make this easier for you below are 40 winning headlines you can use for ideas when creating new ads and start seeing the clicks rolling in.
I have broken this up into two predominant industries:
Each industry has unique selling points, yet within them, there are similarities in terms of the type of psychology that can help stimulate and motivate the target market. Therefore, different messages and language can tend to generate a better response if you know what the triggers are.
The obvious trigger I am not going to focus on is the price. Most people are motivated by price if they are comparing like for like products or services and it’s easy to convey – a high price may scare people away and a lower price may attract people you don’t want to. So from a business perspective, you have to decide whether you want to be perceived as cheap or premium or middle of the road. But that’s a separate and more unique discussion, yet is easy to test in ads.
I’m going to focus on the more emotional benefits that address people’s fears or concerns, which can be more challenging to work out. However, since we manage thousands of ads, across both industries we know what generates those clicks you are chasing!
Across both industries, we have found two prevalent factors that tend to attract more clicks:
My favourite industry, who doesn’t love a good bargain? And guess what, Google users love a bargain too. A non-branded ad with the headline “Orders Above $99 Free Delivery” commanded a massive 26% CTR
Urgency & Convenience-Based Headlines
Value based headlines
In the service industry, we found that a consistently dominant factor for people was the speed of response & service. For example, in one industry the headline “Same-Day Service In Perth” generated had CTR’s of between 20% all the way up to a whopping 62.5%
Speed, location of service
Value based headlines
Trust & Expertise
Before you start playing around with headlines make sure you are happy with the rest of the ad copy too. ALWAYS test 3 or more ads in each ad group (make sure ads are set to rotate evenly, so they compete equally, click here to find out how). Remember, you won’t generate more clicks if your budget isn’t sufficient so check up on that, make sure bids are high enough that you are appearing above the search results.
And finally, for a true test you need to ensure ceteris paribus (all else is equal). Test, test and test again and I guarantee you will see an improvement in results.
If you want to find out how else to improve your AdWords, see some of our other blogs:
Ready to improve your business?