Most of the Google Ads advice you read is about budgets, keywords and bidding. All of that matters, but it skips over the bit the customer actually sees: the advert itself. A few lines of text sitting at the top of the search results, competing with three or four rivals, with a couple of seconds to earn a click. Get that wrong and it barely matters how well the rest of the account is set up.
The odd thing is how little time most business owners spend on it. I regularly open an account and find the advert was written once, when the campaign was first built, and never touched since. It reads like a company slogan rather than an answer to what someone just typed. So here is how I approach writing an advert that brings in the right people, based on what I see working across local accounts.
Answer the search, don't describe yourself
When someone types "emergency electrician Gloucester" into Google, they are not looking to be impressed by your mission statement. They want to know you cover Gloucester, you can come out today, and you are the sort of person they can trust in their home. An advert that opens with "Established 2011 | Quality You Can Rely On" tells them almost nothing.
The strongest headlines echo the search back at the person. If they searched for an emergency electrician in Gloucester, then "Emergency Electrician in Gloucester" as your first headline does more work than any clever line. It confirms they are in the right place, and Google tends to reward that relevance with a better position and a lower cost per click too. Match the words to the intent behind the search, not just the keyword.
Give a reason to pick you over the ad above and below
Relevance gets you noticed. A reason to click gets you the customer. Your advert is sat in a row of near-identical competitors, and if all of you say roughly the same thing, people default to whoever is top or whoever they have vaguely heard of.
So the second job of the advert is to answer "why you". This is where a genuine detail beats a generic boast. "No call-out fee" means something. "Free quote within 24 hours" means something. "Gas Safe registered, based in Stroud" means something. "Best service in the area" means nothing, because everyone says it and nobody can prove it in a headline. Pick the one or two things that are actually true about your business and would matter to someone deciding between you and the next firm. If you are not sure what those are, think about what your existing customers say when they explain why they chose you.
Put off the wrong people on purpose
This is the part that feels counterintuitive, so owners rarely do it. A good advert should discourage the wrong clicks as much as it encourages the right ones. Every click costs you money whether or not it turns into work, so an advert that quietly filters people is doing you a favour.
If you only take on full bathroom installations and never small repairs, say so. If your minimum project is around £2,000, a line like "Full renovations from £2,000" will stop the bargain-hunters clicking and wasting your budget. A driving instructor who only teaches automatic can put "Automatic lessons only" right in the advert and save themselves a stack of pointless enquiries. You are not trying to get the most clicks. You are trying to get the clicks most likely to become customers, and gently waving everyone else past.