4 Steps to Writing Multiple Tailored Ads

Anisha Birdi shares her Four Step process for writing tailored ads in bulk – guaranteed to save you time and maximise on results

So you’re already a whizz kid at writing effective PPC ad copy. You know how to entice your audience, you keep an eye on your competition, and you test different ad variations. But when you need to write ads specific to what feels like a million ad groups, you don’t always have time to tailor every single ad, especially when it needs to be done quickly for a last minute sale. Sound familiar?

Thankfully, help is at hand. Using a simple Excel formula and creating a few simple columns in your spreadsheet could save you hours of painstaking agony tailoring thousands upon thousands of ads. And the best part is, when you’ve done this once, you can recycle your efforts for each and every sale that comes your way.

Our Simple 4-Step Process for Writing Tailored Ads in Bulk

1. The base

Take an export of all the campaigns and ad groups that you need to write ads for. You can do this by downloading an ad groups report from the Google AdWords interface. Delete all columns except for ‘Campaign’ and ‘Ad Group’, as these are the only elements you will require. Title your columns for ‘Headline’, ‘Description Line 1’, ‘Description Line 2’ and ‘Display URL’.

2. The custom variables

Next, you need to identify the unique descriptions that each ad group requires within its ads. For each of these variables insert a column into your spreadsheet. For example, if you are running campaigns for clothing and have ad groups which correspond to the colour of the clothing, you would need a column for both the product type and the product colour.

3. The magic formula

Now for the fun bit. You can use this formula within any part of your text, all you need to decide is where you want the custom variables to be pulled in.

The magic formula is:

=“text ”&cell&“ text”

The “text” portion refers to the part of the ad you will manually enter, for example “Shop online today for ”. The ‘cell’ is the cell number of the custom variable you will be inserting, for example D3 for ‘Dresses’.

(When writing your text be sure to leave a space before closing the speech mark on the left of &cell& and a space before your text after opening your speech mark to the right of &cell&. This ensures there are spaces before and after the custom variable is inserted.)

The formula:             =“text space”&cell&“space text”

What I enter:            =“Vintage ”&D3&“ Now 50% Off!”

This translates to:        ‘Vintage Dresses Now 50% Off!’

To insert more than one custom variable you simply separate each &cell& with “text” even if you don’t need any additional text between the two variables.

The formula:               =“text space”&cell&“space”
&cell&“space text”

What I enter:               =“Vintage ”&E3&“ ”&D3&“ Now 50% Off!”

This translates to:          ‘Vintage Red Dresses Now 50% Off!’

You must always start and end the formula with “text”, however, you do not have to enter text within the speech marks.

4. You’re almost there

Once you have written your first ad simply drag the formula down and voila, your ads are pretty much done! All you need to do now is check you are within your character limits and adjust where necessary. To remove the formula simply copy the cell and paste over it as a Value.

Save Time Writing Tailored Ads Again and Again

Don’t forget to save a copy of your spreadsheet to use for future ads and you won’t have to run through steps 1 and 2 again (dependent, of course, on your account structure remaining the same).