Generating Google Ads with Copy.ai

Acquiring customers is critical to the success of your early stage startup, and while it’s not the most cost-efficient way to do so paid ads can be an effective way to target customers in your early stage startup while longer-term marketing efforts like search engine optimization and content publication ramp up. But if you don’t have someone on your team with marketing experience, generating ad copy can be a very time-consuming activity. Luckily there is a new generation of self-service tools powered by AI that can generate blog posts, marketing copy, and even images all on-demand and tailored to your startup’s focus. While these tools aren’t a replacement for a dedicated, focused marketing professional, they will no doubt surprise you with their ability to create relevant and high-quality content. In this Recipe we’ll use Copy.ai, one of the leaders in this new group of tools, to generate Google Ads headlines and copy that you can immediately put to use to launch your paid search effort.

To get the most out of this Recipe you’ll need to have a good understanding of your users’ search intent, and some guesses about the keywords they’ll use to find you. If you’re struggling with keyword discovery you can review the Keyword Planner Recipe. If you’re still stuck, try Dashword’s People Also Search For free tool to generate additional keywords.

Get started by visiting copy.ai’s free Google Ads Generator. You can review the information on how it works, to see what you’ll need to provide. When you are ready, click Try For Free Today.

You can sign up with an email or if you have a Google or Facebook account already, you can use that. Once you sign up you’ll be asked a series of questions to help the company tailor its products to your needs, but you can skip these if you choose.

You should now be at the Google Headline generator form. If you want to include your product or brand name you can, but the most important field here is the product description.

You’ve got up to 1,000 words to add for a description, and the more relevant information you add here the better. For hints on what to add, click or hover over the info button next to the field name.

You can also change the tone of the outputted content. If you already have a sense of your brand voice you can change this, but one of the nice things about this tool is you can generate variations in as many of the tones as you prefer.

For this Recipe we’ll treat Startup Recipes as our product. We’ll enter the product name and a description of the content of Startup Recipes, who it’s for, and the problems it solves. We’ve also picked a tone that’s not one of the presets, because it better fits our brand.

Once you are satisfied with your description and tone click Create Content.

It may take a few minutes to generate, but the tool will eventually give you five variations on a one-sentence headline optimized for the Google Ad Headline field. Note that copy.ai’s tool will also give you a word and character count, since Google Ads have strict limits on field length. Take a minute to review the options it’s generated for your product and see if any resonate with you. Below are the first three headlines generated for Startup Recipes.

If any of the headlines absolutely don’t work for you you can click Remove, and if there are some you love you can click Save. If none of them work for you, at the bottom there’s a button labeled Make More that will generate another 5 options. Once you have 2 or three that you are satisfied with, navigate to the first of them in the list and click More Like This to generate body copy for the headline. This process may also take a few minutes, but eventually you will get 5-6 options for body copy associated with that headline. Below is an example of body copy generated for the headline Startup Recipes has it all. :

You can also save or remove body copy to get down to the options you like most.

It’s a good idea to have multiple options when starting with a paid ads campaign, since you won’t necessarily know what will resonate. One option to generate additional variations is to change the tone. Below is an example of body copy for the headline Time-crunched entrepreneurs, using the Witty tone:

AI-generated copy isn’t perfect, and occasionally you’ll get content that’s definitely not relevant, as in the example below. You can simply remove these if they don’t work for you.

Some copy generated will be close to what you’re looking for, but need some editing. In the below body copy the overall message is good, but the phrase every small business matters could come across to some readers as inappropriately co-opting the Black Lives Matter slogan, which would be offensive.

To edit any content just click on the text and type or erase as you see fit until you are happy with the result.

Once you have 2-3 headlines you like and 2-3 options for body copy per headline, you’re ready to start running Google Ads for specific keywords.

Many startup founding teams don’t come from marketing backgrounds, so marketing support is typically an early expense for these companies. With tools like copy.ai’s Google Ads Generator your startup can generate initial paid search campaigns in minutes for free. Even as your company scales, AI-powered tools like this are a cost-effective way to generate the enormous volume of content needed to market your business.