If you've come here, you're probably looking for some inspiration before launching your Google Ads campaign.
This article will examine some of the best Google Ads examples and why we think they're so awesome.
What is Google Ads?
Google Ads is an advertisement platform developed by Google, where users can bid to display ads, product listings, or videos to online users.
Google Ads' algorithm uses cookies and keywords determined by advertisers. Google utilizes these characteristics to place advertisements that they think might be relevant.
Google Ads also doesn't just run on Google's search engine but also on numerous other platforms that Google either owns or is partnered with.
To learn more about the benefits of using Google Ads, why not check out 12 Reasons Why You Need Google Ads for Your Ecommerce Store?
15 of the best Google Ads examples
So now that we know a little more about Google Ads, let's dive right in and look at some examples of great advertisements.
1. Direct Line
This ad is significant because, straight away, it's telling users that their insurance isn't available anywhere else but there. Direct Line lists the various types of insurance they provide and the perks of using them.
Direct Line also takes the opportunity to boast about their 5-star defaqto rating, reassuring users that they're in good hands.
This ad is very to the point, and the user knows enough about it from the ad to confidently click on it.
2. Apple
This Apple ad is great because they have chosen to highlight their promotions. They have also created a sense of urgency in their ad and a few calls to action.
The user may have been browsing for various apple products online, and this ad is designed to pull the user down the sales funnel by shouting about their offers.
3. Pizza Hut
What was interesting about the above was that the searched term was for ‘Dominos Pizza.' Pizza Hut, in this case, may have been using the keywords ‘Domino's Pizza' to try and lure customers away from their competitors.
What is also great about this is they have provided links directly to their hottest deals. The user may not have wanted a Pizza Hut instead of a Domino's, but the ad's promotions may have enticed them.
4. Argos
Argos is a vast catalog retailer in the UK, and you can buy pretty much anything from them. The above ad shows a few of the product ranges they sell. Usually, the categories displayed will be tied to the keyword search team used.
This is an excellent benefit to using Google Ads; the advertiser can opt-in for dynamic ads, creating various ad layouts and letting Google decide which one to display to the user based on what they have searched for or is interested in.
5. Shopwired
Shopwired is a UK-based alternative to Shopify, albeit a much smaller company.
The search term used to pull up this ad was ‘Shopify,' so they have directly piggybacked off their name in their search term settings. Additionally, they have called out Shopify with them being an alternative.
Shopwired has said ‘0% or no transaction fees' three times in this ad, and as a Shopify user, I find the transaction fees a mild inconvenience.
The advertiser is well aware of this and is shouting about what they do better than Shopify to persuade potential customers away from their major competitor.
6. Upwork
Upwork is an American freelancing platform. With Upwork, the user can either sell or buy professional freelancer skills.
This ad provides a lot of information, which is what makes it so great. Upwork has made it crystal clear what its platform is for and also provides reassurance that the freelancers on the platform are ‘highly-skilled and pre-screened.'
By Upwork providing a great deal of information on their ad, they will have also reduced the number of misclicks on their ad as they'll find fewer people coming to their platform in error. This means that the traffic coming to the platform will be of higher quality.
7. Fiverr
Fiverr is similar to Upwork; they are an Australian freelancing platform.
What was good about this ad is it focused on outlining the different services offered on their platform. Each of the four categories takes the user to another section on their platform.
This is another way an ad can engage users and gradually pull them further down the sales funnel.
8. DFS
DFS is a furniture retailer based in the UK.
What's great is how personal this ad feels; DFS asks the user a question, something that many ads don't. If the users weren't already engaged, they would be now. The user is made to ask themselves, ‘ what is my thing?', thus prompting them to click the ad and find out.
DFS also provides a link that takes the user directly to their Summer Sale range.
9. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an American marketing platform and email marketing service for managing a mailing list.
The ad includes four sitelink extensions on their Google Ad to give more info about their pricing plans, free landing pages, ecommerce insights, and sign-up forms.
Sitelink extensions are great as they will take the user to key pages on your site to keep them engaged. Should the user become disorientated within the store at any point, they will likely just leave.
10. Legal & General
Legal & General is a UK-based multinational financial services company.
They have touched on a few crucial points in this ad; Legal & General have first reassured the user that they are a reliable service, something of great concern for users, particularly within the financial services sector.
They have also mentioned that the user can have a quote within minutes. Users are typically in a hurry, so this tells them it shouldn't take that long for them to see if the quote is right for them.
A final point, a bugbear of most financial institutions, is offshore call centers. This ad addresses this directly and boasts the fact that they are UK based.
11. Airtable
Airtable is a US-based company that provides an easy-to-use online platform for creating and sharing relational databases.
This ad emphasizes that 80,000+ companies use them, helping validate their market presence and reiterating their social proof.
Social proof is a big deal, more so if the user hasn't yet heard of your company. If your ecommerce store has many customers and good reviews to back it up, why not boast about it?
This may be the deciding factor in whether the user goes with your business or your competitors.
12. Wix
Wix is an Israeli-based alternative to Shopify that provides an ecommerce solution for dropshippers.
This ad has it all, showing the average customer review and has four sitelink extensions taking the user to important pages within their platform.
What's great about this ad, in particular, is they have a call to action button within their site extensions called ‘Start Dropshipping.' This link takes the user directly to the sign-up page.
13. Beefeater
Beefeater is a large chain of pub restaurants based in the UK, owned by the parent group Whitbread.
This ad is great because Beefeater pushes their promotions very effectively. The sitelink extensions take the user directly to their promotional pages. Additionally, the ‘Find a Restaurant' is especially useful to the user to find the nearest Beefeater to them.
Finally, this ad showed up when the term ‘Nandos' was searched for. This suggests that Beefeaters are going after their competitor's traffic, a very effective tactic to persuade customers away from competitors.
14. Dropbox
Dropbox is one of the most extensive file hosting services in the US.
What's great about this ad is they have started off by showing the user how many customers they already have, which is 600 million, adding substantial social proof.
Dropbox has a free 30-day on all of its plans and can be canceled anytime, handing back control to the customer.
Dropbox boasts about this in their ad; they also provide sitelink extensions to take the user directly to the pricing page or to see a bit more about the free trial offer.
15. Monday
Monday is an Israeli-based company that allows users to create their own applications and work management software.
They have crammed as much information into their ad as possible, boasting their trial offer, the platform's scalability, and its benefit of work automation.
Monday have also included six sitelink extensions, each leading the user to important pages. The goal is to answer any questions/reservations the user may have.
This shortens the user journey tremendously, hopefully taking them further down the sales funnel quicker.
Advertising with purpose
When running an ad campaign with Google Ads, it's crucial to have the main objective of advertising in mind. In doing so, you can then plan your Google Ads campaign around the objectives.
So now that we have looked at 15 of the best Google Ads, let's look at the main objectives of running an ad campaign.
Drive sales
This is the obvious one; naturally, the main goal of all businesses is to make money.
When running a campaign focused solely on driving sales, the advertiser will want results that cost as little as possible per conversion.
Fortunately, we have already covered the topic of How to Set the Right Google Ads Budget for Ecommerce Stores, which is certainly worth taking a look at.
Social Proof
Perhaps you're the new kid on the block, trying to get your name out there and build that social proof that all companies need.
Social proof is essential for newer companies because your would-be customers will be complacent about using your store without knowing who you are first.
Typically, social proof consists of the business's reviews and social media presence. This means that should an ad bring a user to the store that doesn't purchase something but follows you on social media; then the click wasn't a waste but a potential future lead.
Showcase a promotion
As you saw in some of the examples that we looked at earlier, advertisers like to run ads for ongoing promotions. Promotions are a great way to build an online presence while generating return customers.
Many chose to add sitelinks, taking the user directly to their promotional page and shortening the user journey with the intention to turn a browser into a customer.
Steal traffic from competitors
We also noticed that when running ads showcasing a promotion, advertisers would do so while targeting users who were initially searching for their competitors. We saw this happen with Pizza Hut and Shopwired in the above examples.
This sole purpose was to steal traffic and potential customers directly from their competitors. An added perk of adopting this method is the search terms will likely be less generic, cheaper, and more relevant to the user.
The search term ‘dropshipping,' for example, will likely cost more per click than ‘Shopify' as it's more generic, plus the traffic may be of poorer quality, potentially drawing in users just wanting to learn about dropshipping.
However, using Shopwired's example again, they have used the search term ‘Shopify' to pull in users who are more likely to know about dropshipping and were ready to sign up with them.
At this point, the user could see Shopwired's ad, realize that they're cheaper, and go with them instead.
What makes you different?
Perhaps you're trying to squeeze into an already saturated market sector, but you want to show people why you're better than the others. Google Ads is a great place to shout about this and entice users to come over to your store and take a look.
Using another example from earlier, Direct Line did this very well by telling users that they are not available anywhere else on insurance comparison sites. This gives the user a feeling of exclusivity in the insurance sector, an ultra-saturated market in the UK.
Direct Line also took the opportunity to boast about their call centers being UK based and having a great defaqto rating, which most other insurance companies don't have.
Collecting data
We haven't touched on this subject much in this article, mainly because it's part of a much broader topic. But knowing your would-be customers is vital for a business to succeed.
It's no secret that Google knows a lot about its users, so they are very good at bringing engaged people interested in or searching for precisely what you are selling.
But it doesn't stop there. The Google Ads platform analyzes all your business's clicks, keywords, ads, competitors, and CPC (Cost-Per-Click) bids.
Google Ads integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics which provides an additional layer of information on the users, such as which pages they visited the most, where they're from, and the time spent on each page.
It's a great practice to run a small budget campaign before your main one to get to know your audience a little better beforehand. You can then polish up your ads and target the most engaged demographic on your main campaign.
Summary
Before we go to the conclusion, we’ve created a quick summary of this article for you, so you can easily remember it:
- Every Google Ads campaign has a primary objective.
- Driving sales through traffic is naturally important.
- Build social proof and customer awareness.
- Showcase a promotion, drawing would-be customers in.
- Steal traffic from competitors, which works great for smaller companies.
- Set yourself apart from competitors; what do you do better than them?
- Sitelinks are a great way to take the user directly to where you want them to go in your store.
Conclusion
In this piece, we have looked at 15 of the best Google Ads examples and noticed a few common trends between them.
Most advertisers chose to use sitelink extensions, and the reason for this is apparent: to get the user from A to B quicker to pull them further down the sales funnel.
Smaller companies would piggyback off their larger competitors to pull in their traffic and potentially their customers. Others will use their ad to boast about what makes them better than the others, be it promotions, free trials, or simply offering excellent customer service.
Whatever your advertising objectives are, Google Ads is a great platform to bolster your business' social proof and online presence while gathering the information you need to know what is and isn't working on your ecommerce store.
If you're ready to learn more about Google Ads, check out our in-depth beginner's guide here!
Let us know in the comments below your objectives when running Google Ads for your ecommerce store!
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