Your Google ad sounds exactly like your competitors' (here's the 10-minute fix)

Search "plumber Northampton" on Google and look at the ads at the top.

Chances are they read something like this:

“Northampton Plumbers | Reliable Local Service | Competitive Prices. Fully qualified, friendly team with years of experience. Call today for a quote.”

Now look at the next one. And the one after that.

They all say the same thing. Reliable. Local. Competitive. Experienced. Call today.

When every ad says the same thing, people pick on gut feel, or on price. Neither is great for you when you're paying for every click.

Why most ads end up the same

Most owners write their ad by asking "what do I want to say about my business?"

So they list the things they're proud of. We're reliable. We're experienced. We're friendly.

The trouble is, nobody searching for a plumber at 7am with water coming through the kitchen ceiling cares about any of that. They want to know three things:

1. Can you sort my problem?

2. How fast?

3. What happens if I click?

Everything else is noise.

A better way to write Google Ads headlines

Write the ad for the person searching, not for you. That means being specific.

Here's the same plumber, rewritten:

“Emergency Plumber Northampton | Here Within 2 Hours | Fixed £95 Call-Out. Burst pipe or leak? A real local plumber, not a call centre. Covering Duston, Kingsthorpe, Weston Favell and more. Call now and speak to the plumber.”

Same business. Same budget. But now it says what you do, how fast, how much, and where.

That's what makes someone click you instead of the ad above.

One rule: only promise what you can actually deliver. If you can't get there in two hours, don't say two hours. Say what's true.

The 10-minute fix

Open your Google Ads account, go to your ads, and check each headline against this list.

Swap vague words for facts. "Fast service" becomes "Same-day appointments". "Competitive prices" becomes a real price, or "Free quote, fixed price".

Put the search in the headline. If people search "emergency plumber Northampton", one headline should say exactly that. Google's own advice is to use your keywords in the ad, because people engage with ads that look relevant to what they searched.

Give a reason to choose you. A guarantee, a price, a speed, your number of reviews. Something the ads around you don't have.

Make the call to action specific. Google says generic calls to action get less engagement. "Call now for a free quote" beats "Contact us".

Fill the headline slots. A search ad lets you write up to 15 headlines and Google mixes and matches them. Write at least 10 that are genuinely different, not the same line ten ways.

Don't chase the "Excellent" score

Google gives each ad an "Ad Strength" rating, and it's tempting to keep tweaking until it says Excellent.

I'll be straight with you. Ad Strength only tells you whether you've given Google enough different headlines to test. Google itself says it isn't used to decide where your ad shows or what you pay. An "Excellent" ad that says nothing still says nothing.

Judge your ads on calls and enquiries, not on the score.

What this won't fix

Better headlines get you more of the right clicks. They won't fix a slow website, a page that doesn't match the ad, or a phone nobody answers.

If people click and don't call, the problem is after the click. That's a post for another day.

Want a second pair of eyes?

If you're running Google Ads and you're not sure what you're getting for the money, get a free marketing analysis and I'll tell you what I'd change first. Or have a look at how we run Google Ads for local businesses.

Talk soon,

Joshua