Messaging

At a glance

Decide three things before writing any ad: who is searching, what problem made them search, and what you promise them on the next page. Use the buyer's words, not your product team's. Sales call notes, support tickets and review sites are the best source. One campaign theme gets one core message. Different problems get different ad groups and pages. Proof beats adjectives. "Used by 1,200 finance teams" works; "powerful, intuitive platform" doesn't. Write it down as a one-page brief. Ads, landing pages and your LLM prompts all start from it.

Search ads are short. You get a few headlines of 30 characters and a couple of descriptions. That forces a choice about what to say, and most weak ads come from not making that choice. This lesson gets you to a one-page messaging brief in an hour or two.

Buyer, problem, promise

For each campaign theme, answer three questions in plain language.

Buyer: who types this search? Job title, company size, and what they're responsible for. "Finance manager at a 50 to 500 person company who owns month-end close" is useful. "Decision makers" isn't. Problem: what happened that made them search today? Think about the trigger: an audit is coming, the spreadsheet broke, the team doubled, a current tool got more expensive. The trigger shapes the headline. Promise: what will they get if they click, stated as an outcome they care about, with proof? "Close the books 3 days faster. See how in a 20-minute demo." The promise must be something the landing page delivers immediately.

Then add the reason to believe (customer count, named logos, a review rating, a certification, a concrete number) and the next step (the conversion).

Example: free trial

Theme "API monitoring tool" searches

Buyer Backend or platform engineer at a 20 to 300 person SaaS company, often choosing the tool themselves

Problem Customers report API failures before the team notices; current setup is scattered scripts and logs

Promise Get alerted before customers notice. First monitor running in 5 minutes, no credit card.

Proof 4.7 rating from 300+ reviews; free tier used by 10,000 developers; SOC 2 Type II

Next step Start free trial (sign up with work email or GitHub)

For trials, the message has to lower effort and risk: speed to first value, no card, no sales call. Technical buyers want specifics, so lead with what the product does, not how it makes them feel.

Example: demo request

Theme "Contract management software" searches

Buyer Legal operations lead or general counsel at a 200 to 2,000 person company

Problem Contracts live in email and shared drives; renewals get missed; audit requests take days

Promise Every contract searchable, every renewal flagged. See it with your own contract types in a 30-minute demo.

Proof Used by 600 legal teams; named mid-market logos; average go-live in 6 weeks

Next step Book a demo (calendar booking right after the form)

For demos, the message has to justify giving up 30 minutes to a salesperson. Say what they'll see and why it's tailored ("with your contract types"), and show you work with companies like theirs. Price signals help too: "plans from" or "for teams of 50+" filters out people who'll never buy.

Where to get the buyer's words

You don't need a research project. In an hour you can collect enough raw language to write from:

Sales call recordings or notes: the first five minutes, where prospects explain why they took the call. That's your problem statement. Review sites (G2, Capterra, TrustRadius) for your product and competitors: what reviewers liked, and what they complained about in the competitor's product. Support tickets and onboarding questions: what new customers were trying to do. Your search terms report, once the campaign runs. It's the most honest record of how buyers describe the problem. Lost-deal notes: why buyers didn't choose you tells you who not to target and what to address up front.

The one-page messaging brief

Write one brief per campaign theme. Keep it to a page. It's what you'll paste into your LLM when writing ads or landing pages, so it pays to be specific.

Messaging brief template

MESSAGING BRIEF: [campaign theme]

Buyer:        [role, company size, industry, what they own]
Trigger:      [what happened that made them search today]
Problem:      [in their words, one or two sentences]
Promise:      [the outcome, stated as they would say it]
Proof:        [3-5 concrete facts: numbers, logos, ratings, certifications]
Next step:    [the conversion: free trial / demo / contact sales]
Offer detail: [no card needed / 14-day trial / 30-minute demo / pricing from ...]
Not for:      [who we don't want: students, enterprises >10k, a different use case]
Words to use: [buyer phrases from research]
Words to avoid: [internal jargon, claims legal won't approve]
Regions:      [where this runs, and any local differences in price, language, proof]

Keeping it focused on the buyer

Most B2B ads drift toward talking about the company. Two quick tests catch it:

The "so what" test: read each line and ask "so what?" as the buyer. "AI-powered platform" fails. "Flags risky clauses before you sign" passes. The swap test: replace your company name with a competitor's. If the line still works, it says nothing specific. "Trusted by leading teams" works for everyone; "Used by 600 legal teams, live in 6 weeks" doesn't.

Local markets

In the EU, run ads in the language people search in. German, French and Dutch buyers often search in English for software categories but respond better to local-language ads and pages. Proof should be local where you can: European customer logos, EU data residency, GDPR compliance. Quote prices in EUR or GBP.

In India, most B2B software searches are in English. Price sensitivity is higher, so INR pricing, a local customer or two and a clear free tier or trial often matter more than polish. Be careful that "free" doesn't attract mostly students and job seekers; say who it's for.

Across the rest of APAC, language and buying habits differ a lot by country. Japan generally needs Japanese ads, pages and local proof. Australia, Singapore and New Zealand respond to the same English messaging as the US, with local currency and time-zone support mentioned where relevant.

In Latin America, run Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil) separately; don't translate one into the other. Local-currency pricing, local payment methods and support in the local language are real proof points, often stronger than US customer logos.

In the Middle East and Africa, English works for most software searches, with Arabic and French for specific markets. Local data hosting, regional partners and named regional customers are strong proof. Make the offer concrete, since buyers often see many vague international vendors.

Go deeper Positioning versus messaging

Positioning is the company-level decision about which market you compete in, against whom, and why you win. Messaging is how you express that to one buyer in one context. Search ads need messaging, and you can write good search messaging even if company positioning is fuzzy, because the search itself tells you the context. If you find yourself unable to write a promise that's specific and true, that's often a positioning gap. Note it and raise it with product marketing, but don't block the campaign on it. Pick the most specific true claim you have and test it.

Do this now

Collect raw buyer language: 5 to 10 call notes, a review export, or a batch of support tickets. Run the extraction prompt and pick the two or three strongest problems for search. Write a one-page messaging brief for your first campaign theme. Run every line through the "so what" and swap tests and rewrite the ones that fail. Share the brief with one salesperson and ask: "Is this what buyers actually say?"

Next: Creating Ads