Gift & Go is a B2B tech platform helping colleagues and companies send presents and prizes to those they deem worthy. I produced a series of ads for them, one set for Google and another for a Facebook campaign.

The brief was simple: show how Gift & Go can improve customer acquisition and retention for clients. The difficult part is that all platforms have different parameters for what makes an effective advert.

For Google, the headline character limit is 30 characters and descriptions max out at 90 (but ideally shorter). So I needed to get as much information as possible into a small number of words. I researched keywords to improve search engine optimisation. I then wrote 30 headlines and 17 main descriptions, giving the client the option to mix and match them, A/B test and quickly discover which combinations worked best.

Facebook ads are easier to write in that there are no tight character counts. The challenge comes with grabbing attention quickly, and holding onto it for long enough to get across your message. People need 0.25 seconds of exposure to an advert to take in some of the content. So the first words need to count. ‘Every business wants to retain customers,’ is a truism no one can disagree with. Anyone who runs a company wants to know how they can keep people coming back. This is why the client chose this ad (among a few others) and chose to run it for a few months.