How To Write A Good Facebook Ad Copy: 7 Practical Advice

Although many media outlets report there’s been a decrease in its usage, Facebook is still the number 1 Social Network with the highest number of daily active users (DAU), with about 1,66 billion daily users.

For this reason, Facebook is the top choice for many organizations, in both B2B and B2C, when it comes to digital advertising. As a matter of fact, most of the marketers invest the majority of their media budget in this channel to promote their products or services, but also their mobile app.

With so much competition going on, it is crucial to learn how to write a Facebook Ad in the best possible way. When doing so, there are several factors that we need to take into account. First of all, we need to think about targeting, which should be specific for the ad. After that, we need to pay attention to the creatives we intend to use, as these will have a direct impact on performance of our campaign.

Sometimes, however, we forget that there is another important part of the puzzle that needs to be taken care of together with the creatives, that is the ad copy (or text of the ad).

But… is the Ad Copy so important for a Facebook ad?

The simple answer, as you might have guessed, is yes!

Although the visual part of the ad is the one that has the biggest impact in terms of click-through-rate (CTR) and performance overall, when spending on advertising, we need to make sure that our ads are 100% effective because each dollar counts.

Here below we take a look at 7 practical advice on how to write the best ad copy for Facebook.

1. Define a specific audience and speak their language

When selling something online, it is crucial to write as if we would be speaking to a specific individual in our target audience, as opposed to the public. In fact, we need to remember, that this person is the representative of our target audience.

On Facebook, it is possible to create very specific target audiences, as we all know. For example, we can have an audience made of women between 30 and 39 years old, with an interest in fitness and a certain job, and another audience made of men between 25 and 29, interested in cars. We cannot use the same language, obviously, when targeting our ads.

Like in real life, we need to choose our words wisely and customize our message for each target audience.

2. Make sure the ad copy is coherent with the creatives.

SMBs and startups sometimes forget that the visual part needs to go hand in hand with the text, and vice versa. This is a “mistake” dictated by a lack of resources and time. However, it is crucial to have a coherent message, both in the visual and writing part, so that each piece supports the other and strengthens the result.

If, for example, we want to promote a discount for a particular product, it is a good practice to:

1. Add in the banner a visible sticker with the percentage of the discount;
2. Repeat in the text the same percentage and explain how someone can take advantage of it.

In the same way, if we are looking to promote a specific feature of our service, we need to make sure that both creatives and ad copy describe the same advantage.

3. Focus on one call-to-action

The best Facebook ads have one thing in common, they have a very specific objective.

In app marketing, the most straightforward campaign objective is the simple app download. However, if we are running engagement or retargeting campaigns, our objective can be very different, for example, we can have registration, purchase, or even service usage.

Whatever our campaign objective is, we need to make sure to communicate this clearly in the creatives and in particular in the ad copy, otherwise, users who stumble upon our ad might not be able to understand quickly what they need to do. The last thing we want in a cluttered and noisy digital world is an unsure user who might have been using our product or service.

Bonus Tip: It is advisable to use a specific button (among those offered by Facebook) associated with the campaign objective.

4. Be concise focusing on the value and create a sense of urgency

We might be tempted to write a long ad copy that goes with our Facebook ad, because, at the end of the day, we are paying for this ad space, and we better make the most out of it, describing in detail how awesome our product is.

Writing long ad copies on Facebook, however, is counterproductive. After writing and testing thousands of ad copies, we noticed that short and to the point copies, focusing on one value or advantage of our service or product, produces much better results in terms of conversion rates.

Read How We Helped WeTaxi Improve Their App Marketing Campaigns

On top of this, if we manage to add a sense of urgency to our promotion, we might be able to attract more users. Finding the right balance between scarcity and exclusivity is not an easy task but if we master it, we can definitely gain some clear advantages (also known as FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out).

5. Use easy to understand language

The copywriter job is undoubtedly very complicated. To “act” as one, without the in-depth knowledge they have gained in the years of experience is even more difficult. Copywriters have a very specific skill, they are able to capture unique advantages of a service or product in just a few words.

The ultimate objective of a (marketing) copywriter is to write a message that is so simple, that even an 8 years old child would be able to understand. As a matter of fact, a user reading our ad should be able to:

• Understand what’s the offer
• WIIFM (What’s In It For Me), i.e. the advantage for them in taking that action
• Understand what needs to be done

6. Use numbers to capture attention

Using numbers in any ad copy can bring incredible results in terms of click-through-rate (CTR) and conversion rate.

Numbers have a very strong “power” in people’s minds. Just think about the impact that the number 9 has when added at the end of the price.

Numbers can be used in all kind of ad copies, for example, when we have a discount to offer or when we want to give social proof. A trick used a lot in gaming apps is to add in the text that another “100,000 people have downloaded this app” or that “87% of users can’t pass that specific level”.

7. Test the ad copy

The only real way to become an expert at writing a great ad copy on Facebook (but not only) is to test, test and keep testing.

Facebook offers tools within the Ads Manager to create several versions of the same ad, that is same image different text. In this way, we can test and understand which variant performs best with the target audience of reference.

It’s important to remember that for each test, it is crucial to change one element at the time, so that we can understand better the impact (positive or negative) this has on the results.

Conclusion

In a Facebook ad, the ad copy is very important and has a direct impact on the CTR and Conversion rate, that is the overall performance of our campaigns.

The text in the ad copy needs to be simple and to the point. We need to avoid complicated jargon and make sure we speak the language of our audience.

Last but not least, image and text need to be thought as a unique combo and not separate elements, as these need to support each others in achieving our ultimate goal, that is a conversion.