Writing Facebook Ad Copy: 7 Superior Advice to Boost Conversions

There are many factors that you need to include when thinking about Facebook ad copy best practices. In this article, we will cover seven practical pieces of advice on how to do it.

Although many media outlets report a decrease in its usage, Facebook is still the number one Social Network in 2022 with the highest number of monthly active users—about 2.89 billion.

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 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, 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. After that, we need to pay attention to the creatives we intend to use, as these will directly impact the performance of our campaign.

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

How Important Is Copy for Facebook Ads?

The simple answer is, as you might have guessed—very important.

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.

Your Facebook ad copy is important since it:

Describes your distinctive value proposition and outlines product advantages
Displays your brand
Highlights your one-of-a-kind offer
Provides reasons why your target group should pick your brand over the competitors
Allows you to create effective retargeting campaigns by contacting users again and asking them to reconsider your offer

Writing Facebook Ad Copy: The 7 Practical Advice

Below, we look at seven Facebook ad copy best practices on how to end up with a quality copy. Let’s get started.

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 an individual in our target audience, as opposed to the public. In fact, we need to remember that this person represents our target audience.

It is possible to create very specific target audiences on Facebook, as we all know. For example, we can have an audience of women between 30 and 39 years old interested in fitness and a specific job. And another audience made of men between 25 and 2 interested in cars. We can’t use the same language 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:

Add in the banner a visible sticker with the percentage of the discount
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 Facebook ad copy describe the same advantage.

3. Focus On One Call-To-Action (CTA)

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

The most straightforward campaign objective in app marketing is the simple app download. However, our objective can be very different if we run engagement or retargeting campaigns. For example, we can have registration, purchase, or even service usage.

Whatever our campaign objective is, we must communicate this clearly in the creatives, particularly 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 When Focusing on the Value and Create a Sense of Urgency

We might be tempted to write a long 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 great 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) produce much better results in terms of conversion rates.

On top of this, if we manage to add a sense of urgency to our promotion, we might be able to attract more users. Moreover, finding the right balance between scarcity and exclusivity is not an easy task. Still, 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. It is even more difficult to “act” as one—without the in-depth knowledge they have gained in the years of experience. Moreover, copywriters have a particular skill; they can capture the unique advantages of a service or product in just a few words.

A (marketing) copywriter’s ultimate objective is to write a simple message that even a child would be able to understand. As a matter of fact, a user reading our ad should be able to:

Understand what the offer is
WIIFM (What’s In It For Me)—the advantage for them in taking that action
Understand what needs to be done

6. Use Numbers to Capture the Attention

Using numbers when writing Facebook ad copy (or 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 kinds of ad copies, for example, when we offer a discount or want to give social proof. Moreover, 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 and master the Facebook ad copy best practices (and other platforms) is to test, test, and keep testing.

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

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

Writing Facebook Ad Copy: Conclusion and Thoughts

In a Facebook ad, the ad copy is critical and directly impacts the CTR and Conversion rate, which is the overall performance of our campaigns.

When doing Facebook ad copy best practices, the text in the copy needs to be simple and to the point. In addition, 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 considered a unique combo and not separate elements, as these need to support each other in achieving our ultimate goal—a conversion.

Are you looking for the right partner to leverage your app marketing efforts? Get in contact with our experts and learn how we have helped multiple partners succeed.

Originally published on April 15, 2020. Updated on October 18, 2022.