Effective Ad Copywriting

How To Write Copy for Facebook Ads, Landing Pages, & More

Facebook Ad Copywriting is one of THE most important skills to learn when growing your brand. You will learn how to write pro-level and effective ads for Facebook ads, landing pages, sales videos, and even emails.

Here’s exactly what we cover in the post:

Sell the Next Step

A big mistake that people make on Facebook ads is to try to sell the entire product on Facebook. They want to tell the customer ALL about the product, the features, all the benefits. The challenge is that people need to take a lot more steps before actually buying a product.

It is more effective to try to only sell the next step in the buyer’s journey. So at each stage you target your copywriting to get the customer from one step to the next.

You do want to give some information, and ignite curiosity on your ads, but just enough so that they would want to find out more. Here are some great examples of hooks that get people to want to know more about a product.

Use the Word “You”

The word you is not completely forbidden on Facebook Ads, but you definitely want to be careful when using it. Here are some tips for using the word “you” and not getting your ads disapproved.

Tip: Don’t highlight peoples attributes

Which means that if you are targeting Jewish men who are in college, you ad cannot say “Are you a Jewish man attending college?”. You also want to avoid negative implications, for example, “Are you tired of being fat and lazy?”. You even want to avoid calling out somebody’s horoscope “Do you love being a Virgo?”

Remember that even if your ads get approved, you want to be careful because people could hide or report your ad, and that could mean you ad would get pulled down anyways.

A good way to use the word you, could be by saying “Are you eating healthier but missing potato chips?”. Or you could pose a question like “How much are leaky faucets costing you?”, which suddenly creates a question in people’s minds and they start wondering how much are leaky faucets costing them.

If you want to know more about little known ad mistakes that can totally ruin your campaign and your results watch this video-

Presell Article or Video

A great strategy is to do a helpful article or video instead of jumping directly into selling your product.

So let’s say you sell an acne cream. You could create an article that includes 5 tips for acne-free skin, and one of the tips could be using your cream. This tip can be linked to your product page. Then you can add the people who read this article to a retargeting campaign, because now they are more engaged with your brand and a lot more likely to buy.

This is especially important if you are selling something with a higher price point. As customers it takes a bit of thought to go into buying something. So try to think about that, because it will often take several steps before people decide to buy.

Social Proof

If you can show that other people have bought this product, or have liked it, you want to highlight that. In terms of reviews it also helps to feature that in your copywriting, You can say things like “This product has over 350,000 5-star reviews” or “Learn more about the product people are raving about”

Tip: Specific numbers are better than general numbers. (over 1.43 million sold VS over 1 million sold)

People don’t want to miss out on something, and they don’t really want to be out of the loop.

Text Overlays on Videos and Photos

When you are copywriting it is important that you think not only about the headline and description of your Facebook ads, but also about the text you can overlay on your video or image. Especially when you have a video, you need to make sure that something is drawing people’s attention and creating a motivation to watch your video. For example if you had a caption on the top of your video that said “Suppose this happened to you on your wedding day” you will generate a lot more views because this phrase will create a lot of curiosity.

Explore Reasons for Buying and Reasons for Not Buying

We want to think about every single reason why someone would buy this product, and every single reason why someone would not buy. What are people complaining about, what are they linking and not linking. So not only do you need to highlight everything that people care about, but also you need have an answer to their objections.

There are very common objections to buying a product like the price point (does it bring value?), and the quality (can you proof that your product is better?). Knowing the specific objections of your potential customers will be really helpful, especially when retargeting ads to people who visited your page and maybe even put something in the cart but never completed a purchase.

Don’t Sound too Corporate

It is important for the ads to sound the same as how people speak everyday. A casual and fun tone, with even some personality will help connect to the audience. You don’t have to sound so “professional” that it comes across as stiff.

Tip: Record yourself reading your copy and make sure your tone is fun and relatable

Make the words specific to the audience you are targeting

The more you can customize your message to a specific group, the better. Including things that are very specific to them will help in creating engagement in your campaign. If you have a list of customers it would be helpful to go through it and try to notice similarities and patterns that you can later use in your copy.

Build in Guarantees

Build in some sort of guarantee, or a very flexible return policy, as this will help generate more trust in your product.

In my courses I have a 30-day no questions asked money back guarantee, because I don’t want people who are not happy to pay. I don’t think about a refund as lost money, because in truth, guarantees help you boost sales. So, in the end, even if you get some returns, you will end up making more money by having a great guarantee.

Tip: Build in a great guarantee for your product and increase your sales.

Compare and Contrast

Another effective copywriting strategy is comparing your product/services to that of the competition. I avoid calling them out by name, you could do a very simple Us VS Them instead. This will help highlight your product and talk about it’s features in a different way.

Urgency and Scarcity

Having either sales or limited amounts of stock can really help drive purchases. But you don’t want to fake it by having fake countdowns or saying there is a limited amount when there is really not.

You really need to plan ahead of time your sales periods or the amount of stock you want to have.

Avoid Buzzwords

Contrary to a lot of advice that says you should use these word in your copy to see more clicks and engagement, I have found that buzzwords do not really help to connect to your audience because they say nothing.

In your copy, you want as much as possible to highlight qualities that only apply to your product, and that your competitions could not use. So, if for example you sell potato chips that have 8gr of protein, and your competitors don’t, that is what you want to highlight in your headlines and ads.

Tip: Your ads should be specific to your business

Take risks

I wan to encourage you to take risks with your ads and try off-the-wall zany stuff. Sometimes ads like those will really catch people’s attention. Just make sure that whatever you do is tied in to your message and your product.

It is true that these ads could completely flop. However, it is also true that generic ads rarely do well, and by experimenting you can really understand what your audience likes, and you just might find some winning ads.

Motivation

People are generally either trying to gain something or avoid something. Thinking about that for your audience can be very powerful. You do not want to go very heavy-handed on using the avoid category, but trying to incorporate some elements will help your copy connect to the audience.

Avoid Too Many Technical Words

Unless you have a very specific audience that will respond to technical language, try to avoid just throwing technical words out there. So if you are selling a computer and are targeting very tech-savvy people you could definitely use specifications such as these:

If you are talking to a general audience, you need to make sure that at least 95% of people will understand all you are saying. In this case, it would be better for you to focus on the emotional aspects of what buying a computer entails. You also need to link the capabilities of the computer to what that means for a customer. So if a computer is really fast, what will that allow them to accomplish? Maybe they can be done with work earlier and could use that time to be with their families.

If you are selling a hammer, your customer might get excited about all the projects he can accomplish. In turn, that could earn him respect from his partner or neighbor. So, go deep with what a person’s core desires might be. And then use that instead of technical words to tell them about your product.

Think about A Bigger Offering

It is a good idea to not only have one product but to think of a way to bundle up your products. Then you can create excitement about what having the complete bundle can do for the customer.

Find out more about how to structure a bigger offer and increase your revenue

Stories are Powerful

I learned this from Russell Brunson, who has really mastered this skill. Taking a customer through the journey of discovering a problem, trying to find a solution, and finally realizing what the solution is can be very powerful. You can actually get the customer to really match the mindset of the story, and then they are more likely to want your solution. You need to really take them through your emotional journey.

Length

As a general rule, you will write longer copy or produce longer videos the more expensive your product is. If it is a cheap product and you have a lot of copy it might confuse your customers. They could feel something is “off”. Something cheap can be an impulse purchase. If you have a more expensive product or service you really want to make clear what the value is. You do want a long landing page explaining the value, just remember to add action buttons. That way people can read, and at the point they are ready to purchase there will be a button close by.

Be clear about your product

Your copy should clearly let customers know what they can expect and when. Good reviews are vital. In order to have them customers need to have clear expectations of your product, and a timeline. Make sure this is a part of your landing page, especially before people check out.

Describe in detail

Be descriptive and try to include all the senses. Let people know what your product will look like, smell like or taste like. Get their imagination going. It is also important to have descriptive images and videos. This is a fantastic way to get an emotional response. Clients will even envision using your product or getting a benefit.

Videos

An amazing type of video is the user-generated review. It is better to give your customers very specific questions so that you can create an outline. This will give you better content than if you just ask for their general opinion. Beware of giving them a word for word script, it will often sound fake. You just want to give them prompts so that they can walk you through their story.

Emails

Your post-purchase email is actually one of the most important ones. Here is where you can get people to learn more about your story, connect with you or recommend the product. You can also offer them a discount, or another offer.

All that we said above applies to email marketing. Telling a story, being conversational and friendly helps. Remember the PS is one of the most read parts, so include something juicy there.

What’s Next

If you read through this post you might be interested in my Comprehensive Facebook Ads Course. This course takes you through the entire planning, copywriting, video and photo ad creation, setup, and campaign launch on Facebook. 

If you are a small business owner and would love some more strategies for your business check out this video.