Writing beautiful and efficient copy for ads is not at all easy. It is no accident that some people do it for a living: it requires skill and it is ever more valued, with an increasing share of the digital segment in the advertising market.
With the huge number of ads we see online it is hard to stand out and good ad copy is a great way to do so.
Although it is a difficult process we have some tips to fine tune your copy and make it more effective:
1) What is your target audience looking for?
Do not write boring text; instead ask questions and engage with your potential customers.
If you are selling a digital marketing platform do not write something like “Digital marketing platform — Try it now”; ask yourself why someone would look for such a platform online? To boost sales? To reach more customers? Show the customer that you understand their needs by writing something like “Struggling to get new customers? — Use our platform!”.
Knowing what your potential users are typing in the search bar to find you online is a great way to help you adapt the text to their needs.
2) You don’t have much space, so use it well.
You cannot include a full 600-word text in your ad. Google Adwords, for example, allows 80 characters as a description –but you may not need that much space. Most of the time clear, short sentences will do the trick: after all the goal is to generate a click on your ad, and more texts may only confuse your audience. Short, well-structured phrases, by contrast , may arouse curiosity.
3) Add value with something you can offer (free shipping, discounts etc…)
When the goal of a specific ad is to sell a product there are specific things that are greatly valued by customers, such as knowing that the product is marked down, the product’s price (especially if it is cheap) or whether free shipping is included.
There are many studies on the ‘free shipping effect’, one of the most interesting of which was conducted by Usability Sciences. To cite one of its conclusions: “The average number of items in the cart was 3.7 with an average ticket price of $142.93, versus 3.4 items and a ticket price of $118.29 when free shipping was not offered” — leading to the conclusion that people are not willing to spend as much when there is no free shipping included.
Another survey, conducted by Alixpartners, found that the second most frequent reason for a customer to decide not to order was that the cost of delivery was too high.
4) Adapt the text to your audience
When writing ad copy there is no need to use extremely technical jargon. Such vocabulary is sue to put off a lot of potential product buyers or service users.
Even if you are selling a product to developers or other technical users, for example, keep in mind that they work with different technologies and programming languages, so there is no need to delve too deep by using very specific vocabulary.
5) Experiment and use the data collected
The final and perhaps the most important tip is to try different approaches, to measure and adapt.
Use different Calls to action, write in a friendly manner, with enthusiasm, or maybe try writing with more sentiment. It is extremely important to measure results with each campaign and then adapt text to the customer you are trying to reach, based on these previous results.
There is no golden rule for ad copy or a specific piece of text that serves all audiences; after all, different consumers are sensitive to different ways of communicating. That is why it is important to use data that you already have or automatic platforms such as advertio that use the results collected from past campaigns to optimise and adapt copy for each target audience.
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