Zap
Optimised Facebook Ad Copy makes a difference. That optimisation makes all the difference between a conversion and a missed target.
That’s not to put undue pressure on your copywriting skills. Listen, we’re all here to learn and grow; that’s half the fun!
But it should influence you to take those Facebook ads as seriously as you can.
Today, our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to help optimise your Facebook ads. We also want to show you why you should care.
Mission: accepted. Join us as we delve into the world of Facebook Ad Copy.
Ever wondered why Facebook (and Instagram) are such a vital element of your marketing?
Meta plays a vast role in the success of your online profile. That means they have a finger in all the digital marketing pies (tasty!)
Their popularity is key. Facebook is the 3rd most-visited site on the internet, just behind Google and YouTube. Heck, 44% of the UK population uses Facebook every single day. Do you know how many conversions you could achieve with that? Hint: loads.
There’s more. Facebook’s advertising settings are on another level. Its focused-targeting options are invaluable. You can really take advantage of them to tailor your work.
Facebook provides the chance to get your brand in front of the people who are most likely to engage with it. What’s more, it’s a chance to get it there using the language and visuals that are most likely to inspire.
How do we do that?
With optimised Facebook Ad Copy, of course.
A Facebook Ad can be broken down into the following components:
1. A Hook – the bit at the start of the ad, designed to draw people in. It appears above the ‘Read More…’ link; that means you have 125 characters or fewer to get people to click that link
2. Body/Text – a little bit of context, a little bit of detail. Once you’ve hooked the reader, you have to keep their attention. The body content depends on who your intended audience is. However, it should always be informative about your brand, product, and what’s on offer
3. A Picture – pictures or videos are so important in a Facebook ad. On Facebook, posts with images see 2.3x more engagement than those without. This bit will accompany your headline, and should be relevant, eye-catching and coooool
4. A Headline – the succinct, clear text which appears below the image/video on a Facebook Ad. Typically, you’re given 40 characters to play with and, often, the headline is the same as the Call-to-Action
5. A Call-To-Action (CTA) – tells your readers what they should do now they’ve read your ad
A LITTLE DISCLAIMER
Facebook Groups have a few rules in place to keep members safe. To post about and advertise online games and competitions here, you’ll need the appropriate permissions. To find out more, and fill in the form, check out Meta’s guidance on the subject.
So this part isn’t to do with the actual writing process.
However, it has everything to do with optimising your ad content.
Sure, you could dive straight in and begin writing. But you’ll be missing out on the thing which makes Facebook Advertising so special: targeting.
There’s no point in writing ads that are one-size-fits-all. Relevance is the most important part of inspiring clicks and conversions.
So, let’s have a think about how we can work to know our audience.
1. Core Audiences
This is the default targeting option in Meta Ads Manager.
These guys are part of your warm audience, which means they’ve interacted with your brand, in some way, in the past. Facebook chooses them based on their behaviours relating to your brand.
2. Lookalike and Custom Audiences
These are the ones whose parameters you define yourself, using Meta Ads Manager.
You define Custom Audiences by their behaviours, both on and off Meta platforms. You can then ask Facebook to show your ads to Lookalike Audiences. It’ll search for cold audiences who share traits with your Custom Audiences. This helps expand your outreach.
3. Cold Audiences, or Audiences Based on Interest
These guys are newbies. They’ve never interacted with your brand before, and they need some serious winning-over.
They’re targeted by things like demographic, interests, and behaviours.
It all relates to the marketing funnel.
You wouldn’t talk to a customer at the loyalty stage in the same way as those at the Top-of-the-Funnel (TOFU). Raising awareness is not the same as inspiring loyalty.
For warm audiences, your ad copy must assume a sense of familiarity. Use insider language, as if you’re telling in-jokes with an old friend. Basically, at the Bottom-Of-The-Funnel (BOFU) stage, it’s all about making them feel like they’re part of the club.
Your hook can reference a shared sense of history or behaviour:
1. ‘Still thinking about us? Back at you’
2. ‘Remember eyeing up [product]? Can we inspire you?’
3. ‘Because you’ve been there for us, we’re here for you. X% off’
These all use language which implies gratitude, exclusivity, community, and belonging.
The body copy itself will be different for BOFU customers. There’s less need for your brand’s backstory. Instead, you can focus on their common pain points and your excellent solutions.
Your copy should be introductory and informative for cold audiences or TOFU customers. You’ve gotta show them:
a) that they should care about your product
b) why they should care
Adopt a tone of curiosity and intrigue. A hook that is an open-ended question they’ll need an answer to. Focus on value-centered descriptions.
Lead the horse to water and give it a straw.
It all happens through Meta Ads Manager, something we have a whole series about over on our knowledge base.
However, when breaking down your audience, consider facts such as:
1. A/B Testing – try out a few things and see what works best for your audience. No two versions of ad copy achieve the same thing, and no two audiences want the same thing, either. Trial and error is the way to go.
2. Market Research – if you don’t know what people want, you can always ask. Conduct a few surveys, interviews, and questionnaires. You can even run polls on social media.
Ok, so we lied. We’re actually going to create a few hooks, one for each group of your audience.
The nature of Facebook is that it can be highly segmented. That means your copy can be highly targeted, but you’ve got to spend some time thinking about it first. It can even come down to the minutiae of word choice.
Ask yourself these questions:
Write out a brief sentence for each group. It should summarise their needs, wants, and interests.
Use these to inspire as many hook lines as there are groups.
Remember that tiny little changes can make a big difference. It’s a bit like A/B Testing. Look at these two examples:
1. A hook for an audience of small, startup businesses: ‘Do you know the one mistake businesses make when starting out?… Our Marketing Agency can help.’
2. A hook for a big business, looking to expand: ‘Do you know the one mistake growing businesses make?… Our Marketing Agency can help.’
It’s the same product on offer at the end. However, the word ‘growing’ targets and inspires a different group, to ‘starting out’.
So, at this stage, plot out what each group wants, and the word choices you can use in the hook to help inspire each group.
The ground rules for headlines are:
These can be fairly similar across all audience groups.
Now they’re in the palm of your hand, your job is simple: keep them there.
We recommend:
The body of your ad should do more than outline your product’s features. An ideal copy is value-focused, which means that it focuses on common pain points. Doing so paints your product/brand as a solution to that problem.
For example: ‘Our marketing services can help any business struggling with customer retention’. This shows the value of your work, as opposed to, ‘We have great marketing services’.
It all paints your business in an empathetic light, showing them you understand. It also opens a loop, getting the reader to click to find out more about the solutions on offer.
Then it’s time to go back to your audience demographics. The length of your copy will vary depending on the stage of the marketing funnel the customer group is at. Use your audience metrics to think about the things they most need to know, right now.
Images get to the heart of how people’s brains work on social media.
Make sure your image is relevant to your post. If it’s something unrelated, you’ll confuse readers or make them lose interest.
Secondly, think about the sorts of images you want to use. Ideally, these will be pictures of real people, or images you’ve taken yourself. Stock photos are fine, but people impact things like trust in your brand, and connection with you as a real community.
PSA: This is often the same as your headline.
However, it’s good to come back to it, because it gives your post a purpose.
By the time the reader gets to this point, there should be no doubt about what you want them to do.
We’re talking lots of verbs (doing words!) ‘Click here’, ‘Sign up for [this]’, ‘Subscribe now’, to give it an action-oriented feel, and get straight to the point.
Make sure the links are easily visible and optimised too for both mobile and desktop.
Only include a single CTA per post. Too many and you’ll confuse readers.
All done!
Now all that’s left is to see if it works.
So much of what we tell our clients comes down to this: trial and error. You’re not a mind-reader, after all.
While this can be tricky, you’re in the same boat as every other Marketer under the sun. That means you have time to try things and see what works.
To optimise your Facebook Ad Copy, we recommend A/B tests:
It’s always a good idea to run some A/B Tests.
That means running two very close versions of the same campaign. Facebook even has an A/B Testing feature in Meta Ads Manager.
You can use it to duplicate an existing campaign or ad set. You can also use it to modify one particular variable.
Just make sure you only test one variable at a time, eh? Otherwise you don’t know what people are responding to.
If any of this sounds complicated to you, that’s because it is. Sorry! However, there is some good news.
It’s complicated for everyone. That’s why, at Zap, we’ve created a comprehensive system of support for businesses just like yours.
Want support running A/B Tests? Fancy a second opinion on your winning Hook? Want to write copy that converts?
Aye, fair play. Luckily, our marketing and web design experts are here to help.
Contact us today to find out how we can help you. We’d love to chat.
