How to Write Incredible Facebook Ad Copy in 7 Steps

There’s a lot that goes into a single Facebook Ad campaign. You have to choose your audience, an objective, ad formats and images. These factors easily claim all of the focus for most marketers running campaigns.

While every part of your Facebook Ad matters, too many marketers and businesses end up neglecting their Facebook Ad copy…and hinder their results in the process.

Every part of an ad matters. Targeting puts you in front of the right people, for example and an image helps grab their attention. Nine times out of ten, however, it’s the copy that will actually get them to click, because it explains what you’re selling and why it matters. Even video ads can use some help from the ad copy to explain to users why they should be watching it.

While ad copy is crucial to the success of every ad, you don’t need to be (or hire) a professional copywriter to write it up. Instead, you just have to follow these 7 easy steps that will help you craft the perfect Facebook Ad copy to drive conversions.

1. Understand Your Goal

What’s the first thing you do when you create a Facebook Ad? You choose an objective, which aligns with the goal you want to accomplish. When it comes to Facebook Ad copy, this is the first thing to consider. An ad meant to drive sales will have very different copy than an ad intended to get users engaging on a mobile app.

This ad uses “Learn More” to win over tentative users, instead of a more immediate “Sign-Up” CTA that might lose them.

This also means that you’ll want to choose your CTA early on, even though it’s one of the last steps in the ad creation process. I recommend knowing from the very beginning of each campaign if you’re going to want users to be encouraged to “learn more,” “contact us,” or “shop now.” Ultimately, the copy meant to drive these actions all need to look different, even if sales are the actual goal of the ad.

2. Understand Your Audience

After you choose an objective, you’ll focus in on an audience, and there’s a good chance you’re using segmented audience targeting for your ads. To create ad copy that’s actually effective, you need to fully understand that audience.

This ad solves the pain point of “healthy eating is hard” – not that it’s “expensive,” which would be the pain point for a different audience.

How will they use your product? What pain points do they have that you need to solve? Even within your overall audience, different niches will have different priorities, problems, and objections. Take all of this into consideration before you even think about trying to come up with a headline, because every word you write will be dependent on the individual audience you’re targeting.

3. Consider Ad Format

The next step of Facebook’s ad creation process has you choose your ad placements and then formats. You must take both into consideration, as each placement will have different copy requirements. Newsfeed ads, for example, have much more room for copy than ads that appear on the side of desktop users’ feeds.

Instagram Ads and Facebook Ads also have different best practices. It’s great to use hashtags in an Instagram post, but you should avoid this on Facebook.

Using hashtags on Instagram Ads is great, but it should be avoided on Facebook.

Similarly, you’ll want to account for the type of ad you’re running. Carousel ads will require extra copy, while video ads will need copy that focus on driving video views and whatever ulterior objective you’re focusing on. There are no “one-size-fits-all” rules when it comes to ad copy.

4. Create a Hook to Capture User Interest

Your hook is the angle that you’re going to use to reel potential customers in. This is what will grab their attention. I personally recommend going for emotional hooks whenever possible, but logical and educational hooks also work well.

Anyone who has ever had a net-90 payment will be sucked into the copy of this ad immediately.

In many cases, the hook will translate directly into the headline. The hook should tell users “why” they should care, click, watch, or convert. Sometimes, the “why” comes before the “what,” offering up the pain point or the problem before the actual solution. This is effective, because it puts the problem fresh in the customer’s mind, giving you the perfect opportunity to present a solution they’ll be excited to hear.

5. Anticipate Objections

We mentioned objections briefly in the “understand your audience” section, but it’s essential to consider it again when you’re actively writing the ad copy: you must anticipate objections so you can fight them. Objections will be what prevents a user from converting, or even clicking. They assume that your meal delivery service will be too expensive, or that your beach shoes will be cheap material and fall apart the second they hit the hot sand.

Apple’s simple copy reminds users that “All the computer stuff you love” is still available on the iPad Pro. This is offsetting an objection of limited capabilities.

You should make sure that your copy doesn’t evoke any objections, and—if possible—puts them to rest. In some cases, even adding just one word to the copy can help prevent objections from ruining your ad’s potential. Saying “affordable meal delivery service” and “durable beach shoes” can offset objections from the get-go.

6. Use Short, Feature-Benefit Sentences

For many business owners and marketers, our first instinct is to be like the entrepreneurs on Shark Tank who keep saying “oh and one more thing!” even after the Sharks have already made offers or bowed out. We know how amazing our products are, and we want the whole world to know every single reason why.

Realistically, we can only fit one or maybe two feature/benefits into a single Facebook or Instagram Ad. This means that we need to choose the one or two benefits that will speak to a specific audience’s pain points and interests the strongest. Feature-benefit selling, for those who aren’t familiar, lists a feature (like “shatter-proof”) and then how it benefits users (“so you don’t have to worry about messy clean-ups”).

It’s a simple feature, but an effective one.

These sentences should also be short and sweet. No run on sentences, please. Since users typically skim through ad copy, you want your point to get across cleanly and immediately.

This ad uses concise language that focuses on features and benefits.

The old copywriting rule I was taught is to write a sentence and then chop away at least a third of the words. Keep the phrasing as compact and to-the-point as possible, and your Facebook Ad copy will be significantly stronger.

7. Cut Out Corny Sales Talk & Spammy Language

This is another big one: while you’re fine-tuning the copy itself (which typically means cutting), go through and eliminate any corny language that makes you sell like a bad car salesman or like an email containing a computer-crashing virus.

This includes how you choose to punctuate and capitalize the copy—no one wants to see all caps informing you that “ONLY THREE DAYS LEFT ON THE BEST SALE WE’VE EVER HAD DON’T MISS IT YOU’LL REGRET IT.” Unfortunately, I saw that exact text on an ad about two weeks ago.

There’s no reason for this ad to have the link to the site in the ad itself. It should just be in the CTA; it clutters the copy and looks like spam. It also
lacks transparency by saying “see how much you can save!” instead of telling users outright.

Some emojis are ok, but adding lots of arrows pointing to where you want users to click is a no-go. You’ll also want to eliminate phrases like “Stock going fast, you’ll miss out if you don’t order now!” This works fine in an email, but it’s wasting up limited space in an ad, and just comes across like a bad line. Because social media thrives on authenticity, try to sound like a real human person instead of a broken record trying to trick the user into buying something.

Short and sweet. It’s clearly a promotion, but doesn’t feel like someone is trying to force me to buy something.

Final Thoughts

Facebook Ads is an unbelievably powerful ad platform, and having all the pieces of the puzzle fitting cohesively together will allow you to write copy that maximizes that power. Facebook Ad copy should be short, sweet, and—most importantly—relevant to the specific audience you’re targeting and ad you’re running. If you follow these 7 simple steps to write incredible Facebook Ad copy, you’ll be lightyears ahead of the majority of your competition, and your results will speak for themselves.

Still unsure if your ad copy is up to snuff? If you want some extra help, let us know here or in the comments below. We’d be happy to provide feedback!

What do you think? What’s your process for perfecting your Facebook Ad copy? How do you increase your ROI? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!