Tips to improve your copy on social media ads

It can be hard to stand out from the crowd on social media. You’ve got to make sure you can make an instant impact, or else people will just keep scrolling past your ad. One way to ensure you can make a lasting impact is by having the best possible copy in your ads. But how can you know whether or not your copy is going to be any good? There are some tips you can follow to ensure you can produce the best possible quality content for your social media ads.

1. Keep it simple

This is advice that writers are told all the time - keep it simple. This goes for social media ads as well. After all, when you have to make an impression quickly, you don’t want to risk people not being able to understand your copy. If it’s too confusing, people won’t want to engage with your ad, and you won’t receive any clicks.

2. Have all your text displayed

When you’re advertising on Facebook, often some of the text will be cut off, forcing users to press the “see more” button. However, not everyone is going to want to do that, especially when they’re in a rush. If the best part of your ad is cut off, you risk losing customers. Make sure your copy is short enough to all be featured in your Facebook ads. If any text is unnecessary, get rid of it.

3. Come up with a powerful headline

With social media ads, you’re limited by how much text you can include. It is often the headline that will grab the attention of the users. You want to make sure this is concise and as attention-grabbing as possible. You can do this by using assertive and powerful words within your headline. This will help people to action your ad.

4. Talk to your audience

When you’re writing copy for an ad on social media, you want to make sure you’re directly addressing your audience. You can do this by making your ads more personal. This isn’t overly complicated to do. Simply make your language more direct by including “you” in your heading or descriptive text. This makes the ad appear to appeal to the individual, rather than at a group of people.

5. Include a call to action

Does your copy make it clear what you want people to do, or what they will get out of your ad? Does it outline what benefit they will receive? If people aren’t sure what to expect from your ad, they’re not going to click nor trust your brand. The trust will decline further if your headline and copy are click bait and don’t actually deliver on what is said. Make sure you always include a clear call to action which delivers.

6. Test your ad

You may think you’ve created a masterpiece of an ad, but when it goes live it fails to achieve the results you were hoping for. This scenario can be avoided if you do some testing prior to investing time and money into your social media ads. Consider publishing your ads organically as a way to test the quality of the copy. If it responds well organically, it’s a good sign that it will be successful as a paid ad too.

Once you’re paying for the ads, it’s a good idea to undertake A/B testing. This allows you to publish different variations of the same ad. You can tweak the headline, the description, and even the image to see which one achieves the better result. Doing this allows you to run your campaign with the copy that will be the most successful.

Writing great copy for social ads doesn’t have to be difficult. Following these tips will help you to improve the copy of your ad, and therefore experience an increase in clicks and traffic flow to your website.

Got any social media copywriting tips? Let us know in the comments.