Digital marketers have heard it many times before: personalize your ads. Tailor them to fit your audience. Whether you’re writing text ad copy for specific ad group keywords, or pondering over personas, crafting messaging for a potential customer’s needs and pain points can be tricky.
When advertising in the Facebook newsfeed (and Instagram/Facebook partners audience ecosystem) in particular, it’s an ever-changing world of increasingly segmented audiences, thanks to first-party data and lookalike audiences.
Search giants are moving into audience targeting as well with Google Ads’ ever-increasing display audience options and Audience Insights, as well as the Microsoft Audience Network. Making your messaging hit the heart of a particular audience is not only more realistic than ever, but more challenging with our limited time.
How to approach your Facebook ad copy
With Facebook ad copy, you must realize that the channel is filled with disengaged “I’m browsing, leave me alone” users. Digital marketers have various audiences to choose from that, unlike search, aren’t invested in their product or actively seeking their services. From these choices, additional variables come into play, such as:
- Does your audience have power over the purchase decision? Or do they influence others to purchase?
- Is the audience familiar with your brand? Do they recognize your brand when they see it? Have they had positive interactions with your products or thought leadership previously?
- Do you possess information that could better guide your messaging, such as customer lists, surveys, and lead data from your sales team?
This article will discuss how to save time with Facebook ad testing and how to address these questions with some of the best and inspiring Facebook ad copy examples. At the conclusion, you can better craft copy to reach these disengaged social audiences and drive them closer to conversion.
Why you should reconsider your messaging
Audiences today are more fragmented than they’ve ever been in the history of marketing. Newspaper or TV ads don’t capture all audiences anymore. Today, digital marketers understand the need to be more nuanced with their ad copy.
In fact, a Harris Poll Study Commissioned by Lithium found that 74% of millennials and Gen Z consumers gravitate to information they find on their own. What’s more is that 56% of these digital natives report cutting back or stopping the use of social media sites entirely due to newsfeed ads.
And B2B marketers aren’t off the hook. A 2016 Forrester study found that 65% of businesses are likely to switch vendors if they don’t have personalized company communication. The solution that the market demands is clear: Better ad messaging is necessary for positive customer experiences, especially on social networks like Facebook.
Tools to create better Facebook ads
Before we dive into how to write engaging Facebook social ad copy, save time and use ad testing automation. Some popular larger platforms include:
- Acquisio, Kenshoo, Marin Software, Optmyzr
- AdEspresso – designed for ad testing and analysis
- Adalysis – finding your statistical significance easily
- AdStage – closed-loop automation
If you would rather not use one of the platforms above, the Facebook split testing tool is a solid option for “set it and forget it” ad copy testing. The tool lets advertisers compare ad formats, creative options, calls-to-action, and other ad elements. It also ensures no audience overlap and single variable tests to ensure your data is clear and actionable:
Below is a sample of a Facebook split test result. These results are sent by email at the test’s conclusion and is available to view in the ad manager:
What to test when crafting Facebook ad messages
One of the best places to start is AdEspresso’s Facebook ad examples tool, which provides over 155,000 examples of Facebook ads from every industry. This alone can help spark your creativity!
Now, let’s analyze different Facebook ad copy examples based on the audience segment.
1. Speaking to the audience’s power (or lack thereof) over the purchase decision (B2B)
Some businesses might shy away completely from advertising to lower-level workers (like IT managers who may influence their peers, as opposed to CIOs or CEOs who have purchasing decision power.) But in the example below, Sisense has crafted an ad that speaks directly to the user’s lack of control and arms them with the information to persuade their boss to buy:
This is a terrific example of mid-funnel targeting. If an IT manager or System Admin (targeting by job title and interests in your Facebook audiences) has interacted with your company before, giving an offer like this could move an employee closer to the side of your product. This type of content promotion helps provide a final push to conversion or open up conversations with other people within their company.
2. Addressing copy to ”friends of” Facebook audiences (ecommerce)
From an ecommerce perspective, it’s wise to make use of “Friends of” targeting and craft your Facebook copy to appeal to these friends. People talk about the products they like in real life. We’ve all experienced a friend or family member raving about a brand and then mysteriously seeing that particular brand in our newsfeed. It isn’t magic. It’s targeting:
You can also target friends of those who have downloaded your app, attended your events (great for local marketers like gyms or boutiques), and make custom combinations:
Once you have this audience targeting identified, speak to these audiences with some assumption that they have a small amount of brand familiarity. Also, give these audiences more informational content instead of a simple “buy now!” type of ad.
Consider this scenario with two men: One uses Harry’s razors, but the other one does not. It’s likely that the non-Harry’s customer has heard good things from his friend about the product offline. The friend of the current customer could receive this concise and informational ad about the brand due to their connection with a Harry’s devotee. The audience a marketer would use for this ad type is “Friends of people who like your page”:
Notice that the copy above is clever and specific:
- Written for a male audience.
- The ad mentions a list of 7 benefits, which is an intriguing headline to persuade prospects to click-through.
- The ad isn’t strictly written with a “buy now” or “for sale” proposition. Instead, it provides a taste of the product’s value after espousing that Harry’s is a GQ award winner.
- The key focus of the ad is on providing product information. This copy would be perfect for someone who has already heard about Harry’s value but needs an extra push to make a purchase decision.
- It’s just pushy enough, while demonstrating value.
3. Making use of internal data like sales information, lead lists, and churned customer surveys (all advertisers)
Perhaps one of the greatest gifts in social advertising has been our keen ability to better target ads with first-party data sources. Recently, Facebook rolled out some new requirements for custom audience data (June, 2018) but by and large it won’t affect those companies using their own data collected by email, sales teams, or partners.
A great trick is to write copy around surveys that you may already be running for churned customers. For example, I skipped a month on my MeUndies subscription, who then sent this friendly email asking me why I had skipped:
The survey provided multiple choice answers related to the price being too high, not enough print variety, and “I have too much underwear.” I imagine that MeUndies has a large database of these responses and such lists can allow them to properly address churned customers by their exact needs and displeasures. Should the price be too much, they could include churned customers in an audience that is served sale-specific offers on Facebook ads.
If those former customers were unaware of the variety of products or were fed up with a steady diet of underwear, MeUndies could take the opportunity to educate them on their diverse product line. This Facebook ad for MeUndies loungewear would be a great place to start when addressing this audience:
4. Using testimonials that speak to life events or customer needs (all advertisers)
Most companies have a variety of testimonials — why not use them in ads? Better yet, try to use these glowing reviews to serve audiences that are in similar situations like those in the reviews.
For example, this Original Grain watch ad is perfect for targeting brides-to-be because the testimonial demonstrates the satisfaction of a bride buying a watch for her groom:
How many of you have stellar unused testimonials that could better be used in ads? And what audiences can you discover by sifting through your customer testimonials and determining if Facebook audiences could be targeted better with optimized ad copy?
Write social ad copy that inspires more action
These examples show how you can optimize your Facebook ad copy messaging to inspire prospects to take action. Be sure to split test your ads to determine which combination performs best, too. Use audience mapping to organize different approaches and visually lay out which audiences to approach first when improving your copy to their needs, wants, and pain points. Also, don’t forget to connect all your Facebook ads with personalized post-click landing pages, sign up for an Instapage Enterprise demo today.
About the author
Mary is a Digital Account Manager at Hanapin Marketing. She worked in traditional advertising and lead generation before developing a passion for paid search and social ads management in 2012. For 7 years, she has managed campaigns for a wide variety of industries, from local to B2B. She has a passion for content marketing and adores the challenge of a long, complex funnel with multiple user touchpoints. Give her some engaging content, and she’ll be in her happy place.