A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Ad Copy That Sells

Copywriting is a highly underrated skill in the business world. Many people falsely believe that they already know how to write ad copy when the truth is they don’t. 

Copywriting is a skill that only comes naturally to some, and businesses and other entities must have well-written copies if they want to grow their brand and income.

What is Copywriting?

Copywriting is often considered the foundation of advertising. It is the art of writing “copy” for promotional material like Facebook or Google Ads, website content or email marketing campaigns that persuade or influence the reader to take a particular action (like purchasing your product or booking an appointment). 

When you read ad copy, you should easily understand what it is trying to sell without going through multiple difficult steps. 

Copywriters have mastered this skill and aim to captivate their audience with just a few words. They use persuasive techniques while weaving a content-rich tale that sways the customer towards making a purchase or committing to an action. 

Advertising isn’t just about getting your audience’s attention — it’s about delivering a message that resonates with them and persuades them to take action. If you want to write copy that sells, here are five tips to get you started:

1. Understand what your customers want or need

You need to understand the psychology that drives people’s decision-making process and how to present your product or service in the best possible light. Before you can write copy that sells, you must first know who will be reading it and what they need. 

To do this, you must start by creating a buyer persona. 

A buyer persona is a fictionalized representation of your target audience. It’s important to have a clear understanding of who your potential customers are and what they want before putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). 

You’ll use this information to create persuasive ad copy that is personalized to this audience.

The following are some of the few questions you should ask yourself when creating a buyer persona:

• Who is my target customer? 
• Are they male or female? 
• What is their age range? 
• What is their average household income?
• What types of products do they buy online?

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2. Make your headlines clear and easy to understand

In today’s Internet age, advertising has shifted its focus to social media platforms such as Tiktok, Instagram, and YouTube, where people can easily share information about their products or services within seconds to millions of people around the world. 

Due to this convenience factor, users’ attention spans may have become shorter as a result of the abundance of online content that meets their interests and their constant need for instant gratification. 

With so much to read, watch and share, platforms like TikTok (and Vine before it) were created to offer ultra-short form video content allowing users to swipe through a seemingly endless amount of content that ranges from 30 seconds to less than 15. 

Through social media like TikTok and Twitter, users have grown accustomed to having their content delivered in short bursts and 280-word snippets. 

With this in mind, when writing your ads, keep them short, sweet and simple. Don’t try to cram too much information into your ads or you’ll lose your reader’s attention. For webpage content, blogs and email campaigns, don’t hesitate to use bullet points for better readability. The longer something looks, the more likely they are to skip right over it. 

3. Use important keywords

When writing ad copy, you should ensure you use important keywords to help with SEO and ad quality score. Keywords are the words and phrases that people use when searching for products and services online (in both Google’s organic and paid search results). 

So if you include them in your copy, they can help you get your message in front of the people who are most likely to click on it and convert because it’s relevant to their search query. 

In particular, for Google Ads, ad quality score is given as a performance indicator of how relevant your ad text is to the keywords in your ad group. If your ad copy doesn’t include the keywords you’re bidding on, then the ad quality score is likely lower due to what may seem like irrelevant content to the bots.

4. Use persuasive words and phrases in your copy

The purpose of most advertising is to sell something. This can be a physical object like a car or a service such as insurance. It can also be intangible, such as an idea or a point of view.

The common element in all successful advertising is that it communicates clearly and concisely to its target audience. The goal of your ad copy is to convince your audience that the product or service you’re selling is worth their time, money and attention. 

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So it’s recommended to write ad copy using persuasive words and phrases that speak to the target audience. Keep in mind the following when choosing your words:

• Use the “power words and phrases” they can relate to as well as create an urgency to act fast (e.g., “new,” “free,” “now,” “limited time offer”, “proven results”).
  
• Keep your sentences short and simple. Get straight to the point!
  
• Use conversational language, not formal business language.
  
• Do not use jargon or acronyms unless you know your target audience will understand them (and even then, it’s better not to use them).

Conclusion

The only way to write great ad copy is to put yourself in the shoes of your customer and understand their needs, wants and desires. If you do this, you’ll be able to write ads that sell.

If you want your ads to sell, they need to do what good ads are supposed to do — grab the reader’s attention, make them want to click or call, and leave them wanting more. 

There’s a reason why good copywriters are sought-after professionals — because writing copy that does all this takes careful consideration of tone, audience, and instruction. 

It may seem intimidating to write ad copy that inspires strangers to take action, but with the right tips and tricks, you’ll be able to write ad copy that sells. And if you still find copywriting to be difficult or tedious, the Content Marketing team at TechWyse is ready to help. 

Post By Bonnie Luu (16 Posts)

Bonnie is a part of the Account Management team at TechWyse. She enjoys working collaboratively with clients to achieve digital marketing success. Outside of office hours, you would find her either going on food adventures around town or fighting evil by moonlight.