Crafting Compelling Advertising Copy: A Guide to Effective Messaging

Good ad copy isn’t something that you can do without: it’s central to the success of any campaign because there is great power in words. For businesses and brands, ad copy becomes the vehicle by which they can reach their audience and build a relationship with them. You can never understate the importance of copywriting for ads in building trust, establishing your presence and, most importantly, selling your product.

Therefore, it is paramount that you know how to write good, effective ad copy! The audience’s perspective of your business can be the deciding factor as to whether or not they’ll buy your product. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know to craft impactful messaging for your business.

What is a Copy Ad in Advertising?

Before you can craft a good copy, you must first learn what it is. There’s no set definition, but you can easily understand it as the text used to promote a business. Good ad copy, simply put, is a piece of text that can effectively achieve its purpose, whether it’s selling or increasing brand awareness.

Of course, it takes more than knowing what is an ad copy to be able to actually create exceptional advertising text. So, stick around until the end of the article to gain lots of valuable insights that can help you with writing for your brand or business.

What Are the Characteristics of Good Ad Copy?

We’ve gone over the definition, so now let’s dive deeper. Regardless of the purpose of your copy or the industry that you’re in, exceptional ad copy possesses certain universal traits. As you will notice, these traits tend to overlap with what is generally considered good writing. So, beyond a general ad copy definition or understanding, what are the ingredients that make it effective?

Good Ad Copy Employs Attention-Grabbing Headlines

There are a lot of distractions on the internet, and you may only have a few seconds to make your case. That’s why all good copy ads have a great headline. Imagine that your business or product is a book being judged by its metaphorical cover. Here, the few words that make up the headline are the cover! Effective ad copy will get them hooked right away because, on average, only 2 out of 10 people read past the headline. So, take your time when crafting this part of your copy. This largely determines the success of your advertisement.

Good Ad Copy is Consistent With the Brand Voice

If you met someone who seemed friendly and relaxed in your first introduction and then they became very formal overnight, wouldn’t you be confused? Ad copy follows the same logic, and it’s the reason why the best advertising copy examples sound like the brand they represent. However, apart from consistency, why is maintaining a brand’s voice important?

It makes the brand seem dependable and capable of delivering the same level of quality every time.
Great ad copy avoids mixed messages, enhancing the effectiveness of your overall campaign.
It shows that your brand is polished, demonstrating a high level of professionalism.

No matter how well-written, your ad copy is part of your greater efforts to promote and sustain a brand. So, you should be consistent.

Good Ad Copy Has a Strong Value Proposition

If you’re serving a market, then you have competition, no matter the product or service. The question is, how do you get your target market to go after your offer instead of another’s? Quality ad copy will use the unique selling point (USP) that the offer has to make it stand out. One mistake that we see copywriters make is to assume that there can only be one USP for an audience. However, what makes good ad copy effective is that it aligns its message with the audience segment, and the benefit — or set of benefits — that would appeal to one segment might differ from another segment.

Good Ad Copy Appeals to the Reader’s Emotions

No, we’re not talking about a copy that exaggerates everything to draw out emotion from the reader. However, ad copy shouldn’t be cold and robotic, either. Appealing to a reader’s emotions here means creating a way for them to relate to what you’re saying. And how do you do this? Good ad copy can do any of the following:

Talk about pain points that the audience is experiencing;
Explore the ways that your offer can make their lives easier and better;
Tell a story that will resonate with them.

All great ad copy is written for a particular set of audiences. Trying to arouse emotions is an important part of writing, but if you go overboard, your reader may just see you as manipulative.

Good Ad Copy Has Clear and Concise Messaging

As mentioned earlier, your potential customers don’t have the time to listen to every person or brand on the internet vying for their attention. So, excellent ad copy makes it easy for them to understand your message quickly. However, don’t mistake concise for being short. Just remember to KISS:

Keep
It
Short and
Simple

Basically, the best ad copy example will communicate everything that you have to say (not want to say, there’s a difference!) and nothing more. After all, you want them to get the full picture without boring them with fluff. Good ad copy helps your audience quickly get what you’re saying. This allows audiences to process your copy and make decisions more quickly, thereby increasing conversion rates.

The Different Types of Ad Copy in Advertising That You Can Write for Your Audience

With the definition and characteristics covered, you’re a little bit closer to learning what it takes to create good ad copy for your business. Great job! But let’s go even further down the rabbit hole. Anything and everything that you write should serve a purpose, and that doesn’t just mean pushing sales. Remember, we have said that any solid example of good advertising copy will be effective in fulfilling its purpose, no matter what that is.

So, what purpose does your ad copy serve? Understanding this will determine typology, which we will discuss in the following subsections. Just to note, these types are not necessarily mutually exclusive, so ad copy can be informative and SEO optimized, for example.

Informative Copy

Informative copy promotes learning for its audience. Many businesses invest in this type of copy through web content. So, how can you spot good ad copy under this categorization? It must do at least one of the following:

Talk about how to use a certain solution that the business is offering;
Provide potential solutions to a reader’s problem;
Answer questions that matter to the target market.

Essentially, informative ad copy will educate the reader in some way. This helps establish the credibility of the brand as an expert while also reframing the minds of the readers that a business product or service is a viable solution.

Persuasive Copy

Persuasive ad copy is usually considered good content because people like measurable results. For this type, the goal is to persuade the reader to take some form of action. The best ad text copy examples here may accomplish any of these goals:

Get readers to sign up for an email or SMS list;
Convince readers to buy a product;
Encourage people to click an ad directed to a website.

We already discussed how good ad copy appeals to emotions in some way. But here, emotions are amplified to hit pain points that persuade readers to take action. You’ll normally see this in landing pages and promotional emails where the measure of exceptional ad copy is how well it converts.

Descriptive Copy

From the term itself, the main purpose of the descriptive copy is to describe. This is very useful in situations where you need to bring the reader closer to the experience of using a product or service. This can include:

Providing technical specifications of a product;
Comparing competing items, like two models of a phone;
Immersing the reader in an experience by engaging other senses through words.

Good ad copy here is very useful in a wide range of industries where some level of description is warranted. It does a lot to promote transparency while also potentially communicating benefits to readers.

SEO Copy

Did you know that ad copy can also get you to the top ranking on a search engine? At least, that’s the case if you write with SEO in mind. For any business, you may find SEO writing in either of these places:

Within the business website: All good ad copy will have on-page optimization, using keywords and good practices for formatting content to improve the page and site ranking.
Outside the business website: Part of SEO writing is creating backlinks to your website to establish its authority within a niche. Ideally, readers of those pieces will also be encouraged to click those backlinks.

However, apart from the SEO aspect, ad copy under this typology can also inform or describe.

Engagement Copy

Social media plays a huge part in forming the image of a brand as well as the opinions of the audience. That’s why it’s important to have a strong presence in these channels. This is something that you can accomplish through engagement, as you’ll see with our social media marketing copy examples. So, what constitutes good engagement copy? Look at metrics such as reactions, shares, comments and impressions.

But let us dispel one myth: going viral doesn’t necessarily mean you have written good ad copy. A brand can easily attract attention for all the wrong reasons, and any short-term successes based on numbers can come with long-term disaster for the reputation of the company.

Brand Awareness Copy

Ad copy should help spread awareness of a brand. This is very important, especially in the earlier stages when the company is still trying to find its place in the market. However, good examples of copywriting ads do more than just establish the presence of a company. It can also:

Communicate the personality of the brand to make it more relatable to the audience;
Improve brand familiarity through repetitive exposure to good ad copy from the company;
Establish what the company wants to be known for.

The About Us page is one of the most important pages of any website, so having a great ad copy here is highly impactful for brand awareness. However, you can find brand awareness ad copy practically everywhere.

How to Write Effective Advertising Copy: Top Tips for Creating Good Ad Copy

As you have seen in the previous section, knowing what you want to accomplish with your copy ensures that your writing efforts are aligned with a clear purpose. Ad copy can look like a lot of things, depending on the platform and ad format used to make it happen. However, regardless of where you write and the format you use, what makes good ad copy is guided by the same principles. So, keep these top tips in mind to maximize the potential effectiveness of your advertising copy for your business.

Write Multiple Ad Copy Headlines

Do you remember how we talked about the fact that most people never get past the headline? If you want to create quality ad copy, using multiple headlines is important because it allows you to:

Cater to different segments of your audience;
Avoid ad fatigue from those who will see your ad multiple times;
See which headlines resonate with the audience the most;
Display various angles for the same offer;
Manage the risk of a single headline potentially failing.

So, how many variations should you have? While there’s no absolute number that you should follow, you should consider the campaign’s scope, the platform that you’ll use and audience segmentation.

Do Your Research

You can’t create great ad copy out of thin air. Research is easily 50% of the job because, during this stage, you’re gathering everything that you need to create effective messaging. What do you need to do before you start writing ad copy?

Customer avatar: This condenses everything you know about your audience into one person. You’re supposed to write for this avatar!
Competition research: Was the competition able to write effective ad copy for the same audience? Use what you know and build on that.
Market sentiment analysis: How does your market feel about various topics? Top ad copywriting examples use such information to make the message more relatable.

Make It All About the Reader

One of the most common mistakes that we’ve seen brands make is making everything about themselves. Good ad copy doesn’t concern itself much with how great the company is. Instead, it makes the reader the star of the show, emphasizing the ways that the company can make things better for them. How can you shift the focus of the copy from the brand to the customer? Here are a few ways:

Write in the second person by using you and your;
Create a sense of empathy;
Turn features into benefits;
Make the reader feel like they’re part of something.

Ad copy shouldn't isolate: talk to your readers like a friend or colleague, whichever may be applicable.

Include Social Proof Whenever Possible

We invite you to think about who you’re more likely to believe: someone talking about how great they are or five other people vouching for that person. A writer of good ad copy asks, why not both? You can highlight your strengths by conveying benefits to your audience. At the same time, you can strengthen all claims in your ad copy through social proof. But what should you include as social proof when you’re writing? Here are a few ideas:

Include direct testimonials;
Use notable sales numbers;
Include names of reputable clients;
Mention awards.

Good ad copy will use the types of social proof that work best based on general effectiveness and the format of the advertisement itself.

Don’t Be Afraid to Use Copywriting Templates

Ad copy doesn’t have to be completely unique. It can use the same format as other texts because what’s the point of starting from scratch? There’s a lot of value in creating ad copy from a template. In doing so, you can do two things:

Make your advertisement easier to read for the audience;
Use a structure that already works for the platform.

However, what turns regular ad copy into good ad copy is that it goes beyond the template. So, feel free to implement changes that you think will better highlight the benefits and improve readability for the user.

Best Examples of Ad Copy Writing and Strategy

What does excellent advertising copy look like? Going back to everything that we’ve talked about, it’s something that is:

Based on research;
Reader-centered;
Clear and concise;
Representative of the brand or business.

Most importantly, effective ad copy fulfills its purpose. If you write to convert leads into sales, then the established KPIs must reflect that. In the same way, if you’re writing to improve SEO rankings, you should see an increase with consistent effort. To give you a better idea of what exceptional ad copy can look like, we have compiled our favorites below.

Xero

Xero is an accounting software package used by over three million users. So far, they’ve also created one of the best Google ads copy examples that we’ve seen.

This goes to show that ad copy doesn’t have to be complex. It simply needs to get the job done. Here, they highlighted that it allows you to transition to the new service in under three hours and that you can try it for free. This competitive ad copy promotes convenience with zero risks. Who wouldn’t want that?

Burrow

Burrow sells furniture to complete your home. What we love about this Google AdWords copy is how straight to the point it is. They quickly demonstrate their unique selling point (60% discount) while also displaying relevant links based on search. By doing so, Burrow can quickly direct traffic to relevant pages. Plus, they can attract a bigger market through this ad copy because everyone likes getting a great deal.

Duo Security

Duo Security protects organizational data through its series of features, thus preventing identity theft. What makes this such a good ad copy is that it raises alarm bells while also presenting information right away. It offers a downloadable guide for comparing MFA solutions as a lead magnet. And what does Duo Security get in return? It opens these possibilities:

Improved engagement through likes, comments and shares;
Increased ad impressions that may also raise brand awareness;
Improved credibility of the brand;
Customer information through the lead magnet.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Good Ad Copy to the Success of a Brand

A quality product or service is necessary if you want to improve your business reputation. However, on its own, quality may not be enough to generate sales. Effective ad copy does a lot of things that all lead to one key objective: increase your profit. In this article, we have talked about the many ways that you can use ad copy for your branding and marketing efforts. Diversify your budget and invest in native advertising as well. When you do, know that you’ll have more than the power of great ad copies by your side. Sign up on the MGID platform to access sophisticated tools, a knowledgeable Creative Department and a personal manager. We’re rooting for the success of all the good ad copy you write!