Ad copy is the actual words and messaging you use in your advertisements to get people to stop scrolling and take action. This is everything from the headline that grabs attention to the body text that explains your offer to the call to action that tells them what to do next. Good ad copy speaks directly to your target audience, addresses their pain points or desires, and makes them feel like clicking is the obvious next step. Bad ad copy is generic, boring, and gets ignored by everyone who sees it.
What Makes Copy Work
The difference between ad copy that converts and ad copy that wastes your budget comes down to understanding your customer better than they understand themselves. You need to know what keeps them up at night, what they’re trying to achieve, and what’s stopping them from getting there. Most people write ad copy that talks about features and how great their product is when nobody cares. What works is copy that focuses on the transformation or outcome the customer actually wants. Instead of saying your software has 50 features, you talk about how it saves them 10 hours a week so they can finally leave work on time.
Why Most Copy Fails
The biggest mistake people make with ad copy is trying to be clever or creative when they should be clear and direct. Your ad isn’t a place to show off your vocabulary or make inside jokes. It needs to communicate value immediately because you have about two seconds before someone scrolls past. The other killer is writing the same ad copy for everyone instead of segmenting your audience. A 25-year-old single guy and a 45-year-old mom are not going to respond to the same messaging even if they both need your product. This is why testing multiple variations of ad copy is critical because what you think will work and what actually performs are usually two completely different things.