What is ad copy?
Short for advertisement copy, ad copy is any piece of written content that is used to sell a product, service, or idea to an individual, group of individuals, or organizations. It is used in virtually all types of advertising channels, including TV, radio, print, out-of-home, web, and social media.
If you wish to learn more about this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What is the difference between ad copy and regular web content?
The main difference between ad copy and regular web content is their primary intent. Ad copy, as we have seen in the section above, is specifically used to sell. Regular web content, on the other hand, is used for a wider variety of purposes, including but not limited to:
- Information dissemination
- Search engine optimisation (SEO)
- Entertainment
- Education
Also, ad copy is generally shorter, snappier, and more creative than regular web content because it needs to quickly grab the attention of the customer and get them to take action.
Question #2: How do I write effectively?
To write effective ad copy, you need to first be able to empathise with your target customer. What are their primary pain points? Which ones can the product or service you are selling solve? The goal is to craft your ad copy in a way that clearly lets the target customer know that you understand their problems and you have the exact solution they need.
Now, while this sounds simple, a lot of B2B (and even professional copywriters) actually struggle with it and end up just writing about how awesome their company, products, and services are instead.
This is why we get ad copy such as:
- Discover Australia’s number one burger! Visit ABC Burgers today!
- Get help from Brisbane’s best lawyers at ABC Law!
- Train at Melbourne’s top fitness centre ABC Gym!
Instead of:
- Get more beef in every bite at ABC Burgers!
- Leave your legal troubles to the experts at ABC Law!
- Experience truly personal training at ABC Gym!
In the first set of examples, the focus is on the businesses and how amazing they are supposed to be without giving the customer an actual reason to choose them over their competitors. The second set fixes this.
Let us take a look at each example again:
‘Get more beef in every bite at ABC burgers’ takes the customer’s pain point, which, in this case, is the fact that all the other burgers they have tried did not have enough beef then clearly shows that ABC burgers can solve it by promising more beef in every bite.
The second example does the exact same thing. ‘Leave your legal troubles to the experts’ makes it clear to the customer that ABC Law not only understands that they are struggling with legal issues (i.e., the pain point), but also has the means to make said issues go away (i.e., the solution).
The same goes for the third example. In this case, the customer is tired of being left to figure things out on their own at the gym (i.e., the pain point) so ABC Gym promises to guide them every step of the way through personal training (i.e., the solution).
Do not worry if the concept is not perfectly clear to you yet. Unless you are a professional copywriter, you should not be worrying about these things anyway because you can always just hire someone to take care of it for you.
Question #3: Can I hire any writer to craft ad copy?
No. You cannot just hire any writer to craft ad copy for you. You need an actual copywriter if you want real results.
For regular web content, articles, and other similar pieces, however, any writer with decent grammar should be more than enough for the job.