How To Write Ad Copy For Your Business

As much as we’d like to avoid it, when you’re a small business owner, self promotion is necessary. Whether it’s for brochures, email campaigns, social media, or your own ads, writing punchy, short and effective copy will help your business be understood by others. 

Just like you know how much work it takes to run a business, writers know how much work it takes to feel comfortable and confident with your own writing. Dealing with insecurities and uncertainties is totally normal, as long as you are trying new things and putting your writing out there, you’re on the right track!

The Goal: Punch Up The Copy On A Facebook Ad For My Ecommerce Store

I’ve been blogging about my journey becoming an ecommerce shop owner, and my business The Snarky Raven recently started running Facebook ads. Right now one of the ads we have running is for Anchored NW, and while the taglines we’re using are ok, I think it’s worth seeing if we can punch them up a little bit. 

Here is the ad:

Current ad copy: During these hard times, let this candle fill your mind with positive thoughts. 

Constructive Critique: There’s nothing wrong with this ad copy, and we’ve been getting sales from it, but I want to do a quick critique of what I think is working vs what could be improved. 

This candle is called ‘Quarantine & Chill,’ so there’s no getting around the fact that we’re mentioning coronavirus. The current copy does reference coronavirus and I think that’s a must for whatever we replace it with.

Right now my main critique of the copy is the tone. It’s kind of serious for a candle that’s actively making a joke. The candle is also directly referencing ‘Netflix & Chill,’ so we’ll get bonus points if we think of a way to weave that in as well. 

Big Loose Brainstorm: Now that we have some goals, it’s time to write up some alternatives. This is the point in writing where any judgements you have of yourself or your ideas will only stifle you. Agree not to judge anything while you’re brainstorming, and write down everything you think of. Here’s my unedited brainstorm. 

• Give in to 2020 and relax with this 100% Soy Wax candle. 
• Make 2020 suck a little bit less by making your house smell really fricking good. 
• Just because you can’t leave the house doesn’t mean you can’t make it smell good. 
• Sit back, crack a beer, and light this baby up. 
• Date night is gone but not forgotten. Celebrate each evening with this candle that was handmade in the US. 
• You’ve. Got. To. Smell. This. Candle. 
• Support small businesses with this rustic candle. Each one is hand poured in the US made with 100% Soy Wax grown on American farms. 
• Make a purchase you can feel proud of. All our candles are hand poured in the US with 100% Soy Wax grown on American farms. 
• Hand poured in the US with soy wax grown on American farms. Plus… they smell realllly good. 

Ok, here’s my initial list. As you can see, I tried to give each line a pop of emotion, and experimented from sarcastic to patriotic. Once I locked onto mentioning that our product is US made and grown, you can see I experimented with a few different options. 

Narrowing It Down: Next I’m going to look at what I made and start the narrowing down process. This is just based on my own instincts. Are there some I really like? Some I don’t? For ones with multiple versions, which is best? 

I felt these slogans reference coronavirus in a way that’s too negative and/or cryptic. 

• Give in to 2020 and relax with this 100% Soy Wax candle. 
• Just because you can’t leave the house doesn’t mean you can’t make it smell good. 
• Date night is gone but not forgotten. Celebrate each evening with this candle that was handmade in the US. 

I was pretty happy with these ones:

• Make 2020 suck a little bit less by making your house smell really fricking good. 
• You’ve. Got. To. Smell. This. Candle.
• Stuck inside? At least make it smell good. 
• These candles are hand poured in the US with soy wax grown on American farms. Plus, they smell realllly good. 
• Make a purchase you can feel proud of. All our candles are hand poured in the US with 100% Soy Wax grown on American farms. 

So here are my final five. Now to get someone else’s eyes on what I’ve done so far.

Feedback: It’s always helpful to get a second opinion, especially on something so qualitative, like writing ad copy for your business. I ran these ideas past our Abound Facebook ad expert, Alex Gallner. Here’s what he said:

Overall your brand personality comes across very strongly, so that’s great. My favorite is ‘Make 2020 suck a little bit less by making your house smell really fricking good.’ It’s kinda snarky, easy to identify with, and on point. My second favorite is ‘Stuck inside? At least make it smell good.’ It’s nice and simple. 

Some notes on the others: when you’re writing ad copy for your business, you always have to be careful with misspellings, even if they’re intentional. And I would put a question, or a call out in front of the last one so it seems like buying is the logical next step. 

Ultimately, we’ll throw these into a dynamic creative ad and let Facebook run their experiments to find out who the true winner is. This way, the next iteration we try will have real data behind it. There are a ton of variables to consider when writing ad copy, and while at the beginning all we have is our instincts, great ad campaigns merge those instincts with user backed data.

– Alex Gallner, Abound’s Facebook Ad Expert

Finalizing: With Alex’s notes, I felt comfortable making some finalizing tweaks to my slogans. From here, I’ll try them out on my Facebook ads, and see which ones start converting to sales!

Winners
1) Make 2020 suck a little bit less by making your house smell really fricking good. 
2) Stuck inside? At least make it smell good. 

Alts
–You’ve. Got. To. Smell. This. Candle.
–These candles are hand poured in the US with soy wax grown on American farms. Plus, they smell really good. 
–Make a purchase you can feel proud of. All our candles are hand poured in the US with 100% Soy Wax grown on American farms. Available now on The Snarky Raven.