The closer we get to the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, the more consumer excitement and anticipation builds.
With much of that shopping starting online, businesses will need to be spot-on with their ad copy, making this avenue to sales a priority within their seasonal digital marketing strategy.
In the U.S., approximately $41 billion is already being spent on digital retail media ad spend, and this amount is expected to double by 2026.
With more and more brands competing for the attention of shopping consumers, the importance of your ad copy cannot be overstated, especially during this peak window of opportunity for boosting customer engagement and increasing profits.
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Importance of Compelling Ad Copy for Maximizing Black Friday Sales
Maximizing Black Friday sales becomes a priority as the weeks and days tick down to the Thanksgiving holiday. Your digital advertising campaigns take on a new urgency, requiring research, planning, and confident creation.
The importance of creating compelling ad copy is that, when done right, it can draw more attention to your brand, entice consumers to engage or interact and spur shoppers to take action.
For instance, your ad copy might aim to prompt customers to make a purchase, subscribe to a newsletter, sign up for a free trial, download a resource, register for an event, or even share the ad with their network.
Understanding the Role of Ad Copy in Black Friday Marketing
In the midst of fierce competition, it’s crucial for your brand to rise above the noise and captivate consumers’ attention. This is precisely where a carefully tailored ad copy for Black Friday marketing becomes indispensable.
Significance of ad copy in driving customer engagement
Ad copy is a form of tailored content with the specific goal of converting potential leads into customers for your business. It communicates how your company’s product or service can solve a consumer’s problem and does so with short, carefully crafted content.
When done correctly, an ad copy captures the attention of the right target audience, creates interest, and drives customer engagement.
It can encourage a buyer to take immediate action, which usually means making a purchase sooner rather than later.
Key elements of effective Black Friday ad copy
Effective Black Friday ad copy begins with a robust content creation strategy. With this, you can create compelling copy targeted to your audience, which includes the following key elements.
- The right keyword(s)
- A compelling headline
- Mention of the problem/solution
- Benefit(s) of your product or service
- An irresistible/compelling offer
- A clear call to action
- An attractive image
Impact of persuasive copywriting on consumer behavior during the shopping season
The purpose behind persuasive copywriting is to move your audience toward a particular action. It also has the power to shape, reinforce, or change a response from a consumer.
Marketing campaigns that include such effective copy can influence consumer behavior and elicit reactions, often by utilizing emotional words and phrases.
Crafting Effective Black Friday Ad Copy
By planning strategically for your ads, you can avoid Black Friday mistakes.
Start by crafting compelling promotional copy for Black Friday with the following steps.
1. Researching Target Audience and Understanding Its Pain Points
Crafting compelling ad copy begins with researching and compiling data on your target audience.
→ Identifying the target audience for Black Friday promotions
To identify the target audience for Black Friday promotions, try the following:
- Review your email list.
- Include those shoppers who recently added items to their carts, as well as those who abandoned their carts for one reason or another.
- Look at those who made purchases of your product in the last 60 days or less.
- Add users of social media who have engaged with your content in the past.
You will also want to review past Black Friday buyers and bring them back as return customers.
Social media platforms offer a wide choice of targeting and retargeting ad options, and knowing who you wish to target can bring about a more successful outcome.
→ Analyzing consumer behavior and expectations during the shopping season
By collecting and then analyzing various data on consumer shopping behaviors, motivations, and preferences, you can gain a better understanding of consumers during the prime shopping season, including what their expectations may be.
With your data, identify any trends and patterns that will help you tweak your own advertising when needed.
→ Understanding the pain points and desires of the target audience
Understand the specific desires and pain points of your target audience and build your campaigns around these. For example, why is cart abandonment happening prior to Black Friday? Is it because of the shipping fees? If so, create a strategy in which you offer free or discounted shipping for Black Friday purchases.
While the ultimate goal is to increase customer engagement and boost sales with your Black Friday ads, you won’t succeed without first understanding your target audience and then prioritizing the customer experience.
2. Utilizing Emotional Triggers and Power Words
With so little space to entice and engage with consumers, you will need to strategically choose the content to include in your ad.
→ Leveraging emotions to create a sense of urgency and excitement
By seeking to leverage emotions, you can build a sense of urgency and excitement into your ad copy and propel consumers to take action right away.
For example, focus on positive emotions of empowerment or a strong sense of community. Connecting with your target consumers on an emotional level increases the chances of their buying your products or services.
→ Incorporating persuasive power words and phrases in the ad copy
To make the most of the content included in your Black Friday ads, be sure to incorporate persuasive power words and phrases. Examples include:
- Free
- Now
- Exclusive Offer
- Limited Time Offer
- Hurry
- Today Only
- Get It Before Everybody Else
Powerful words and phrases can elicit a strong reaction in readers, often persuading them to go in one direction and increasing conversion rates for your business.
→ Tapping into the psychological triggers that resonate with the target audience
Tapping into the psychological triggers that will most resonate with what appeals to your target audience is also beneficial.
Effective psychological triggers include fear (e.g., fear of missing out) and scarcity (e.g., limited quantity available). You can also choose to build trust by giving social proof that others endorse your product.
3. Highlighting Irresistible Offers and Deals
Consumers are anticipating irresistible offers and deals on Black Friday and all the way through Cyber Monday. As such, you will want to highlight these in your ad copy.
→ Showcasing exclusive discounts, limited-time offers, and doorbusters
Customers love a good deal, and by offering exclusive discounts, your products become even more attractive and desirable. Introduce limited-time offers so buyers know they only have a certain amount of time to act. To get buyers into your brick-and-mortar store, offer doorbusters with special discount pricing.
→ Communicating the value and savings customers can expect
While excitement is a big part of the Black Friday shopping experience, consumers still want to be assured of the value of a product. They also need to know they are saving money. Let them know these in your ad copy.
→ Creating a sense of scarcity and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
Add a sense of scarcity, such as “limited stock available,” so buyers take notice and feel compelled to act quickly or else they will miss out. For instance, add a short phrase such as “don’t miss out” and highlight it.
4. Using Compelling Headlines and Attention-Grabbing Openers
Your ad will need to stand out, and the following can help.
→ Crafting attention-grabbing headlines that captivate the audience
Consumers scan content more today, so tailor your headlines to target your ideal buyers and their pain points or desires. What can they gain from reading more of your ad?
→ Creating compelling opening lines to entice readers to continue reading
The opening lines of your ad need to engage and hook your reader immediately and make them want to continue reading. Use compelling language that relates in some way to your particular target audience.
→ Incorporating curiosity, urgency, or humor to capture attention
Some of the best ways to capture the attention of readers is to create curiosity, urgency, or humor in your ad content. These can entice and motivate them to take action.
5. Formatting and Structuring the Ad Copy
The formatting and structuring of your ad copy also matter.
→ Utilizing short paragraphs and bullet points for easy readability
By including short paragraphs (2 to 3 sentences max) and using bullet points, you increase readability for consumers. Long paragraphs are a deterrent to readers, especially when searching for a good deal. Bullet points are also helpful, breaking up text into smaller chunks. These not only save time but also impress upon readers the most important information.
→ Highlighting key information and benefits using bold or italicized text
Draw the reader’s eye to key information, product benefits, and the special deal by bolding and italicizing text. These effects will capture the consumer’s attention quickly.
→ Incorporating clear and concise calls-to-action
Don’t leave anything up to chance in your ad. Instead, include a clear, concise call-to-action telling readers exactly what you want them to do next. Make it easy.
Creating effective ad copy requires focus and skill. If you find that you lack the time to spend on these efforts or your team feels less confident in their abilities, you may want to consider outsourcing. WriterAccess provides you with access to hundreds of professional writers, including those skilled in creating ad campaigns.
Testing, Tracking, and Optimizing Black Friday Ad Copy Performance
While you may have a good idea about your target audience’s response, don’t leave your digital marketing strategy stagnant or up to chance, especially regarding your Black Friday ads.
Instead, continually find ways to test, track, and optimize Black Friday ad copy performance. Here are a few ways that can help.
Experimenting with different headlines, offers, and messaging
When it comes to how to write a successful Black Friday ad, one way to gain insight is by experimenting with your copy.
Try different things to attract your audience.
Be creative while staying grounded in what you already know about that target audience.
For example, create different messaging in the copy of the ad itself. Rephrase an offer or come up with a new one. You can also vary your headlines to see what strikes more of a chord with your audience.
With this experimentation, you can create compelling promotional copy for Black Friday and win over more customers.
If you need help with those creative versions of your ads, sign up for a free 14-day trial with Writer Access and see the benefits of partnering with a professional freelance writer.
Split testing to measure the performance of different ad copy versions
Once you create your differing content, measure each version’s performance to determine what works best for your audience.
You can accomplish this by conducting A/B testing, also called split testing.
Split testing involves testing a particular element in your ad campaign and assessing each version’s impact on performance. In other words, which one is your audience responding to more?
You can find the best way to announce Black Friday sales by conducting such a test.
Tracking and Analyzing Black Friday Ad Copy Key Metrics
Before running your Black Friday ad campaigns, determine the key metrics to track and analyze results.
Monitoring click-through rates (CTRs), conversions, and sales
Three of the most telling metrics of the performance of your ads are click-through rates (CTRs), conversions, and sales.
CTRs measure the percentage of those who see your ad and click through to find out more. A lower CTR lets you know that something in your ad is not resonating with your target audience and adjustments must be made.
Knowing the conversion rate provides you with a way to monitor how well your ad attracts attention. The higher your conversion rate, the more your target audience identifies with your ad and is enticed to find out more.
From there, you’ll want to monitor sales to determine how effective Black Friday copywriting and creatives are to the success of your campaign.
Analyzing user engagement and bounce rates to assess ad copy effectiveness
Another way to analyze your ad copy’s effectiveness is to track user engagement and bounce rate.
User engagement rates provide a picture of how users interact with your Black Friday ad content and come in the form of shares, likes, and comments.
Next, analyze the bounce rate of the webpage that your ad links to. This key metric helps you determine what visitors do on that webpage once they arrive. Do they leave after a second or two, or do they stick around and learn more about your offer and brand?
If those visitors leave shortly after clicking your site, you will see a higher bounce rate.
The ad copy and the content on the webpage may not be in sync. If so, analyzing the bounce rate can alert you that something is wrong and adjustments are needed.
Iterating and Optimizing Based on Data Insights
Accumulating critical metric data will provide valuable insights that you can use to improve your content.
Making data-driven adjustments to improve ad copy performance
With the insights you gain, identify several effective Black Friday copywriting techniques and approaches and make data-driven adjustments to improve the performance of your ad copy.
Some standard data-driven adjustments include:
- Mentioning the promotion in the headlines of ads.
- Boldly inserting prices in your messaging.
- Making call-to-actions more specific and actionable.
Refining messaging, offers, and targeting based on audience response
To boost effectiveness and produce compelling promotional copy for Black Friday ads, continually refine your messaging, offers, and targeting based on the responses of your audiences.
Utilizing your data insights will narrow in on what your audience prefers, relates to, and enjoys. From there, you can create a more refined ad that speaks directly to them and, in turn, boosts conversions and sales in your favor.
Good Black Friday Ad Copy Examples
To help you get started, here are five ad examples using effective Black Friday copywriting and design.
1. Bath & Body Works
This retailer already offers BOGO deals for shoppers year-round. Yet, to appeal to existing customers as well as entice new ones, their Black Friday ad focused on the one-time event of mixing and matching any items in their online store. The ad includes an attention-grabbing headline, a compelling offer, and eye-catching visuals.
2. Man Crates
Man Crates uses personality in its ads, showing that they understand their target audience well. This ad not only includes attention-grabbing and entertaining copy, but also is a carousel ad with each photo as part of a story.
3. Target
In this big store retailer’s Facebook ad, the focus is on a product their target audience seeks at this time of year – Christmas trees. Buyers will pay 50% less if they act within the next four days, creating a sense of urgency. They sweeten this deal by offering free shipping and returns. In other words, they take a multi-layered approach to convincing consumers to buy now.
4. Light
The phrase “Black Friday Sale Starts Today” captures the attention of consumers and causes them to stop scrolling. The brand also uses numbers to make an impact, choosing to include the amount they can save (instead of the percentage off).
5. Gap
This Facebook ad by Gap, while straightforward and visually pleasing, captures attention with its double offer of free three-day shipping AND 40% off. The ad intro evokes the holiday spirit while hinting at the savings available.
For more inspiration, check out how other brands are crafting compelling Facebook ads in a variety of industries.
Create Compelling Black Friday Ads With the Help of WriterAccess
Black Friday provides your company with an exciting opportunity to attract more customers and boost conversion rates.
As such, creating compelling ads will be essential. By applying the strategies and techniques outlined above and leveraging the power of persuasion, you can maximize your Black Friday sales beyond your expectations.
If you have any concerns about your ability to create these ads or don’t have the time to take them on yourself, WriterAccess has you covered!
To get started, try us free for 14 days and find out what our professional writers can do for you.
