Using a Bonus Offer to Overcome Price Resistance
A prospect hesitating over price is often weighing whether the core offer alone is worth the cost, and sometimes the most efficient way to tip that decision isn't lowering the price at all — it's…
Choosing a Base Style Manual and Dictionary: The Foundation of Your House Style Guide
Building a house style guide from scratch, covering every possible grammar and punctuation question, would take forever and largely duplicate work that's already been done well by established…
Defining Brand Voice in Writing: Making Tone a Documented Standard, Not a Guess
"Sound friendly and professional" is the kind of voice guidance nearly every brand starts with, and it's specific enough to feel useful while being far too vague to actually guide a real writing…
Documenting Your Exceptions: Building a Custom Word List for Your Industry
Every industry has its own vocabulary — acronyms, hyphenated terms, jargon used slightly differently than the general public would use it — and none of that gets covered by a general style manual…
Getting a Style Guide Actually Used: Implementation, Buy-In, and Keeping It Alive
A carefully written style guide that sits unread in a shared drive delivers exactly zero of its intended benefit. The gap between having a style guide and actually using one consistently is where…
Microcopy: Why the Smallest Words on Your Site Deserve Style Guide Attention
The words on a button, in an error message, or in a confirmation email get a fraction of the attention devoted to blog posts and landing pages, despite appearing constantly and directly shaping how a…
Why Every Content Team Needs a House Style Guide
Nearly every business today is, functionally, a publisher — writing blog posts, emails, social captions, landing pages, and support messages constantly, usually without anyone on the team having…
Five Small Edits That Make Copy Easier to Read
Most copy doesn't need a complete rewrite to become dramatically easier to read — it needs a handful of small, mechanical edits applied consistently. These aren't creative decisions so much as…
Reducing Friction at the Point of Decision: Small Changes That Increase Yes
The moment right before someone commits — clicks buy, submits a form, confirms a signup — is where small, easily overlooked details have an outsized effect on whether they actually follow…
Testing Whether Your Core Marketing Message Is Actually Compelling
Every piece of marketing copy is ultimately built around one central idea, whether or not that idea was ever deliberately chosen. A weak or generic core idea makes even well-crafted copy fall flat,…
Why Some Prospects Convert Faster Than Others: The Hidden Factors Behind Buying Intent
Two people can face the exact same problem and the exact same offer, and one converts within minutes while the other takes months to decide, if they decide at all. The difference usually isn't about…
Why Your Landing Page Should Never Have a Backup Offer
It's tempting to hedge a landing page's single call to action with a smaller, safer secondary link — a "not ready yet? just browse instead" option tucked below the main button. That instinct feels…
A Simple Exercise for Finding Your Brand's Voice
Describing a desired brand voice in the abstract — "friendly but professional," "confident but approachable" — rarely produces writing that actually sounds distinctive. A more effective way to…
The "5 Whys" Technique for Uncovering What Customers Actually Want
Ask a customer what they want directly, and you'll usually get a surface-level answer that's true but incomplete — "I want a faster process," "I want to save money." Keep asking why, one more layer…
What Makes Copy "Conversion Copy" vs. Just Copy
A tagline, a billboard, a brand jingle, and a checkout page button are all technically "writing for a business," but only one of them is actually designed to make a specific person take a specific…
Why the Top of Your Page Should Do Nothing But Confirm You're in the Right Place
The first few seconds after someone lands on a page from a specific link or ad are spent unconsciously checking whether they arrived somewhere relevant, before any actual persuasion has a chance to…
Button Copy: Small Details That Change Whether People Click
A call-to-action button is one of the smallest pieces of copy on any page, and it's also one of the highest-leverage — every visitor who's genuinely interested has to get past it to actually…
Choosing a Product Launch Method That Matches Your Actual Resources
There isn't one correct way to launch a product — there are several genuinely different approaches, each with different resource requirements, and choosing one that doesn't match your actual…
Editing Persuasive Copy With Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
A classical framework for persuasion, first articulated more than two thousand years ago, still holds up remarkably well as an editing checklist for modern marketing copy. Ethos, pathos, and logos…
Join the Conversation Already Happening in Your Reader's Head
A reader arrives at a piece of marketing copy already thinking something — worried about a specific outcome, hopeful about a specific result, skeptical of a specific kind of claim. Copy that…