Get this: Simply using negations (words like “no,” “don’t,” “never”) can increase your engagement and word of mouth.

In a study of more than 15,000 tweets and Facebook posts, more people viewed, engaged with, and acted on posts that had negation words.

Consider testing them in your copy.

A few examples of how to frame your content using negations:

• Tell users what not to do. “Don’t settle for XYZ.”
• Explain what your product helps avoid or reduce. “Never worry about [problem] again.”
• Create a sense of impossibility. “You can’t find a better deal anywhere else.”

Why do negations generate more engagement?

Research suggests that since these words seem powerful and assertive, they signal higher social status. So consumers who desire status tend to engage more.

Given these findings, negations might have a stronger impact on luxury brands or other businesses that sell status-signaling products.

Creative teams often rely on instinct and assumptions alone to answer customers’ “whys”:

• Why they should click on your ad
• Why they should be excited about your brand or product
• Why they should buy

Until you understand which “whys” truly resonate, your campaigns will never reach their full potential.

If you run social ads, try a simple four-step exercise to uncover high-impact creative concepts.

1. Write down 25 reasons why someone should buy your product. We'll use a hypothetical example of deodorant from an eco-friendly DTC brand.

2. Look at the product's reviews, and make a list of all the benefits people talk about. If someone says:

• "It's long-lasting"—put a tally mark
• "It's natural"—put a tally mark
• "It smells great"—put a tally mark
• "It's long-lasting"—put a second tally mark

3. Sort benefits from most to least tallies.

4. Match the top 10 benefits with your list of "whys."

Now you have a messaging matrix for 10 ad angles—using your customers' words. Every angle on the list should have:

• A clear why
• A clear problem it's illustrating
• And the benefit it provides

Test these angles in your campaigns to see what resonates, then iterate on top performers.

David Perell recently asked a question: “What’s causing all these logos to look the same?”

Within a day, his post had gotten 20 million impressions.

His question points to a wider trend: Brands are getting more homogenous in their design, UX, and messaging. Creativity is losing out to CRO—and consumers are getting bored.

Reminder: Consumers like being surprised and delighted. Otherwise, TikTok wouldn’t exist.

To prevent brand burnout—that’s consumer fatigue caused by brand uniformity—differentiate your brand. Consider using an “onlyness statement” to do that. What is it that only your brand is doing?

Follow this structure: “Our brand is the ONLY ___________ [your business category] that __________ [your differentiator].”

For example, “Trader Joe’s is the only grocery store that makes shopping unique and fun.”

Then flesh it out:

• What: The only [your category]
• How: that [your differentiator]
• Who: for [your customers]
• Where: in [your market geography]
• Why: who [your customers’ need state]
• When: during [the underlying trend]

Another example:

• What: The only motorcycle manufacturer
• How: that makes big, loud bikes
• Who: for macho guys (and macho wannabees)
• Where: mostly in the US
• Why: who want to join a gang of cowboys
• When: in an era of decreasing personal freedom

You can see how that encapsulates Harley-Davidson’s slogan: “American by birth. Rebel by choice.”

Nearly half of checkout pages have poor UX in their field labeling and microcopy.

That means a lot of unoptimized bottom-of-funnel pages. 

Baymard Institute uncovered two major issues with checkout page labeling and microcopy: jargon and ambiguity. Both have easy fixes.

Checkout page jargon: Although “don’t use jargon” is copywriting 101, it sneaks in all the time anyway. Even the best jargon-hunters miss it in places that are easy to overlook, like checkout page microcopy.

• Easy fix: Read through your checkout page. Are there terms like CID or CSC? Does your shipping or opt-in messaging use robotic language? Clean up any confusing language, and use heatmaps or user tests to see if your checkout page language is slowing shoppers down.

Ambiguity in required vs. optional fields: 85% of sites don’t explicitly mark required and optional fields. Instead, sites often only mark required or optional fields—not both.

• The frequent result: validation errors preventing purchases. Not something you want at the purchase conversion point.
• Easy fix: Mark both required and optional fields. Every little thing you can do to reduce confusion and friction increases the ease of conversion.

Your goal as a writer is to get readers to fall down a "slippery slope."

The job of the 1st sentence: get people to read the 2nd sentence.

The job of the 3rd: get people to read the 4th. And so on.

Now: there's a simple (and effective) copywriting technique you can put to work today to keep people sliding down the page instead of hitting the "back" button.

"Bucket brigades"

What are Bucket Brigades?

Before fire engines were invented, firefighters would pass buckets of water from person to person down the chain to extinguish fires. Hence, "bucket brigade."

When writing content, the "fire" you're trying to prevent is a person leaving the page. 

Add these words and phrases to your content to keep people reading:

1. Listen up:
2. Here’s the deal:
3. Now:
4. What’s the bottom line?
5. You might be wondering:
6. This is crazy:
7. Let me explain:
8. It gets better/worse:
9. But here’s the kicker:
10. Want to know the best part?

You might be wondering: “How do you know where to add these?”

First: Use heatmaps to pinpoint where people drop off. Add a bucket brigade there, and watch your time on page increase.

Then:

• Use them in transitions
• Use them when you need to grab the reader's attention
• Use them before/after explaining a key concept
• Use them to direct attention to an important takeaway

And here’s the best part: (See what we did there?) Any form of written content, from emails to ebooks, to ads as well as advertorials, can benefit from a handful of well-placed bucket brigades.

Personalized product demos are an overrated tactic for acquiring new customers.

Here’s how the typical demo strategy runs:

Prospects click on a “get demo” button. They’re connected with a sales development representative for a qualification call. Then the rep passes on this information to a salesperson who leads a demo.

The problem with these demos: They make prospects jump through unnecessary hoops, like a qualification call before the actual demo. And qualification calls can raise prospects’ expectations—bad if your demos aren’t actually personalized.

Most companies don’t actually need to provide one-on-one demos to win customers. Instead, consider providing:

• An ungated explainer video that describes what your product does. Keep it under one minute.
• A short demo video (2-3 minutes) actually showing what your product does. This should also be ungated.
• A deep demo video that runs through your product more thoroughly. Make it as long as necessary, and publish it on both your site and YouTube channel.
• A weekly live demo that requires prospects to register. Here, prospects can ask questions—and you can follow up afterward to ask if they’d like to be connected with a salesperson.

Using this strategy, you’ll save your sales team’s time as well as your prospects’. Take a look at Otter.ai’s video assets for an example—here’s an explainer, short demo, long demo, and a recording of a live demo.

Consumer research often focuses on opinions, not stories. That’s missing a big opportunity.

Example of research that leans into opinions, not stories:

• Asking a customer, “What’s your favorite feature of our product?”
• Instead of, “Tell me about a time when our product added value to your life.”

Customer storytelling can reveal unfiltered perspectives and add context and depth to your consumer insights. And it’s grounded in real-world usage, not hypotheticals.

A simple way to gather customer stories is through digital ethnography. That’s the practice of studying your customers in the real world—and you should be doing it regularly.

We asked Eun Suk Rafael Gi, VP of Growth at our agency Bell Curve, for tips on conducting digital ethnography. Here are three he shared.

• Join customers’ online communities: “Understand what social platforms / communities your audience participates in, and join those communities,” Raf said. “Be an active listener; better yet, be an active participant. This roleplay will allow you to spend some time in your customers’ shoes and give you a more intuitive understanding of your audience.”
• Look for patterns: Don’t just look at the words people use. Focus on the intensity of posts and comments. What do people post about most often? What do they post about most “loudly”?
• Study your own profile: Review your company’s social media accounts. Who is following and engaging with you? If followers’ profiles are public, look at what kinds of pictures, posts, and stories they’ve shared to understand what motivates them.

Get inventive with it—think through all the ways you can find, engage with, and study behavior both on- and off-line. As Raf puts it, “Your creativity and curiosity set the bounds for what you’ll uncover.”

Internal links can radically improve UX and overall SEO health.

Thing is, most marketers don't have a deliberate strategy in place to benefit.

Unless you have a massive website (1,000+ pages), there's no need to over-complicate it—stick to the "ICARE" framework: Intent, Context, Anchor text, Relevance, External link authority.

1. Intent: Link to pages that readers expect. For example: "Strong customer relationships lead to better brand equality."

• Right: Links to Guide to Customer Relations
• Wrong: Links to CRM Software Solution Page

Link to pages that build on intent.

2. Context: Don't match keywords; match context.

Right: Put your audience at the center of your SEO strategy

• Links to How to Create an SEO Strategy

Wrong: Byrdie's SEO strategy is built around topic clusters

• Links to How to Create an SEO Strategy

Google understands the context surrounding links. So make sure the pages you link are contextually relevant.

3. Anchor text: Use keywords.

Right: If you publish health content, you need to know what E-A-T is.

• Links to What is E-A-T & Why it's Important

Wrong: If you publish health content, you need to know what E-A-T is.

• Links to What is E-A-T & Why it's Important

The former satisfies intent, context, and targets a great keyword. The latter satisfies none of those things.

4. Relevance: Add links where they're relevant.

Ideally, links are related to the main topic of the page. In a section on internal linking, you'd want to link to pages about internal linking. 

5. External link authority: Link from high authority pages.

Lastly, if you can't find linking opportunities that satisfy the first four criteria, your best bet is to link out from pages with the most backlinks.

“We’re pleased to announce”: the start of exactly 0% of compelling product announcements.

For a more remarkable way to announce product news, look at how Twitter does it.

That tweet is deceptively simple. A lot went into it. 

Marketing Brew’s Jack Appleby asked Ashley Tyra, Twitter’s Head of Social Editorial and Voice, what their process for product tweets is. Here’s what she said:

“We open up a Google doc and start doing a free write. First, we start with the very straightforward ones—once you nail the clarity line, you can start to have fun with the rest. We probably write 20 to 50 options for ourselves, then arrange them—what are the ones floating to the top? Which ones are making us laugh? Which ones do we have that gut reaction to?”

Breaking that down into steps, which you can use anywhere you’re sharing news (like email hooks or in-app popups):

1. Create a shared doc and invite your writing team to join.
2. Writers add announcements that a) share clear information and b) have personality. As Appleby puts it, “While personality is important in today’s attenuated social landscape, you can’t be all hat and no cattle.”
3. Arrange the top contenders. Pay attention to emotional and gut reactions—those are what make a message stick.

Having a well-defined social media voice will make this process easier. Here are some useful tips from Hootsuite on creating a social media style guide.

If you’ve been a reader for a bit, you might remember the DTC company Graza. They sell olive oil. We wrote about their clever retention tactic back in Newsletter 83. 

Turns out they also perfected their launch. Within 24 hours of launching, Graza sold out and got a 7.91% conversion rate from Instagram.

A large part of their hot start came from product seeding—sending influencers products with the hope that they’d promote them to their audiences.

Since Graza targeted a variety of influencers with different-sized audiences, timing played a big role here. According to Graza’s social media consultant Kendall Dickieson, smaller influencers helped sell out the launch, while larger influencers contributed to pre-orders for the next shipment.

To create a similar effect, here’s how to time your product seeding:

• Send micro-influencers (25k–150k followers) and nano-influencers (under 10k followers) products weeks before your launch. Their UGC is ideal for building anticipation for launch day. For Graza, these smaller influencers often posted about the olive oil right away.
• Send macro-influencers (200k+ followers) products closer to launch. These influencers have backed-up content calendars, but their posts tend to get more reach (and, in some cases, more conversions). If they post pre-launch, their followers won’t be able to buy anything. But after launch, their posts can generate a lot of momentum.

Over 600,000 Shopify merchants use the native Meta integration. It's convenient and easy to set up, and the implication is that you're maximizing data sharing.

But, as Disruptive Digital reports, this “solution” is likely hurting ad performance.

Shopify doesn't provide all the data it actually has available for Facebook to use in its ad optimizations.

Specifically, Shopify's Conversion API (CAPI) either doesn't pass along, or severely limits, two crucial parameters: click ID and browser ID.

• Without click ID and browser ID, Facebook might only see a purchase that happens in the same browser session as the click. Trackable purchase paths are severely limited.
• With click ID and browser ID, Facebook can track someone who, for example, adds to cart the same day as a click, then uses a different browser to check out a week later. Purchase paths are more robust, leading to greater overall account performance.

Facebook recommends 50+ conversions per ad set per week to optimize performance. Every unused data point can hurt your ROAS.

Disruptive Digital (and many Shopify brands) have reported serious performance improvements after migrating away from the integration:

Three alternative solutions to consider:

• CAPI Gateway implementation
• Direct integration
• 3rd-party partner (recommended). Popsixle or Elevar are reputable choices.

To get customers to spend more, try sending handwritten thank-you notes with their orders. 

In one experiment, a beauty company sent thank-you notes to 1,232 customers and tracked their future spending. Here’s what they found:

• People who didn’t receive a note spent $25.97 later on.
• People who received a typed note spent slightly more—$29.74.
• People who received an original handwritten note or photocopy of one spent $52.07.

What explains these results?

DTC companies prioritizing growth can often come across as transactional. A handwritten note—or even a photocopy of one—shows warmth and consideration. Since we feel closer to a brand with these qualities, we’re more compelled to buy from it again.

Consider testing handwritten thank-you notes to improve your customer lifetime value. Try personalizing the message with a first name. If you're at an early-stage company, you can write them yourself or hire someone from TaskRabbit. If you’re scaling, you can use a dedicated service like Handwrytten.

This finding isn't just for ecom. It might work well for service-based businesses like hotels and restaurants. Even if you run a SaaS company or sell digital products, you can send a handwritten thank you to the billing address on file.

If you’re running PPC ads on Amazon, it’s not always clear how much you should be spending on them.

Here are some numbers that can serve as benchmarks:

• A useful framework from Ad Badger: Your Amazon ad budget should be about 10% of your total Amazon revenue. So if you’re doing $100,000 a month in Amazon sales, you would budget around $10,000/month for ads.
• The average daily spend for Amazon sellers is $268.21. That’s high for new advertisers.
• Aim to spend enough to get at least 100 clicks a month on each of your keywords. A common issue with Amazon ad campaigns is having too many keywords for what’s budgeted. The result is that most keywords—sometimes around 90%—don’t get enough clicks, which means insufficient data for the bidding process.

To optimize bids, use the Inch Up Method: Keep initial bids low while you’re gathering information about how keywords perform, then gradually increase bids as you learn which keywords get clicks and conversions. So you might bid 10¢ on Day 1, 20¢ on Day 2, etc. 

You can also use the target bid formula:

Target bid = (average order value x conversion rate) / (1/target ACOS).

If your average order value is $12, your conversion rate is 10%, and your target ACOS is 30% (about the average for sponsored product ads on Amazon), your target bid would be (12 x .1) / (1 / .3): 36¢.

Ad Badger has created a bid calculator you can use to find your target bid.

Do you use tiered pricing? 

Here are 3 steps you can take to make your higher-tier package more appealing:

1. Create a clear hierarchy between tiers. Customers subconsciously want a recommendation. You can use design choices to suggest a tier for them.
2. Make your higher-tier incentive more valuable—if possible, consider using a larger discount for your higher-tier offer.
3. Use descriptive tier names to set expectations and communicate the value on offer. “The complete package” feels more enticing and comprehensive than “the essentials.”

Pair this with “four pricing psychology tactics to increase conversion” from newsletter #070.

People naturally prefer rhymes.

In multiple studies, we rate rhymes as likable, memorable, and trustworthy. Researchers hypothesize that because rhymes are easier to process, we’re more likely to remember and believe them.

That’s why rhyming has historically been so successful in advertising.

Think Bounty’s “quicker picker upper” or Liberty Mutual’s mascot, the LiMu emu.

But rhyming’s not just for creating catchy slogans. You can use rhyming to trigger action in your ads, subject lines, CTAs, headlines, and landing page copy.

Some examples:

• Zapier makes you happier (from Zapier's homepage and social media)
• Integrate, Automate, Innovate (also from Zapier)
• Be kind to your mind (from Headspace's homepage)
• No skimpin' on the chicken! (from HelloFresh's homepage)
• CrapWrap (the name of Firebox's gift-wrapping service)

If you see an opportunity to get creative and rhyming fits your brand voice, consider testing it out.

Case studies and testimonials are B2B conversion gold.

Now, more than ever, B2B buyers are relying on the opinions and expertise of peers to make purchase decisions.

But customers don’t always jump at requests for case studies and testimonials. Not because they’re unsatisfied or unwilling—they just have other priorities.

To get more and better case studies (and prevent ghosting), try these tactics:

• Tell customers that inaction translates into approval. For instance: "We'll send a draft of the case study for approval once it's ready. From there, you'll have [time frame] to review. we’ll follow up and if we don't hear back by [date], we'll take that as your approval.” Bold, but it works.
• Highlight the promotional benefits. If your company has an audience, present the case study as a way for customers to get in front of more people. Example: "If you’re down, we’ll promote the final piece through our channels—you’ll reach [# of people].”
• Framing helps here. You can pitch this as a “customer spotlight.” Mention you’re looking for their take on industry topics and how your company has helped them on their mission.
• Offer something in return. Offer a discount or exclusive access to product upgrades. Or offer any assets used to produce your case study, like any recordings or graphics your team creates.

Marketers often argue about whether it’s better to send ad traffic to product detail pages (PDPs) or dedicated sales pages.

The answer?

It depends. Here are three factors that’ll help you make a decision:

• Ad format. Text-based search ads capture demand while visual formats like Facebook and Instagram create it.
• Your product and industry. Some products, like jewelry and apparel, are self-explanatory—PDPs usually perform well. Innovative products often need more explanation, which sales pages provide.
• User intent. People at the top of the marketing funnel need more information (dedicated landing page) than people at the bottom (product page).

An example:

Ritual sells multivitamins for women. They run ads on Facebook/IG as well as Google search. Using Ahrefs and Facebook’s Ad Library, you can see how the ads’ destination pages differ.

• Facebook ads → dedicated landing pages and homepage
• Search ads → homepage, PDPs, product collections

Why the difference?

If people are Googling high-intent keywords like “best womens vitamin,” it makes sense to send them to a PDP. But on Facebook, where people aren’t scrolling with the intention of buying vitamins, a dedicated landing page helps get new prospects into the funnel.

Use ad format, product, and intent to create a hypothesis of where to send your ad traffic. Then test it.

One of the biggest mistakes we see startups make when it comes to storytelling:

Starting stories at the beginning.

Entrepreneur Andy Smith even calls this one of the “seven deadly sins of startup storytelling.”

Instead, start where it gets interesting. Here’s a great graphic from Wes Kao illustrating the point:

Smith argues that an interesting story arc matters much more than chronology.

“…the stuff you need to hook people doesn't tend to happen early on. Events need to build, one after the other, emotionally rather than sequentially.”

This applies to any form of storytelling, from your about page to video ads to blog articles. Cut the exposition. Get right to what’s exciting or resonant.

A marketing example: The first line of this gut-punch of a video: “There’s a Rang-tan in my bedroom, and I don’t know what to do.”

How do you know where to start? Smith recommends a classic plotting technique you’ve probably seen in a movie: Write your story elements on Post-It notes, then move them around to find your opening. If it’s sensory and intriguing, it’s probably a solid starting point.

Marketers usually use the term "friction" to refer to obstacles that prevent people from converting. Most marketing advice says to reduce friction as much as possible. 

But not all friction is bad.

Sometimes friction does the opposite of what you're told. It can actually drive purchases and keep users engaged.

Here's our friction framework:

Align your product friction with your business model friction.

• Low product friction = easy to sign up for and get started in
• Low business model friction = low price, simple pricing structure

The higher one is, the higher the other should be. Some examples:

• Instagram: easy to sign up for and free to use
• Spotify: easy to start, low subscription fee
• Semrush and HubSpot: more complicated pricing matches more complicated products
• Palantir: highly complex (and pricy) solutions built for enterprise

Quick list of "good" types of friction:

• Personalization (e.g., Canva asking what you'll be using Canva for during onboarding)
• Cross-selling / upselling near checkout
• Helpful tooltips or a short product tour
• Major announcements, like Headspace's recent popup introducing a UI upgrade (but keep them short)

And bad friction:

• Requiring a credit card for signup
• Prompting users to get push notifications early on
• Requiring account creation to check out

We wrote a thread on friction—check it out on Twitter here.

There are many ways to tell if a backlink opportunity is "good" or not: domain authority, domain rating, Moz Spam Score, and more.

The trouble is, none of those individual metrics tells the full story.

Take domain rating (DR). Link builders will typically check a site's DR to gauge whether a guest post link is worth building. A high DR (60+) tells you a website is checking many of the right boxes—you just don't know which ones.

To find out, you'd have to drill into additional data points. And that takes time.

Israel Gaudette created a simple formula to quickly evaluate link placements. And you don't need to check 20 metrics—you just need one: traffic authority (TA).

TA uses a domain's traffic as the main data to gauge its authority.

To measure it:

• Take the domain's organic traffic and divide it by the number of organic keywords.
• Then use these benchmarks to evaluate link placements:

Although no SEO metric is perfect, TA provides a quick, reliable read on link targets.

You can calculate TA yourself (organic traffic / organic keywords). Or better yet, use this handy traffic authority checker. It factors in extra metrics like DR, backlink data, organic keywords, and traffic to give you a snapshot of real “authority.”