Seven Ways to Hook a Reader in Two Seconds
Most headlines fail before the reader decides to read. Here is what the ones that work have in common.
Read →The Blog
No thought leadership. No content marketing. Just how B2B copy actually works — and why most of it does not.
Ten Things B2B Buyers Won't Tell You (But Your Copy Needs to Know)
B2B buyers are professionally skeptical. Here is how to write for someone who is rewarded for saying no.
Read →When Your GTM Story Stops Working
The message did not fail because it was wrong. It failed because the market moved and the story did not.
Read →What Great CMOs Actually Think About Marketing
Seventeen CMOs. One through line. Here is what separates the ones who build momentum from the ones who run campaigns.
Read →The Assertion Spectrum: Why Your B2B Copy Is Either Boring or Threatening
Most B2B copy lives at two extremes. It is either so safe it disappears, or so aggressive it puts buyers on defense. The sweet spot has a name.
Read →Why Your Buyers Stop Reading After the First Line
The decision to keep reading happens in under two seconds. Here is what is actually happening in that window, and how to win it.
Read →The Uniqueness Trap
Every B2B company thinks it is unique. Most of them are just different. Here is why that distinction is the difference between a story that lands and one that disappears.
Read →How Internal Consensus Kills B2B Messaging
When everyone has to agree on the message, the message becomes a document that offends no one and moves no one. Here is what happens inside that process, and how to break it.
Read →The Primer: What You Say First Is Not What You Think It Is
In B2B marketing, the first job is not to sell. It is to make the sale possible. Most companies skip this step. They pay for it in pipeline.
Read →Writing Copy When You Cannot Afford to Be Wrong
B2B is not like B2C. Your addressable universe is small, test cycles are long, and one bad message can burn a relationship that took years to build. Here is how to write under those conditions.
Read →First Say This: The Order of Your Message Is the Message
Most B2B copy fails not because the content is wrong but because it arrives in the wrong order. What you lead with determines whether anything that follows gets heard at all.
Read →How to Write to Someone Who Has Never Heard of You
Writing to strangers is structurally different from writing to warm leads. The rules change. Most B2B companies use the wrong set.
Read →The Hook: How to Find the One Line That Unlocks Your Whole Message
Every strong message has a hook underneath it. Most companies never find it. Here is the process for digging it out.
Read →Why B2B Ads Are Boring: A Diagnosis in Four Parts
B2B advertising is not boring by accident. It is boring by committee, by habit, and by a set of misunderstandings about what buyers actually respond to. Here is what is actually happening.
Read →Nine Fixes for Nine Webinar Problems You Think Are Unfixable
Low attendance, no questions, dead air, bad recordings. Most webinar problems are not technical. They are copy and structure problems. Here is how to fix them.
Read →Be the One They Want to Watch: What Makes Live Content Worth Attending
Most webinars are tolerated, not attended. The ones people actually show up for share a specific set of qualities. Here is what those are and how to build them in.
Read →Everything You Actually Need to Know Before Hiring a Copywriter
Most companies hire copywriters for the wrong reasons, brief them badly, and then wonder why the output does not work. Here is how to avoid all of that.
Read →Reliable, Dignified Prospecting: How to Reach New Buyers Without Embarrassing Yourself or Them
Most B2B prospecting is neither reliable nor dignified. Here is an approach that earns a response without making you cringe at your own outreach.
Read →Why Prospects Ghost You (And It Has Nothing to Do With Your Follow-Up Timing)
Ghosting is not a follow-up problem. It is a message problem that surfaces late. Here is what is actually happening and how to fix it upstream.
Read →Write Headlines That Hit: The Mechanics Behind Subject Lines That Get Opened
Most B2B subject lines are ignored in under a second. The ones that get opened share a specific structure. Here is what it is.
Read →Not the Also-Ran: How to Position When You Are Not the Category Leader
Being second, third, or newer is not a positioning problem. Trying to out-claim the leader on their own terms is. Here is how to stop doing that.
Read →How to Brief a Copywriter for Outcomes Instead of Output
A bad brief produces a long revision cycle and copy that never quite lands. A good brief cuts both. Here is what separates them.
Read →What Desire Has to Do With B2B Marketing
B2B buyers do not make rational decisions that they then justify emotionally. They make emotional decisions that they justify rationally. The implications for how you write are significant.
Read →The Questions That Change How You Write
The quality of a brief determines the quality of the copy. Most briefs ask the wrong questions. Here are the ones that actually matter.
Read →What Makes a Webinar Worth Completing
Most webinar attendees drop off in the first fifteen minutes. The ones that hold the room share a specific architecture. Here is what it looks like.
Read →Three Levels of Messaging: Why Most B2B Marketing Lives on the Wrong Floor
There are three levels at which you can talk to a buyer. Most B2B companies default to the lowest one. Here is what each level does and which one actually moves people.
Read →The Credibility Problem: Why Buyers Do Not Believe You Even When You Are Right
Your claims may be accurate. Your proof may be real. Buyers still may not believe you. Here is why credibility is not about facts and what it is actually about.
Read →What the Follow-Up Is Actually About
The follow-up email is not a persistence problem. It is a positioning problem. If your first message was wrong, the second one just confirms it.
Read →The Voice Problem: Why B2B Companies All Sound the Same
Read ten B2B homepages in a row. They are interchangeable. This is not a coincidence. Here is the process that produces sameness and how to break out of it.
Read →The Scope of a Message: What Good Copy Actually Has to Carry
Most copy briefs define what to say. The best ones define what the copy has to accomplish. These are not the same instruction, and confusing them produces very different results.
Read →Test Your GTM Message Before It Costs You Anything
Most companies find out their GTM message is wrong after the campaign is live, the sales team is briefed, and the budget is gone. There is a better order of operations.
Read →How to Test GTM Messaging Without Running a Single Campaign
You do not need live campaigns to find out if your message works. You need the buying committee in a room before they are a buying committee — and before you spend anything.
Read →What a Tested Message Is Actually Worth
Pre-validated copy is not about perfection. It is about knowing where your message breaks before buyers find out first — and what that knowledge is worth in pipeline and time.
Read →The Shortcut Is the Ballgame in B2B
B2B buyers already know their problem and can picture their positive future. What they are evaluating is your mechanism — the specific way you get them from here to there. Most companies never explain it.
Read →The Cold Outreach Split: Why Your CRO and Your AEs Want Different Things
The CRO wants to break through. The AEs want to blend in. Both think they are being professional. Here is why this split exists in almost every sales team and how to resolve it.
Read →Three Ways Cold Sales Messages Actually Cut Through
There are three legitimate ways to get a cold message read and acted on. And one approach that everyone still uses that does not work. Here is the difference and how to choose.
Read →Who Your First Contact Should Come From
Marketing outbound comes from a company. Sales outbound comes from a person. When you mix these up, both fail. Here is why the distinction matters more than most B2B teams realize.
Read →You Are Actually in the Entertainment Business
Every piece of B2B content competes for the same finite resource: attention. Understanding that you are in the entertainment business — not the information business — changes how you write everything.
Read →Nobody Does What You Do Not Ask Them To
The call to action problem in B2B is not that companies forget to include one. It is that they are afraid to make a real ask. Here is what a real ask looks like and why avoiding it is costing you.
Read →Why Your Testimonials Are Doing Nothing (And How to Fix Them)
Most B2B social proof is written for the company that earned it, not the buyer who needs to see it. Here is how to write testimonials that actually move people.
Read →The Follow-Up They Don't Delete
Most B2B follow-ups fail because they have nothing new to say. Here is how to write follow-up that actually earns a response.
Read →What to Do When They Go Quiet
When a B2B prospect goes silent, most people panic and re-pitch. Here is what actually works to bring a stalled deal back to life.
Read →The Pricing Conversation You Keep Avoiding
Price only shocks people when it arrives before the value does. Here is how to sequence the pricing conversation so the number lands right.
Read →Why Your LinkedIn Posts Are Talking to Themselves
Most B2B LinkedIn content is written for the person who wrote it and the algorithm. Here is how to write posts that actual humans stop and read.
Read →The Demo That Decides the Deal
The demo does not win because it shows more. It wins because it makes the prospect feel like it was built for them. Here is how to make that happen.
Read →The 90 Percent Rule: Why You Should Do Almost All the Work for Your Prospect
Most B2B marketers expect their prospects to meet them halfway. That is the wrong expectation. Here is why you should go 90 percent of the way, every time.
Read →Write to a Person, Not a Persona
B2B marketers target C-level executives. Then write stiff, formal copy because that is how C-level executives want to be talked to. They are wrong.
Read →Nobody Cares About You. Use That Freedom.
Your prospect's life is full without you in it. That is not a problem to solve. It is the most liberating fact in marketing.
Read →You Are a Distraction. Get Good at It.
Most B2B marketers resent that their prospects are distracted. The smart ones accept it and optimize for the glance. Here is how to think about attention the right way.
Read →Why Your B2B Copy Is Really About You
Most B2B copy is written to make the writer feel good. The reader is an afterthought. Here is how to tell the difference — and how to fix it.
Read →Every Weakness Is a Strength. Reframe.
Most B2B companies apologize for their supposed weaknesses. The smart ones reframe them into advantages. Here is how that works and why it might be your highest-ROI marketing move.
Read →Artists, Artisans, and Assemblers: Hiring the Wrong Type of Copywriter Explains Most Bad Copy
There are three types of copywriter. Each serves a different purpose. Hiring the wrong one for the job does not produce bad work — it produces irrelevant work, which is worse.
Read →Prevention, Mitigation, or Suffering: The First Messaging Decision Most Companies Never Make
Every solution lives at a specific stage in a problem's lifecycle. Naming that stage precisely changes everything downstream — your headline, your audience, your proof, and your pitch.
Read →Why Your B2B Buyer Is Not Responding to Logic (They Are Responding to Threat)
B2B buyers evaluate vendors through the same threat-detection system their ancestors used to survive. The SCARF model names what is actually happening — and what to do about it in your copy.
Read →Your LinkedIn Page Is a Message. Most of Them Say the Wrong Thing.
The LinkedIn About section and headline are the first things a stranger reads before deciding whether to accept your connection request. Most professionals treat them like a resume. They are not a resume.
Read →The Prospecting Gift: How to Make Prospects Come to You Before the First Call
A short, well-written PDF that shows how an expert solves a specific problem does more prospecting work than a cold email sequence. It also does it without pitching anything.
Read →Showing Beats Telling: Why the Live Event Is the Best Prospecting Tool for Expert Services
Telling prospects what you do is the hardest way to earn their trust. Showing them how an expert thinks through their problem — in real time, in a live event — is the easiest.
Read →Ready to Put This to Work?
Reading about copy is one thing. Having it written for your market is another. Let's talk.
Work with me