Copy can sound right and still fail
A headline can be polished enough to approve and forgettable enough to ignore. Joanna Wiebe, who runs Copyhackers and says she has spent nearly 15 years consulting and teaching conversion copywriting, has built her practice around that gap. Her perspective matters because the standard she describes is not whether writing earns approval, but whether it performs.
That distinction unsettles a familiar creative process. A team brainstorms, debates language, and refines a message until everyone can live with it. The sentence gets smoother as the conversation gets longer.
Whether it gives a customer a reason to act is another question.
In conversation with Chris Do, Wiebe draws a line between creative copywriting and her own discipline. She associates the former with memorable taglines and award-winning campaigns. Her focus is writing that moves someone toward a decision, measuring its performance, and improving it.
Conversion copywriting answers to behavior, not preference.
Do recognizes the contrast from his experience working on national campaigns: the glossy image, the headline, the coordinated presentation of a brand. Such work can win recognition without establishing that it sold anything. Wiebe does not dismiss that work; she rejects using the same approval criteria for every writing assignment.
The irritation behind her approach is subjective feedback. A stakeholder dislikes a phrase. Another prefers a different tone. Without a shared performance standard, the writer is left negotiating tastes rather than solving a defined communication problem.
Conversion copywriting changes the conversation. An email is not successful because its author or approver likes it. It needs to do the job assigned to it, and its performance needs to be examined rather than assumed.
This does not eliminate creative judgment. It gives judgment a clearer assignment.
Wiebe describes a process grounded in customer language and direct response principles. Rather than begin by inventing a clever expression of a product, the writer begins with how prospective buyers describe their circumstances. Those words become material for a message organized around a decision.
The distinction matters across the formats she names: sales pages, emails, ads, and video sales letters. Each gives the writer an opportunity to take someone from an initial state toward a choice. A billboard, in her comparison, does not necessarily have that same immediate assignment.
The consequence is practical. Before arguing about whether copy sounds good, a team needs agreement about what it is supposed to accomplish. Otherwise, refinement becomes an expensive substitute for direction.
Wiebe's method offers a different starting point: stop treating the blank page as proof that the message has yet to be invented. The material may already exist outside the marketing department, in language that has not been made presentable enough to lose its meaning.
The writer's first job is to notice it.
The useful words are often the uncomfortable ones
One of Wiebe's examples comes from work for a brand trying to get more women to buy clothing through its app. She recalls a generic headline about finding clothes to love. It was the sort of promise that could sit above almost any clothing collection.
Then came the line she describes as the winner: “big bum, thick waist, not so perky boobs”, presented as a question. A supporting line offered clothes suited to the customer's size and shape, though Wiebe does not claim to remember that wording precisely.
The contrast is not simply tasteful versus provocative. It is general aspiration versus recognizable experience.
Wiebe says those descriptions came directly from customers. Their specificity gave the headline its personality. The brand did not need to invent an outrageous voice; it needed to stop translating a distinctive one into standard marketing language.
Voice of customer data preserves how people actually speak.
That preservation is central to her method. Summarizing what someone means can remove precisely what makes the statement useful: its rhythm, frustration, unusual phrasing, or emotional emphasis. A clean abstraction is easier to circulate internally, but less likely to sound like the person whose attention the business wants.
The clothing example contains several differences worth separating:
- The generic promise identifies a desirable outcome without describing a particular customer experience.
- The customer-derived headline names specific concerns in the language customers used.
- The supporting promise connects those concerns to clothing suited to the buyer.
Wiebe calls it a winning headline but supplies no conversion rate, test duration, or sample size. Its value here is as an account of her process, not a quantified guarantee that blunt body language will outperform every alternative.
She also warns against mistaking conspicuous words for the whole technique. The language does not have to be dramatic. It has to capture something that people actually say and recognize.
That makes listening a creative discipline rather than a preliminary courtesy. A writer is searching for expressions that carry more meaning than a category label. The task is related to the audience attention at the center of The Futur's Know your audience, but Wiebe gives that attention a specific destination: the words on the page.
There is judgment involved in choosing which expressions deserve that position. Wiebe describes noticing interesting lines and edge cases, drawing on experience and an ear for language. Customer research supplies the material; it does not automatically select the strongest hook.
Nor does using a customer's words mean dropping an isolated complaint into an advertisement and calling the work finished. The phrase needs a structure that connects recognition to relevance.
The raw language is the beginning of the argument, not the entire argument.
A car door becomes a positioning argument
Do supplies an example with none of the polish of an advertising brief. His wife has a Tesla, and he dislikes the process of opening its door with a key card. His older Volvo, he says, lets him push a button.
The irritation is specific: technology intended to make a vehicle feel advanced can make an ordinary interaction feel harder. Do knows there is a reason for the design. That does not make him enjoy using it.
Wiebe immediately distinguishes this from a basic transportation problem. Do is not wondering how to get from one place to another. He already understands cars and is comparing experiences within that category.
This changes what a relevant message needs to do.
A used-car seller, in Wiebe's hypothetical, could treat that frustration as a reason someone would prefer an older vehicle to a newer one. The older car is no longer merely the less recent option. Its familiar controls become part of the case for choosing it.
The example shows how positioning can emerge from a complaint. A feature that looks dated in a specification sheet can feel welcome in use. The customer supplies the criterion that makes the contrast meaningful.
Do's compact version is a complaint about smart cars behaving stupidly. Wiebe then asks for related frustrations that would make the argument more concrete: unnecessary technology, missing buttons, or too much navigation through menus.
These details require care. During the exchange, Do explicitly identifies one imagined complaint about playing a song as untrue. The conversation is a writing exercise, not a verified review of vehicle features.
What matters is the construction of the argument. The opening names a frustration. Supporting examples develop that frustration. The proposed solution answers it with a more straightforward experience.
The movement is not from a clever line to an unrelated product claim. It is from a recognizable experience to a reason to choose.
That is why customer language is more than a source of colorful quotations. It can reveal which comparison the buyer is already making, and which attributes deserve emphasis. The writer who misses that comparison can produce accurate copy that answers the wrong concern.
There is a parallel with the listening discipline suggested by The Skill You Need To Win Clients That No One Talks About. In Wiebe's example, attention to the buyer's frame of reference changes the argument before any sentence is polished.
She is not recommending that every business attack newer technology or lead with frustration. The hook determines the direction. A customer expressing a wish presents different material from a customer describing an aggravation.
That distinction becomes important when selecting a writing framework. Structure should develop the thought already present in the customer language, not force every possible message into the same emotional shape.
The better starting point is not the product's favorite feature. It is the buyer's reason to care.
The expert had an attention problem too
Wiebe's own business provides a useful complication. Expertise in conversion copywriting had not automatically translated into success on YouTube. She describes roughly eight years of intermittent effort, with modest results and no reliable sense that the channel was working.
The effort was not a continuous, weekly production commitment. Copyhackers had a course business organized around two launches a year. Between those launches, the team had capacity, and YouTube became one place to direct it.
That staffing decision carried an assumption: someone already making course videos could learn to make the channel succeed. A team member entered a mastermind intended to help. Wiebe says the resulting project was a 12-hour white-noise video for copywriters to work alongside.
She regarded it as a miss.
The problem was not a shortage of activity. The business had assigned people, time, and training to the channel without finding a convincing approach. YouTube had become something available staff could work on, rather than a discipline someone had learned to direct.
Do recognizes the pattern. Founders see a skill they need, lack time to acquire it, and ask a capable employee to learn it instead. Paying for education feels like progress, even when the person or assignment is not right.
His conclusion is not that delegation always fails. It is that a founder's recurring sense of needing to understand a subject deserves attention. More spending cannot necessarily replace the missing understanding.
Wiebe eventually decided to learn YouTube herself. She blocked out time and took Ali Abdaal's part-time YouTuber course. The most useful part for her, she says, was a bonus video that introduced people she subsequently hired to help.
That detail resists a simple self-reliance narrative. Learning the discipline did not mean doing every part alone. It helped her find more appropriate assistance.
Better quality means better fit for the platform.
She reports a substantial change after that shift, including more views, subscribers, traffic, and leads. The figures discussed in the conversation are self-reported, so the meaningful editorial point is the change she attributes to the work, not a promise that the same intervention produces the same growth elsewhere.
The distinction between having expertise and packaging it for YouTube also sits behind She Cracked the YouTube Code. Here's Everything She Knows. Wiebe's experience makes the business cost of that distinction visible.
Attention created a new problem rather than completing the job. More visitors reached pages that now needed conversion work. The copywriter had to apply her own discipline to the opportunities the channel generated.
Reach and persuasion were connected, but they were not interchangeable. A stronger channel could bring prospective buyers closer. It could not make an unclear page persuasive simply by sending more people to it.
Authority needs somewhere useful to lead
Behind Wiebe's renewed commitment to YouTube was pressure on the business that had previously supported her. She describes a company built through long-form written material, books, and courses. AI, in her account, changed both the value customers perceived and the way they accessed information.
Her language about the damage is forceful. But the account supports a narrower conclusion than a declaration that writing or courses have universally stopped working: her business was experiencing a shift, and its previous model no longer looked dependable.
She describes freelance copywriters pulling back while in-house buyers became more important. She also says course sales continued, though at a level far below what the business had previously enjoyed.
The challenge was therefore not simply visibility. It was relevance to a changing buyer.
Wiebe's response combines public authority with a different kind of offer. She names three activities that can reinforce one another:
- Write a book. Give expertise a substantial, identifiable form.
- Build a YouTube presence. Make the expert visible through work suited to the platform.
- Get on stages. Bring that expertise into speaking opportunities.
She describes these activities as mutually supportive. Progress in one can make the others easier. YouTube, for her, was the hardest part to get working.
None of those activities resolves the offer question by itself. That distinction aligns with the premise of You Don't Need a Personal Brand. You Need an Offer. Recognition matters commercially when there is something appropriate for the newly attentive buyer to purchase.
For Copyhackers, Wiebe describes a greater emphasis on client work, coaching, and teaching teams inside larger organizations. The work includes helping companies find better messages and get their teams aligned around them.
She had wanted to pursue more of that work before, but a healthy course business gave her little reason to rebuild. Pressure changed the calculation. It also created an opportunity to address the disconnection she had felt selling education primarily through launch numbers.
There had been another experiment, a mentorship program, but she found it exhausting. Helping people did not mean being able to control the decisions that shaped their outcomes. The eventual direction was not simply more access to the founder; it was a different service context.
Her description of organizational demand returns the conversation to copy. Teams were using AI inconsistently, she says, while struggling with an older problem: they did not know how to find a distinctive message.
More available text did not resolve that uncertainty. It made the need for direction harder to ignore.
Wiebe's business adaptation therefore follows the same logic as her writing method. Identify what the buyer is struggling with now. Build the response around that problem, rather than around the format that once made the seller successful.
The structure follows the hook
The practical method begins before drafting. Wiebe listens for exact expressions, identifies promising hooks, and then chooses a structure that fits. The framework gives the material a sequence; it does not manufacture the material.
Her two central options are straightforward:
- Problem, agitation, solution. Name the problem, develop it through related experiences, and introduce the answer.
- Desire, obstacle, solution. Begin with what someone wants, identify what prevents it, and introduce the answer.
The car-door complaint belongs naturally with problem, agitation, solution. The frustration already exists in the opening language. Developing it means finding other relevant instances of that same difficulty, not abruptly switching to an unrelated advantage.
Agitation, in Wiebe's explanation, brings the problem to life with more examples. The point is to make the buyer's experience concrete enough that the solution feels connected to something recognizable.
A wish suggests a different opening. If the strongest customer statement describes something desired, desire, obstacle, solution offers a logical route. It begins with the outcome rather than requiring the writer to translate aspiration into a complaint.
Wiebe presents these as useful starting points, not compulsory formulas. The choice depends on the hook. Experience and judgment still matter when deciding which customer phrase has enough interest to lead.
She also discusses attention, interest, desire, action, the familiar AIDA framework. It is her least favorite because she finds its instructions too open-ended. What creates attention, and how should a writer distinguish interest from desire?
Her objection is operational. A framework that leaves too much unresolved is less helpful at the moment a writer needs to decide what goes on the page. The labels should reduce guesswork, not merely describe a desirable outcome after the fact.
Once the structure is chosen, the test is coherence. The supporting material should develop the opening thought, and the proposed solution should address what the copy has established. Otherwise, the framework becomes a set of headings concealing disconnected claims.
The clothing headline illustrates that coherence without requiring technical language from the reader. It names recognizable concerns and follows them with a promise about finding suitable clothing. Do notices the same problem-to-solution movement during the conversation.
The discipline also leaves room for personality that is not built on discomfort. Wiebe cites emails from Hiut Denim that tell stories about the fabric used in its jeans. Her interest comes from the specificity of the subject and the company's willingness to assume readers care about it.
She also recalls a newsletter that places an interesting fact in its footer. That detail gives readers another reason to open and read the message rather than accept a compressed version of its contents.
These are examples of reading experiences, not evidence that AI cannot reproduce a tone. Wiebe's more durable point is that useful personality gives the audience something worth experiencing in its original form.
Practice needs a direction
Wiebe's argument for quality over frequency introduces a final tension. Better work helped her see better results. But Do worries that beginners will hear the demand for quality and mistake it for a demand for an expensive studio, sophisticated equipment, or impressive guests.
His own production environment, he points out, reflects decades of development. Treating that environment as the entry requirement would make starting unnecessarily difficult.
He proposes a 90-day progression that separates permission to begin from the obligation to improve:
- During the first 30 days, make deliberately rough videos. Build expression and rhythm rather than waiting for polish.
- During the next 30 days, review what brought some enjoyment. Form a hypothesis, choose promising directions, and work more intentionally.
- During the final 30 days, look for overlap between personal interest and audience response. Seek coaching or other help around the direction that shows promise.
This is not an argument that every weak video is secretly a good strategy. It is an argument for using early production to discover what deserves more focused effort. The work has to change as the creator learns.
Do makes an important distinction between expression and commercial ambition. Creating solely for personal satisfaction is a legitimate choice. Caring about reach, engagement, and authority adds another obligation: the audience's interests have to influence the work.
Wiebe does not reject practice. She challenges how easily a business owner can sustain it while carrying several other responsibilities. A plan can be reasonable on paper and still lose to the next urgent problem.
Her own solution involved a change in identity. She began treating herself as a YouTuber rather than a founder occasionally experimenting with the platform. That commitment helped her focus on the work over a longer period.
The disagreement is productive because both positions expose a different avoidance tactic. Waiting for quality can prevent publication. Publishing indefinitely can prevent an honest examination of quality.
Neither equipment nor frequency supplies that examination automatically.
The same is true of copy. A team can keep refining adjectives without reconsidering the message. It can keep generating alternatives without checking whether the starting premise reflects anything a customer actually said.
Wiebe's approach gives that team a more concrete place to return. Preserve the language. Choose the hook. Select a structure that develops it. Examine whether the resulting message performs, then improve what is not working.
That sequence asks for both humility and judgment: humility about where the strongest words come from, judgment about how to arrange them into a persuasive argument. The writer still has work to do, but inventing a customer's concern is not part of it.
The next copy review does not need another round of preferences disguised as strategy. It needs the customer's actual language beside the draft, and a clear account of what the draft is supposed to accomplish.
If the customer disappears when the writing gets polished, the polish is the problem.
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“now you have to give the audience what they want.”
— Chris Do
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