How to Structure Content for Higher Conversions

I've been in the copywriting space for 10 years and have generated $100’s of millions of dollars for clients.  Here are the 9 most profitable copywriting lessons I've learned along the way: 1. Most Copy Follows the Same Pattern: Headline → Lead → Body → Offer → CTA. Use this structure for every piece of copy: sales pages, emails, ads—everything. Try this today: Take an existing sales page and rearrange it to follow this flow. Notice how it improves clarity. 2. Stop Selling to Everyone: A hungry niche is far more valuable than a big, lukewarm audience. Identify your top 2–3 customer personas and speak directly to them. Try this today: Rewrite one of your marketing emails to address a single, specific persona’s biggest pain point. 3. Your Headline is King: 80% of your effort should go into writing a headline that stops the scroll. Without a powerful headline, no one reads the rest. Try this today: Write 10 variations of a headline for the same offer. Pick the strongest one (or split-test them). 4. Write First, Edit Later: Separate the creative process (writing freely) from the critical process (editing). More words during writing; fewer words after editing. Try this today: Draft an email or ad in one sitting without stopping yourself, then cut it down by 30%. 5. Make it a Slippery Slope: Headline sells the subheadline → subheadline sells the lead → lead sells the body → body sells the CTA → CTA sells the click. Each section teases the next. Try this today: Structure each element on your landing page to create curiosity for the next. 6. People Care About Themselves: They want to know: “What’s in it for me?” Focus your copy on how your product solves their problems or satisfies their desires. Try this today: Count how many times you say “you” versus “I/we” in your copy. Aim for at least a 2:1 ratio. 7. Embrace the Rule of One: One product, one big idea, one CTA per piece of copy. Avoid confusing your reader with multiple offers. Try this today: If you have multiple CTAs in an email or ad, eliminate all but one to see if conversions improve. 8. Be a Friend, Not a Salesman: Show your personality: use relatable language, humor, empathy. Give value first, then ask for the sale. Try this today: Add a personal anecdote or inside joke in your next email to build rapport and trust. 9. Never Start from Scratch: Use proven frameworks (PAS, AIDA, FAB, etc.) to save time and improve results. Frameworks guide your thinking and help you hit the emotional triggers your audience needs. Try this today: Pick one framework (e.g., PAS) and outline your next sales email before filling it in with copy.

I audited 40+ landing pages in the Exit Five community. Use these 9 tips to audit your own: 1. Don't confuse a landing page & homepage First thing's first - a landing page and homepage are not the same. There are many reasons why you shouldn't send paid traffic to a homepage, the largest being - everyone including your mother can access the homepage. That means you'll optimize based on murky data. Bad optimizations + mom = money wasted. 2. Content is king but design is queen Your content could be A+ but it won't matter if the page doesn't load or the UI is messy. Pro tip: Run a lighthouse test to check how your website performs. It will give you a list of things to improve. 3. Buzzwords are for the bees If you wouldn't use it in a conversation with another human, then don't put it on the website. Boost your streamlined buzzword soup right into the revolutionized garbage can. Pro tip: Most people read at an 8th-grade level, even if they're highly educated and can read at a higher level. The human brain is lazy...um, I mean, wired for efficiency. Get them to register information about you quickly. 4. Limit the number of asks Do you want our ebook?  Do you want a meeting?  Do you want to pet my dog? We make roughly 10,000 decisions a day. Your buyers are tired. Make 1 ask of your users per landing page. Make it direct. Make it simple. 5. Don't ask too soon Unless your buyers are banging down your door for meetings like Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift tickets, don't ask too soon. You are not Taylor Swift. You need to do some more convincing. Your ratio of value to ask should be 90:10. Tell them what you are, who you're for, what problems you solve, how you solve them, prove your credibility, answer objections THEN... and only then...make an ask. We date before we marry. 6. Story and balance  Landing pages either have too little or too much information. There's no in-between. Don't feature dump - address and acknowledge problems your ICP faces then talk about your features in context of how it solves the problem. 7. Testimonials Using the same testimonials on every page? Make them specific to each product or segment. Pro tip: Link to customer LinkedIn profiles so your users know they’re real people. 8. Prioritize FAQs This is the highest interacted-with block on every landing page I've seen. But make sure to answer real questions and objections not "Why are we the greatest company on earth?" - no one. 9. Optimize for consumption For B2B, they won't convert the 1st or even 50th time. Research heavy, long buying cycles, big committees, yada yada. Look for how they're consuming information on-page then look at overall handraisers on your website over time. --- If reading isn't your thing, Matthew Carnevale and I go over learnings from the audits on episode 185 of the Exit Five podcast. --- I do this for a living. If you want help, reach out to me here: https://lnkd.in/ewys5rwC

Over the last year, we ran 290 landing page experiments for our clients. Here’s what we learned… Things we tested were headlines, CTA, forms (number of fields, structure of form), images (primarily in the header section), page layout. We also have an “other” category that includes things like sticky headers, accreditation badges, adding/removing videos, etc. 47% of the time, experiments were deemed inconclusive, meaning the variant didn’t yield any significant change from the control. Of the 154 experiments that did yield significant conversion lift, these are the tests that moved the needle most: - Headline (54%) - Other (19.5%) - CTA (14%) - Form (6.5%) - Image (3.5%) - Page layout (2.5%) This is what I’m taking away from these numbers… 1️⃣ Nailing the copy is by far the most important thing you can do to improve your landing page performance for paid search. If you’re still using things like “#1 <software category>” as your H1 text in the header, you’re probably losing opportunities from quality traffic. The copy used on your landing pages should immediately convince visitors that you understand the biggest problems they face in their day-to-day and that your product can solve them. 2️⃣ Your call to action is more important than the number of fields in your form. If the CTA is confusing or, worse, irrelevant (e.g. “Learn more” when your goal is to get a prospect to request a demo) then users will be less likely to act. Figure out exactly what you want from your landing page visitors and make it clear that’s what you’re offering them. 3️⃣ If you’ve nailed the header copy, CTA AND you’re getting highly qualified traffic to your landing page, people will fill out your form even if it’s really long. Form length hurting conversion volume is a myth. If anything, prospects will feel that the info they’re providing will lead to a better outcome and a more productive conversation since the sales team now has more information on their specific use case. Don’t fear the long form! (I plan on sharing a very specific example of amazing performance from a client of ours that has a beast of a demo request form on their landing pages) 4️⃣ We need to dig in more to our “Other” category and get more specific data here. However, it’s clear that adding things like quality video content on landing pages can be very impactful. We still have some work to do on cleaning up all the data we’ve collected and organizing it better (e.g. experiments by vertical, and more specific test types) but the early data is pretty clear to me… Copy is king (and it still ain’t coming from GPT). #ppc #cro #landingpagedesign