Joanna Wiebe

Some copywriters swear by ’em… and others effing hate ’em. Swear words. Curse words. Bad words. Studies show that people perceive swearing to be something only ‘the lower class’ does… but if 99% of us are in said class, can a case be made for swearing in your marketing?

You got the sale. Yay! …But that’s actually just the beginning. Funny, and here you thought getting a conversion was the only goal! Well, maybe you don’t think that… But judging by the number of stunningly free-of-thought thank-you pages we’ve seen this year – and we’ve got a swipe file of at least 50 of […]

Nobody wants a losing A/B test… But some of the most interesting tests are the “losers” – the ones where everything you thought gets thrown into question. The assumptions you made prove to be, at least for the tested website, wrong. It’s with the losing tests that we often learn the most.* Today’s example is […]

We put stickers on them. We buy special cases for them. We attach dongles to them. We play on them. We have special pockets sewn into our running jackets to hold them. We press them to our cheeks. We cradle them in one hand while tickling their little bellies with the other. We keep them […]

This week, Google confirmed that the party’s over. Now, sure, I don’t know that the ability to identify the keywords bringing traffic to my site ever qualified as a party, but, in comparison to a life of “(not provided)”, the old way was the better way. For small bizzes like ours, at least. (Is it […]

How long is a piece of string? When we’re talking about how long your landing page should be, we’re often asking essentially that question: how long is a piece of string? Answer: as long as it needs to be. Now, in matters of tying things up with string – whether you’re a hog-tier or Christian […]

The single greatest question a marketer can ask is this: What’s the headline? You’d think that a marketer should be most focused on the higher-level questions. Like, “Are we growing?” or “How did our campaigns perform?” or “What’s our net profit?” or “What did they say about us?” Those are all good questions. But they’re […]

A few months ago, a perfectly nice fellow named Michael wrote to me with a problem… He was launching an online outlet for furniture, and, with 100s of products lined up and more arriving regularly, he was challenged by how many product detail pages he’d have to write. After all, every single product needed a […]

Planning content. Writing content. Editing content… Tracking and updating content… Making sure all your content and the messages your content communicates – across your website, in your emails and through your blog – work together… …That’s just scratching the surface of what a content strategist does. Keeping your content under control may seem simple enough. […]

People love a good live teardown. It was super-fun to do teardowns at Microconf in Vegas. And I’ve had loads of requests for more ever since… So we’re starting something new around here! It’s called Teardown Tuesdays, and this is the first installment. I’m hoping to keep teardowns in the 2-minute range, but y’never know. […]

What if I told you that you can increase page traffic without using spreadsheet magic… or any fancy + expensive analytics software? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, in fact, it’s totally possible. I did it. You can do it, too. And I’ll show you how – right now… Keyword Optimization – The Only […]

Odds are your website is flooded with irrelevant copy… Overrun by it. Infested with it. Visitors are coming to your website and – even though you’ve followed all the ‘best practices’ you read about conversion rate optimization – a big chunk of them are leaving… Why, you ask? Because your tested website copy may be […]

Meet the Panel: We asked these 8 app pros for their best tips on how to promote an app DANIEL YOO Creator of Timer+, which has over 3 million installs to date. Held position in Top 10 in iPad Utilities (free) in the US. JAMES ABELER Creator of Infuse for iPhone and iPad. During launch […]

4 Persuasive Copywriting Techniques When you’re talking conversion rate optimization (CRO), you’re usually also talking persuasion. Persuasion and conversion go hand-in-hand. If you’re not persuading visitors – to sign up, to comment, to share, to buy – it’s going to be very hard for you to boost your conversion rate… You’ve heard about persuasion in […]

When it’s time to write a landing page, do you start by drafting the headline? If so, you’re doing it wrong… When it’s time to review your copywriter’s landing page copy, do you look first to the headline? If so, you’re doing it wrong… See, those may be fine approaches for the home page… or […]

This week’s post is written by Heather Anne Carson of Onboardly, where startups flock for PR help. Hint of the genius that follows: Heather doesn’t think promoting your startup should rest entirely on pitching TechCrunch. Learn loads and share a tweet o’ thanks… For most startups – especially those who are bootstrapped or not yet […]

TMI = Too Much Information Time and again, we see long copy outperform short copy in split tests… But long copy usually means long pages – not lengthy page elements. So we shouldn’t have been surprised when we ran two headline tests – detailed in our brand-new ebook The Great Value Proposition Test – and […]

You’ve wondered how to inject a little personality into your copy… And we’ve talked about writing with tone before (right here). Now you can learn from one of the masters of voice and tone, Kate Kiefer Lee of MailChimp fame. Cuz I sat her down and picked her brain for 25 minutes! The result is […]

By Joanna Wiebe Subscribe for free weekly tips here and get notified when my course opens PPC ads need ’em. Blog posts need ’em. Email subject lines need ’em. Landing page headlines need ’em. Qu’est-ce que c’est? ATTENTION GRABBERS! Uber-prominent messages that grab your prospects’ attention! If you want people to notice your message and […]

Back in March, I spotted this email subject line among dozens in my inbox: “Free Beer!” I quickly opened the email, which was from Matt Harris of SendWithUs.com, to find this: With a catch! Hey Joanna, Brad and I are knee deep in some important sales documents, and would love your opinion. If you’re free […]