Nine copy triggers by funnel stage

Joanna Wiebe (Joanna Wiebe) frames them with System 1 (fast “highway”) and System 2 (slow, sceptical “tollbooth”): good copy keeps System 2 asleep until the reader is ready to justify a yes¹.

TL;DR

• TOFU — “Am I in the right place?” Name a narrow category, mirror their identity, keep it fluent.
• MOFU — “Will it work for someone like me?” Name the mechanism, make big results sound plausible, kill objections in boring sentences.
• BOFU — “Can I justify this?” Offer three options with yours in the middle, state the catch, use one big proof.
• Read the page aloud; wherever you stumble is friction².

Details

Top of funnel

1. Framing — open by naming a specific category (“for in-house copywriters who hate frameworks”), not “business strategies for everyone”; if the brain can’t bucket it instantly, it scrolls on³.
2. Identity matching — “For marketers who already know the basics” makes people feel seen; “Most marketers get this completely wrong” makes them feel attacked and defensive. Ask: am I reflecting their self-image or threatening it?⁴⁵
3. Fluency — short sentences, familiar words, predictable rhythm. Checklist per line: does it ask them to decide anything, imply they’re wrong, or make life harder? If yes, rewrite⁵².

Middle of funnel 4. Unique mechanism — name how it works (Scrub Daddy’s “FlexTexture”) — see Name a problem mechanism and a solution mechanism². 5. Typically atypical — “Double your conversion rate or your money back” triggers “too good to be true”. “Over the course of a year, 9 in 10 of our clients more than double their conversion rates” — timeframe, not-everyone ratio, “more than” — sounds reasonable⁶⁷. 6. Boring by design — name the fear, kill it in one flat sentence (“Powered by AI.” → “It won’t replace thinking.”). Write your three biggest objections and one boring sentence for each⁷⁸.

Bottom of funnel 7. Choice framing — three options (e.g. keep guessing / hire an agency / build it in-house), yours as the safe middle. Two can feel manipulative; four paralyses⁹¹⁰. 8. Transparent trade-offs — “Result, but limitation/effort”: “Sleep through the night — but you’ll need to put your phone away at 7 p.m.” Use once, right before the close. One enterprise B2B client saw a 337% increase in business with this approach¹⁰¹¹. 9. Big proof, small bite — walls of logos and testimonials invite “why are they trying so hard?”. One massive specific proof (“Shopify’s 5,000-person engineering team onboarded in three months, now ships 3× the code”) beats a mountain. List all proof, cross out all but the single most impressive, relevant one¹¹¹².

Disagreements / caveats

• Trigger 9 conflicts with e-commerce practice of stacking many reviews and social-proof blocks (Product-page anatomy — header, carousel, description and support content). Reconcile: lead with one big, relevant proof; keep the review widget lower for the people who want to dig.
• “Three options with the middle as default” is the same anchoring logic used on paywalls (How many plans to show and how to display prices).
• The 337% figure is a single unnamed client, no baseline given.

See also

• Proof placement and believable claims
• Sales / landing page audit checklist

Footnotes

1. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 00:00 — Joanna Wiebe ↩

2. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 04:06 — Joanna Wiebe ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 01:02 — Joanna Wiebe ↩

4. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 01:56 — Joanna Wiebe ↩

5. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 02:58 — Joanna Wiebe ↩ ↩²

6. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 05:37 — Joanna Wiebe ↩

7. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 07:10 — Joanna Wiebe ↩ ↩²

8. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 08:04 — Joanna Wiebe ↩

9. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 09:22 — Joanna Wiebe ↩

10. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 10:20 — Joanna Wiebe ↩ ↩²

11. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 11:31 — Joanna Wiebe ↩ ↩²

12. Words That SELL (Psychology-Backed) @ 12:55 — Joanna Wiebe ↩