How $100M brands write listicles

For those unfamiliar with listicles, it’s a form of pre-sell page that’s extremely versatile & extremely high-converting when done right.

We implement these with almost every brand we work with & they always lift conversion rate massively (we’re talking anywhere from 20-100%).

The reason listicles (& pre-sell pages in general) are so important is because of this:

If you want to scale, you practically need to increase ad spend.

When you increase ad spend, you reach more people, & thereby colder audiences.

These people are harder to convert because they’re not aware of your brand, the solution to their problem, or even the problem itself. So for them to purchase something, you need to make them brutally aware of all these things.

When you don’t educate them properly is when your ROAS drops as soon as you increase spend.

Hence why pre-sell pages (or just some sort of pre-sell education system) are so essential for scaling.

There are 2 main types of pre-sell pages you can run:

Listicles (what we’ll cover here) & advertorials (more story-based pre-sell pages written like articles).

There are of course other ones but there are the 2 main ones we use.

I’ve broken down advertorials in this article if you want to have a read: https://x.com/CarlWeische/status/2071987458040897583

(there’s another listicle-guide linked inside that article, but this one is better if you really want to understand the principles behind them)

The thing with advertorials is that they’re designed to go deep into one angle, so you usually have to run different ones for each ad angle you’re using.

Listicles are broader, so you can run one listicle page for multiple angles & it’ll still convert extremely well.

But before we get into writing listicles, you must understand this concept:

What funnels actually are

I think of funnels (everything from ad to checkout) as a series of pains & beliefs.

Meaning, for a funnel to convert well, it needs to agitate pain & it needs to install the beliefs of:

• “I have a problem(s) & it’s bad & it’ll lead to a bad thing if I don’t solve it”
• “There is a solution”
• “This product is the best solution”

If you can install all these beliefs while agitating pain (& holding attention throughout the funnel of course), you will be able to convert ice cold, completely unaware traffic.

So this is the goal of the style of listicle I’m breaking down today.

I’ll use an example listicle from a multi 8fig brand so everything is easier to understand.

The structure of the listicle

This is just an overview, I’ll get into how to actually write everything later.

At the very top of the page you've got an announcement bar hammering urgency (not required but it can help a ton).

Then have a headline with something like “7 reasons over 50,000 [your avatar] are using [your product]”

& feel free to also add a sub-heading with some benefits if you want.

Example:

From there you break down the reasons, each with their own section.

& then you have a CTA at the bottom sending people to your PDP.

How to come up with the reasons

Every "reason" on this page is either:

• your customers' objections handled
• pain points of your customer
• desired outcomes
• or problems that spark curiosity (see point 3 in this example listicle in the image below)

The easiest one is basing these reasons off of objections.

So when doing your research, look at the common objections your ICP has, & rank them by frequency of which they come up.

Then you order them by how often they came up. So the one the most people have becomes reason number one, the next most common becomes reason number two, & so on.

Again, I said the easiest is basing off of objections, but you should play around with this when you’re split testing these pages against each other.

Write the headlines for each reason so the page works even if they don't read the paragraphs

A large part of the traffic you get to this page won’t read every single word on it, they’ll skim through it.

So the headlines have to carry the whole thing on their own. Someone should be able to skim just the headlines, read ZERO of the paragraphs, & still walk away educated & at least somewhat sold on your product.

A couple of things on the headlines specifically:

Each headline needs to fully land its one point on its own, so that just reading it hands you that piece of education or trust without touching the paragraph under it.

The headlines from the sheets listicle are:

• "temperature regulating comfort"
• "up to 3x less laundry and big savings"
• "your sheets are damaging your skin"
• "odor fighting"
• "luxury comfort without the price tag"
• "try it risk-free".

You get the entire pitch (the value prop up top, some education on why other sheets are bad, & objections handled) just from skimming.

So once you've written them, skim only your headlines & make sure they still sell the product on their own.

The copywriting under each headline

Every paragraph under those headlines is built on the same 4 parts, so let me just show you a full one first, then break it down.

Here's one of the paragraphs from the sheets page (the "up to 3x less laundry and big savings" one):

"According to research by Amerisleep, after just one week of use, bedsheets had more bacteria than a bathroom doorknob. After just two weeks, that number multiplied to have more bacteria than a pet toy. Let's face it... no one has time to wash their sheets regularly! Each wash is not only a huge hassle, but it's expensive and those costs add up quickly. Miracle Made Sheets help prevent up to 99.7% of bacteria growth due to their unique silver-infused fiber technology. This helps you eliminate the need to wash your sheets as much as traditional sheets, helping save you time and money on laundry supplies, water, and electricity. This is an easy way to save hundreds and hundreds of dollars every year!"

So here’s the structure of it:

First is education around the problem. Here it's your sheets being crawling with bacteria (backed by the research stat, more bacteria than a doorknob, then a pet toy).

Then the pain point (having to wash constantly).

Then the ripple effect of that (it’s expensive & costs add up quickly).

So the first part is just educating around the problem & agitating pain.

Then you flip to a feature of the product (the silver-infused fiber that prevents up to 99.7% of bacteria growth).

& then you translate that feature into a benefit, & the benefit has to tie back to the exact pain/problem you opened on. The whole problem you built up was the endless expensive washing, so the benefit is that you don't have to wash your sheets nearly as much, which saves you time & hundreds of dollars a year on laundry.

All the other reasons is built on roughly the same structure:

• the underlying problem (installing a belief)
• pain point & the ripple effect of the problem (agitating pain)
• the solution (your unique mechanism - installing the belief that your product is superior)

Here are 2 more examples from this page:

The CTA

Not too much to cover here.

At the very bottom you've got the CTA that sends people to your PDP. If possible you want to feature as much scarcity & urgency as possible in this CTA (like ”only X left in stock”, or just using good wording like “check availability”).

Testing

Once you’ve built one of these, split test it constantly:

• swap a few reasons
• completely different reasons
• test the first headline & all above the fold elements
• test the headlines for the reasons

Never stop split testing, it’s how you turn a good page into a phenomenal page.

That’s all for today, appreciate you reading.