DTC copywriting

In a DTC business the funnel is the business. There’s no retail buyer to convince and no sales team to hand off to, so the copy is doing the selling by itself.

That raises the stakes on every piece of it. An ad that doesn’t earn the click costs you CAC. A product page that doesn’t answer the objection loses the sale outright, and nobody tells you why.

What DTC copy has to do

Every stage has a different job, and copy that treats them the same underperforms at all of them.

Ads have to earn attention from someone who wasn’t looking for you. Landing pages have to keep the promise the ad made. Product pages have to handle objections you’ll never hear out loud. Email has to bring back people who left without buying.

Where DTC copy usually goes wrong

Writing from inside the company. The copy describes the product’s features instead of the reader’s problem. It’s the single most common issue, and it’s why so many ads sound the same.

Superlatives don’t differentiate. “Best,” “premium,” and “revolutionary” are true of every brand in the category, which is why they stop registering. A specific detail about the product or the moment does the work those words are reaching for, and it’s the one thing a competitor can’t say.

Ignoring the creative. Ad copy written without reference to the image it sits next to. If the visual is making a promise, the copy should pick it up rather than start over.

Constraints I’m used to

A lot of DTC categories can’t say whatever converts best. Supplements, skincare, personal care, anything health-adjacent. Claims go through review, and language gets constrained in ways that flatten most copy.

I’ve written inside those limits for FDA-cleared products and regulated health brands. Working within them is a craft problem, not an obstacle.

Frequently asked questions

What copy matters most for a DTC brand?

The pieces that carry the funnel: ads, landing pages, product pages, and email. In a DTC business there’s no retail buyer to convince and no sales team to hand off to, so the copy is doing the selling on its own. The piece that matters most is whichever one is losing people right now, and it’s usually the handoff between the ad and the landing page. If the page doesn’t keep the promise the ad made, nothing downstream gets a chance.

How do you write product pages that convert?

By answering the objection the customer never says out loud. Most product pages describe the product from the inside: materials, specs, ingredients. What converts is naming the hesitation and resolving it, which means knowing what stops people rather than what the product contains.

Should ad copy be written before or after the creative?

Before, if not at the same time. The copy carries the argument, and the creative has to illustrate it, which is hard to do when the image came first and the writer is working backward from a picture. When copy leads, the designer knows what the ad is trying to say and can build a visual that says it too. The failure mode is an ad where the image makes one promise and the copy makes another, and the reader notices before they can name why.

Why is my landing page getting traffic but not converting?

Usually because it isn’t keeping the promise the ad made. The ad got the click with one message, the page opens with a different one, and the reader feels the gap before they can name it. The second most common cause is a page that describes the product instead of answering the objection: someone arrived with a hesitation, and the copy talked about features. Fixing either is a copy problem, and it’s cheaper than buying more traffic.

Tell me what your copy needs to do

Email: hello@greenwagonmedia.com
Call or text: (631) 210-7282