Pick your copy structure from the market’s stage, not your taste: problem-agitate-solution for new markets, before-after-bridge for emerging ones, us-versus-them for developing ones, proof and offer for established ones. Then check the two overrides.
Copywriting frameworks are old. AIDA — attention, interest, desire, action — is usually credited to the advertising pioneer E. St. Elmo Lewis in the late 1890s, and most modern frameworks are variations on the same idea: a message has a structure, and the structure does as much work as the words.
The mistake most teams make is not a lack of frameworks. It is using the same one everywhere, usually whichever one somebody learned first. Structure is not a matter of taste. It should follow from two things: where your market sits, and how much risk the buyer is carrying.
The defaults, by market stage
The four stages come from the four market stages. Each has a default structure because each has a different job to do. The examples below all sell the same imaginary product — a service that helps B2B sales teams respond to inbound leads faster — so you can see the structure change while the product stays the same.
New market → PAS: problem, agitate, solution
Buyers do not yet believe they have a problem worth solving. So you surface it, make the cost of ignoring it concrete, and only then introduce the fix.
Problem: Your inbound leads are waiting. Agitate: Research published in Harvard Business Review found the average company that responded took 42 hours — by which time most buyers have moved on to someone else. Solution: Answer every enquiry in minutes, without adding headcount.
The agitate step is where most PAS copy is weak. Vague urgency does nothing. A specific, credible number the buyer can check does the work.
Emerging market → BAB: before, after, bridge
Buyers know the problem and are overwhelmed by the options. They need a clear picture of the destination and an explanation of how you get there — the mechanism.
Before: Leads land in a shared inbox and wait for someone to notice. After: Every enquiry gets a personal, researched reply within minutes. Bridge: A first touch drafted automatically in the rep’s own voice and held for one-click approval.
The bridge is the important part. In an emerging market, the mechanism is the category definition. Whoever explains it clearly tends to set the buying criteria.
Developing market → us versus them
Buyers are comparing named options and asking “why you?”. The structure is: the weakness in the usual approach, your strength against it, proof, and a call to action.
Their weakness: Routing tools assign leads. They do not answer them. Our strength: We handle the first reply, not just the hand-off. Proof: [a specific, verifiable result]. Action: See it on your own inbound this week.
Two cautions. Comparative claims must be accurate and substantiated — making an unfair comparison is both a legal risk and a credibility risk. And it is usually stronger to compare against an approach than to name a competitor; buyers can fill in the names themselves.
Established market → social proof and offer
The category is a commodity and decisions run on trust and price. Structure: authority, market position, an incentive, and trust signals.
Authority: The approach sales teams in your industry already rely on. Incentive: Set up this quarter and implementation is included. Trust: No long contract; cancel any month.
The two overrides that matter more than the default
The stage gives you a starting point. Two situations should overrule it.
1. When failure would be catastrophic for the buyer personally. If choosing wrong could mean a security breach, a compliance failure or someone losing their job, the buyer is not looking for excitement. They are looking for safety. Switch to a proof-heavy structure — claim, evidence, comparison, de-risk — and drop disruption language entirely, whatever stage the market is in. “Revolutionary” is the wrong word for a buyer who will be blamed if it fails.
2. When switching costs are high. If moving to you means migrating data, retraining a team or unwinding an existing contract, a discount rarely changes the decision, because the price was never the main cost. Lead with migration support instead. The product may be similar to the incumbent’s; the migration experience is the differentiator.
How to test properly
Most headline testing compares random variations of the same structure, which usually produces small, noisy differences. A more useful test compares structures: a PAS version against a BAB version, for example, on the same audience. If your market stage diagnosis is right, the matching structure should win clearly. If it does not, that is valuable information in itself — your market may be in a different stage than you assumed.
Where to go next
The four market stages explains how to diagnose which stage you are in. Strategic risk flags covers situations where even the right structure will not save a mismatched strategy. And Schwartz’s stages of awareness helps you tailor the same structure to individual buyers.