Your reminder that subtlety is overrated

Season 8, Issue 10! A quick round up of good marketing examples

📬 In this issue:

• Three copywriting tips

• Two good website examples (one SaaS, one ecomm!)

• One dark social example

This week’s book recommendation slash gift for one lucky Mehketeer is a 2025 Hobonichi Techo of your choice (you’ll see all about this below.) Just refer a friend or colleague using the link below to go in the draw for one!

These apparently sell out really early, so getting one now sets you up for a huge status boost and bragging rights in 2025.

I’ve also learned a humbling lesson, which is that offering an hour with me is the worst prize, because for the first time ever not a single person entered last week’s draw, lol. Please pity me and complete the Season 8 reader survey with no incentive.

P.S. If you’ve previously been picked for a book and got an email from me, but then I never followed up, a bug with Substack was flagged with me where some replies weren’t coming through. Just reply to this email or reach out to me on LinkedIn and I’ll get you sorted.

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Hey Mehketeers!

I guess I’m known for my transparency, so here’s the truth. I’m behind on Mehdeeka work and was supposed to announce something today but it’s not ready yet… so here’s a stand-in issue instead! I’ll extend this season by a week to make sure all the stuff I did have planned is still included.

No time wasting, let’s go. I’ve been working on a lot of different content types lately and have been proofing my own work, and using these three rules in particular to clean it up:

Three copywriting tips

1. Look for the “obvious next question”

Imagine I told you I have a secret to share, you asked me “what is it”, and then I explain how I heard about the secret, but I don’t tell you what it is. Infuriating.

And yet this happens all the time in marketing! The caption to an ad doesn’t match the topic of a landing page, paragraphs on a blog don’t flow, or we come away from a home page thinking “what does this company even do?”

To overcome this, start with the most important message you have, then ask yourself what the next obvious question someone who just heard this information for the first time ever would be. That’s where you go next.

I wrote a bit more about this on LinkedIn so check out that post.

2. Test if your longform content is skimmable by only reading the first sentence of each paragraph

Copy the first sentence from each paragraph into a blank document and read just that. If you can follow it, it’s skimmable.

This is one of the reasons why I don’t like the trend of paragraphs being only one sentence — it means “skimming” is… reading the whole thing.

3. Replace “but” with “and”

I’ve said this one before, but I’ve found myself having to reference it a lot lately. And I just did it right here.

I’ve said this before, and I’ve found myself having to reference it a lot lately. That’s better. It sounds less conditional and stronger, especially in something like sales or BoFU copy.

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Two good websites

A big hint to my delayed announcement, Atticus is an amazing example of copywriting tip number 1. I came away from the home page knowing 100% what this product was, who it was for, and how it’s used.

I’m really impressed by how much they fit onto this home page, and there’s only a few things I would cut — would you do anything different?

Atticus also uses a pop up I feel like I haven’t seen since the glory days of Tumblr when ecommerce was still new and not fully trusted yet:

I wonder how much impact it has!

Up next Hobonichi Techo’s ecommerce site that also uses no subtlety, and I love how they’ve just gone for “call it what it is”. Below is some screen grabs of my favourite sections, taken from various pages. Definitely explore for yourself (and pick out which one you’d want for yourself if you share your referral link!)

Or if someone forwarded this to you:

Starting with the menu, Hobonichi is a premium notebook brand, and they have an overwhelming range. The website really helps break it down and guide you through the customer journey:

From the very top we’ve got three sections:

• Exploring each type

• Choosing a Hobonichi Techo

• Simple comparison chart (spoiler, it’s not simple at all, it’s actually huge)

These sections are then broken down even more on the page:

Not only is the customer journey excellent, but their content is really hitting the mark, too. User generated, promotion of their channels, and highlighting pieces of content that makes you want to click though — all of it is high quality and well presented.

I love how simple it is. It just is what it is. Here’s the link again, definitely go poke around.

One dark social example

Quick definition:

Dark social /dɑːk səʊʃl/

Noun

1. Traffic to your site that is categorised as “direct”, but is likely due to someone sharing the link in a private chat group or other similar untrackable source

I was browsing Instagram stories the other day and was surprised to see a Japanese indie idol, ano, asked for mattress recommendations and followed up with sharing the brands that had been recommended by her followers, including Koala. With 1.2 million followers, it made me wonder if the Koala team was questioning where a surge in Japanese traffic or sales were coming from. Dark social at work!

By the way, I follow ano not for her music but because she does a lot of TV. If you have Netflix and need a low-stakes reality show, watch Run for the Money, it’s literally a 24 hour game of tag in a theme park (both while it’s closed overnight, and once crowds start coming in.) ano has an… interesting strategy for the game.

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Reminder!

Fill in the survey because you feel sorry for me, and refer a friend to Mehdeeka using your referral link below because you want to get your very own 2025 Hobonichi Techo as a thank you.

Otherwise, this was long and a bit out of the usual, so I’ll see you next week for a more “regular” Mehdeeka.

Kayla