How to talk to a market that's heard it all before.
Plus a chance to get a free messaging audit.
Welcome to Voicemail — a newsletter about copywriting for B2B product marketers who want to bring their messaging to life.
In 2025 I’m reading some of the greatest advertising books ever written, analyzing the shit out of them, and reporting all the insights back to you. If that sounds like your jam, keep reading (it’s free!) or sign up to get these letters delivered right to your inbox.
Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, originally published in 1966
Long considered THE most influential copywriting book ever published, Breakthrough Advertising is a collection of lessons from one of the greatest copywriters of the 20th century. It’s been called, “the most important book ever written for anyone who markets any product or service in any medium,” by Brian Kurtz (a living copywriting legend).
Reading dates: January-February 2025.
Your message is never static.
About 5 years ago, I got laid off from a job before I could have my first day.
The reason? Google dropped a feature that killed the business overnight. I’m not even joking.
This took place in the summer of 2020, just a few months into the pandemic. By that point we’d juuuuuust gotten over the toilet paper hoarding. We’d moved out of panic mode and started adapting to a new way of work.
It was a blurry hazy few months. But it all taught me something about messaging:
It’s supposed to change. Sometimes that happens overnight.
As much as many of us would like messaging to be a one-and-done project, it isn’t. It’s more of a product than a service — it’s something that requires regular tweaking and adjustment.
The reason is honestly simple: no market is ever static. At the baseline, you could have something happen that upends your industry overnight (be it a pandemic or a mic drop from Google). Sometimes news changes a market’s desires. Sometimes there’s a pop culture moment that you can capitalize on:
In other cases, your message needs updating simply because it works. If you’re first to market you have to do a lot of education… but eventually you’ll start to see copycat products pop up and your conversations with prospects will change.
In short: We don’t live in a vacuum. Your business will need to respond and change its messaging in order to stay relevant.
So… how do you actually do it?
That’s where Schwartz’ Market Sophistication Framework comes in.
How to adapt your messaging to market changes.
Over the last few weeks I’ve taken you on a bit of a journey through the first three chapters of Breakthrough Advertising:
We talked about how the role of an advertiser isn’t to create desire — it’s to channel existing desires towards your product.
Then we talked about how to take mass desires and match them to your product’s capabilities to figure out your product story.
Last week we looked at how you tailor your message to your audience’s awareness levels.
Which bring us to this week: how to tailor your messaging based on your market’s awareness of your product and category. Schwartz calls this your Market’s Levels of Sophistication.
This framework is a bit like the unloved stepchild in the world of marketing (the stages of awareness usually gets put into the spotlight). Buuuuuut it’s an important part of the positioning and messaging puzzle that helps you bring your ideas to life.
Schwartz describes his Market Sophistication framework as the answer to the question, “How many similar products have they been told about before?”
He goes on to say that with a little bit of research, you can narrow your audience’s sophistication into one of five levels (with names borrowed from Sam Woods, another copywriter):
Level 1: No sophistication. Very little sophistication. You’re first to market. Once you get someone interested, they’ll believe your product can help them.
Level 2: Low Solution Sophistication. You’re second to market. Your audience recognizes can name the problem and the solution. They may have tried another solution and failed, but they still believe that the right product will help them solve the problem.
Level 3: Medium Solution Sophistication They audience has been exposed to several other solutions like yours. They know what the product does and believe that certain solutions might help them solve their problem… but are getting bored of messages.
Level 4: High Solution Sophistication. Your market is crowded. Your audience has actually tried another solution before (and been burned by it).
Level 5: Saturated Market, High Sophistication. The audience has seen it all before. They don’t believe any of your claims.
At each of these stages your marketing needs to change… and the pattern of changing it is pretty interesting.
Make a claim —> Exaggerate it.
Schwartz’ messaging suggestion for each stage of awareness can basically be boiled down to this simple cycle:
First, you make a claim.
Then, when that claim stops losing potency, you exaggerate it.
Here’s a helpful graphic I asked AI to create to illustrate the concept. Look at this thing go! This only took four attempts of crystal clear instructions!
There’s a lot to say about this (Schwartz did write a whole book, after all). But to summarize and keep it simple, here’s the breakdown:
Levels 1 and 2 talk about what the product does.
The first two levels of sophistication are focused on explaining what the product does. If your audience hasn’t quite seen a solution like yours before, you need to give them time to wrap their head around what it is.
If you’re first to market (Level 1 sophistication): You make a claim about what your product does. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you’re second or third to market (Level 2 sophistication): If that ☝️ claim from your competitors seems to work, you basically steal it and “enlarge on it.” To quote Schwartz, you should, “Drive it to the absolute limit. Outbid the competition.”
Say, for example, you’re first to market with a tool that automates all an enterprise’s receipt scanning. Here’s what headlines would look like at each of these stages:
Level 1: Digitize Every Receipt In Your Organization In 1 Hour
Level 2: Scan 800 Receipts In 8 minutes — Or Get Your Money Back!
See how Level 2 messaging still explains what the product does, just at a new level of extreme? That’s how you get in a market that’s starting to get crowded.
Eventually, your audience is going to get sick of seeing messages like the Level 2 message. They’ll think “That’s ridiculous. I tried something like this a while back and it was a total dud.” That’s when you move into Levels 3 and 4.
Level 3 and Level 4 focus on the new mechanism that satisfies the desire.
Your market might be sick of seeing messages like “Scan 800 receipts in 8 minutes.” But being tired of seeing a message doesn’t mean they’ve solved the problem.
The desire for the solution is still there. Your job as a marketer is to find a “new way of making the old promise work.”
Schwartz calls this a “mechanism” — the way your product works. He writes that after Level 2 messaging, “the emphasis shifts from what the product does to HOW it works. Not accomplishment, but performance becomes dominant.”
Then, once you figure out that mechanism, you essentially repeat the “Make a claim, then exaggerate it,” flow from Levels 1 and 2.
Let’s go back to our example. We want to shift the message from what the product does to HOW it does it. That could be:
Level 3: Meet Your New AI Accountant
Level 4: The AI Accountant That’s Faster Than An F1 Driver
Again, both of these headlines focus not what the product does (scans receipts). Instead, they focus on the how (AI) then expands on it (faster AI).
Stage 5 is how you revive a dead product.
Eventually, your market is going to be sick of seeing your advertising. They won’t believe any of the claims you throw at them, and they’ll actively wish they didn’t know about your product.
So, how do you market to people like this? Jaded, cranky, “get off my lawn” types?
The answer is to go back to the five stages of awareness model. You solve the problem with the same strategy: shift away from what your product does, and shift towards the prospect’s identity.
Essentially, you put out some rallying cries:
Show your market the version of themselves they want to be
Use images to show your market how others will view them when they use your product
What do you stand for that your market can get behind?
What do you stand against that your market can get behind?
It’s about going back to the basics: finding out what the mass desire is, and connecting it to your product through identification.
Great… so what? How does this all come together?
Good question. I’m still wrapping my head around it.
Next week I hope to have an answer for you in the form of a case study that shows how to combine mass desire, stages of awareness, and market sophistication together.
In fact, I’d love to analyze a real company’s messaging and show how it all fits into this framework.
Normally, I’d ask AI to generate a fake company or use a giant example like Hubspot. I’m not a fan of random teardown posts — even if they are educational — because as an outsider, you never know the context.
But, if you’re reading this and struggling with your current messaging/copy… and if you want a free audit… and you don’t mind me publicly analyzing what you’re doing…
Hit reply and let me know. I’d love to do a totally free audit of your brand storytelling/messaging as a case study.
Up next: Bringing it all together.
We’ve covered the first three chapters of Breakthrough Advertising. Like I mentioned above, next week I want to show how to bring it all together and create a full campaign.
After that, I’m not entirely sure. We’ve only covered the first three chapters of Breakthrough Advertising, but my original plan had us pushing forward to the next book. Let me know your thoughts — otherwise I’ll have a decision for you next week.
Stuff I’m digging from other people this week.
I’ve always found the common advice of separating messaging and copy to be stupid. I’m glad at least one person on the internet agrees with me.
Michal Eisik is running a workshop that I think any working parent might appreciate. I’m not in that category at all — but Michal’s a boss and someone who I deeply respect.
My friend Matt Snyder has a great post this week about how to create urgency in your copy.
Stuff I’ve been writing this week.
The biggest takeaway from Breakthrough Advertising is remarkably simple.
Talking about your product features can kill your marketing efforts.
If you like any of these, I’d massively appreciate a thumb’s up and/or a comment. It’s the easiest way to help more people see what I’m doing. 🙏
Thank you for being here. ✨
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If you have any feedback, ideas, questions, or suggestions, hit reply and let me know. I want this to be the best damn marketing newsletter you read every week, and 2025 is the year of leveling it up.
Appreciate you. Have a great weekend.
Also thanks for the shout out!
As always = 🔥
I’m still on chapter 2!