Zia Reddy

13/07/2026

I am guessing it was mostly B, right?

And that is called "concrete language."

Concrete language describes something a person can picture, check, or reasonably expect. Instead of telling someone that a service is “reliable,” it explains what the business does that makes it reliable. Instead of calling a product “versatile,” it shows what the product can do.

And there's a why this makes a difference in how people respond.

Grant Packard and Jonah Berger analysed more than 1,000 real conversations between customers and employees and conducted additional controlled experiments.

They found that customers were more satisfied, more willing to buy, and sometimes spent more when employees used concrete language. All because specific language made customers feel that the employee had listened to them and understood what they needed.

The research focused on customer conversations, but it gives us a useful communication check for marketing too.

Words such as “reliable,” “flexible,” “personalised,” “high-quality,” and “responsive” sound positive, but they leave the customer to decide what those claims mean.

Whereas concrete details give the claim some substance.

“Responsive support” could become

“Send us a message and a member of our team will reply within one working day.”

“Easy online booking” could become

“Choose an available time online and receive confirmation immediately.”

I'm not saying you should cram every sentence with numbers, features, and operational details. Just use concrete language where you are making an important claim, explaining what happens next, or showing why someone should choose you.

So, before finalising your copy, ask:

What would the customer see, receive, or experience if this claim were true?

Then replace the adjective with the evidence.

Comment "CONCRETE," and I’ll send you a list of 15 specific examples across a bunch of business types.

Source: Grant Packard and Jonah Berger, “How Concrete Language Shapes Customer Satisfaction,” Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 47, Issue 5, February 2021, pages 787–806.

10/07/2026

A design does not get read in the neat order it was made.

Someone might notice the headline first, then the next strongest line, then the smaller supporting point, and only then decide whether the paragraph is worth reading. The design either helps that sequence happen clearly, or it quietly makes the reader organise everything alone.

That is the basic idea behind visual hierarchy. It is the order in which a design asks to be understood.

The biggest line pulls attention first because size, weight and contrast are doing their job. The next strongest element gives the eye somewhere else to go. The smaller sentence might be read later, once the main message has made the design feel interesting enough to revisit. The paragraph has a different role again, because body copy usually gets read once the information already feels relevant, useful or important enough to deserve more time.

This matters in marketing because a design usually has a job to do. It might need to introduce an offer, explain an idea, build trust, promote an event, sell a product or move someone to the next step. When every element is treated as equally important, the viewer has to organise the information alone, and that is a lot to ask from someone giving the design a few seconds of attention.

Before you design anything, it helps to ask what someone should notice first, what they need to understand next, what can wait until they care, and how the layout can make that order easier to follow.

I wrote a fuller article on visual hierarchy, what the research says about how people scan information, and how this translates into better website structure.

Read it here: https://www.ziareddy.com/post/visual-hierarchy

Save this for your next design review.

09/07/2026

Most people do not look at a design and read everything in the order we hoped they would.

Which is rude, really, after all that careful copywriting.

But it is also useful to remember.

People scan first. They look for the thing that feels most worth their attention, and then they decide whether the rest of the information deserves more time.

That is the basic idea behind visual hierarchy.

The process of deciding what someone should notice first, what they need to understand next, what can wait until they care, and designing your content helps them move through the information.

This matters in ads, social graphics, presentations and websites, but websites are where it becomes especially obvious.

If everything on your website is treated as equally important, your visitor has to organise the information alone. And most people will not give a website that much goodwill.

Good design does not demand attention all at once. It earns it in the right order.

I wrote a full article on this below... including examples.

https://www.ziareddy.com/post/visual-hierarchy

06/07/2026

This definitely isn’t news to anyone reading this, because if you’ve spent even a second on LinkedIn this past year, you’ll know that AI is recommending businesses to its users.

And before we sweep every marketing plan off our desks and dedicate every waking minute to hacking the algorithm, it is worth looking at what people actually do after AI recommends a business.

Yext surveyed 3,848 people worldwide about how they use AI to find and choose local businesses.

It found that 42.7% had used AI to search for a local business in the previous month, and 28% had tried a new business within six months because of an AI recommendation.

Only 5% made a purchase immediately. Most continued their research:

• 53% searched Google or Bing
• 49% visited the business’s website
• 42% clicked the sources cited by the AI
• 28% checked reviews
• 20% visited the business’s social media

AI is becoming another place where customers discover businesses, and websites, reviews, search results and social media all help them decide what to do next.

Businesses should make sure:

• Their website explains what they sell, who it is for and why someone should choose it
• Their contact details, delivery information and opening hours are accurate
• Their Google Business Profile is current
• Their reviews are recent and responded to
• Their product and service pages answer common questions
• Their pricing, availability, lead times and next steps are easy to find
• Their information is consistent wherever customers look

You’ll be pleased to know that this does not require an entirely new marketing strategy. Customers are checking the same familiar things before making a decision, and AI has added another route into that process.

One caveat: Yext sells search and brand visibility technology, and the data is self-reported, so the findings should be treated as an indicator of changing behaviour.

The useful question is:

“What will a potential customer find when they check an AI recommendation?”

Yext (2026) *Ask, Verify, Act: How Consumers Navigate Local Search in the Age of AI*. Available at: https://www.yext.com/resources/consumer-search-behaviors-full-report (Accessed: 5 July 2026).

21/04/2026

People act when something feels personally relevant.

This comes up quite often when you start refining messaging. There is usually a concern that narrowing the focus will mean leaving people out or reducing reach. It can feel like you are saying less and limiting who can engage with what you are putting out.

What tends to happen in practice is that people only engage properly when they can see themselves in what they are reading. If the message is broad, it may make sense, but it is easy to move past. If it reflects a situation they recognise, it holds their attention for longer and feels more worth responding to.

There is strong research behind this as well.

For example, the Elaboration Likelihood Model by Petty and Cacioppo (1986) shows that when something feels personally relevant, people are more likely to process it more carefully. Meaning that, if your customer finds your message specifically relevant to them, they'll be more open to what you have to say.

If you look at your own ads or content through that lens, applying this becomes quite practical. Instead of asking whether more people could relate to the message, focus on whether the right person would recognise themselves in it immediately. That usually means being more specific about the role, the situation, or the problem you are speaking to, and allowing that to carry the message rather than trying to include every possible audience in the same space.

In most cases, improving the performance of your marketing campaigns comes from making it easier for someone to see that the message applies to them, rather than trying to make it apply to more people.
Source:

Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., Kao, C. F., & Rodriguez, R. (1986). Central and peripheral routes to persuasion: An individual difference perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(5), 1032–1043. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.51.5.1032.

20/04/2026

This week’s article is a bit of a long one because it deals with a form of marketing FOMO that I’ve had to deal with in the past, and the answer to this is supported by quite an extensive number of peer-reviewed studies. So, I needed to dig into the research and make sure that I cover this topic as thoroughly as possible.

I was walking a client through a lead generation campaign last week, and as we were wrapping up, the client paused and asked whether we should also mention all the other people who could use the product. And look, their thinking made sense on the surface. If more people can benefit from their product, it surely makes sense to say so somewhere in the ad.

But, while it may feel natural to broaden a message so it can stretch further, cover more ground, and appeal to more people, the difficulty with this is that attention does not expand in the same way.

So, in this article, I answer the question: why does broadening a message often make it harder for anyone to act on it?

https://www.ziareddy.com/post/why-people-don-t-act-even-when-they-could

Trying to reach everyone? That might be why your ads aren’t working. Here’s how to fix your targeting, messaging, and conversion flow.

13/04/2026

I was on a call last week, going through campaign performance with a client.

We’d covered the setup, looked at what was working, agreed on next steps… all fairly straightforward.

And then right at the end, they asked:

“Is there anything else we should be thinking about that we haven’t covered?”

It’s a good question. But it’s usually not about the campaigns.

It’s that feeling of knowing there’s something missing… you just don’t know what it is.

In this week’s article, I talk about where this question actually comes from, how it shows up in day-to-day work, and what you can do to get out of that loop.

You can read it here: https://www.ziareddy.com/post/what-if-i-m-missing-something

That constant feeling of “am I missing something?” in your marketing? Here’s why it happens and how to fix it with a clearer structure.

10/04/2026

1. You can’t hit a goal if you haven’t clearly defined what the client actually needs.

I spent time this week on improving performance on a paid campaign. And the results were amazing... but the client still wasn't happy. Why? Because, as we were discussing results, it became clear that there was a gap between need and expectation. We were working towards what the client needed, but that wasn't what they wanted. Once we got specific about that, the direction of the work changed, and the next steps made a lot more sense.

Related to this...

2. Your client is not supposed to have the answer. If they did, they wouldn’t need you.

Clients come to you with a problem, or a version of one. Or they even sometimes come to you with something they see as the solution to a problem. But part of the job is to work through that with them, ask the right questions, read between the lines, and shape what needs to happen before getting into ex*****on.

3. Setup matters more than people think.

Yes, sometimes done is better than perfect, but when it comes to systems, pay attention. When systems and tracking aren’t set up properly, it shows up everywhere. In reporting, in decision-making, and in how confident you feel about what you’re looking at. Taking the time to do it properly at the start saves a lot of time later.

08/04/2026

I put together a simple check this week after seeing a pattern across a few campaigns.

If your content is doing its job but people aren’t taking action, the issue is often not the CTA itself. It’s the step you’re asking someone to take. This worksheet will help you check whether your CTA actually fits the moment your content creates.

It walks you through:

1. What your content is really doing for the reader
2. What you’re asking them to do next
3. Whether those two things line up

It takes a few minutes to go through, but it makes the gaps very obvious when they’re there.

You can work through the worksheet here or download a PDF version at ziareddy.com.

07/04/2026

I’ve been noticing this more and more in campaigns lately that a lot of the time, we’re asking people to take an action because it’s what WE want to happen next, rather than thinking about what would make sense for THEM in that moment.

Someone reads something or watches something and they’re just starting to figure things out. They’re getting a better sense of what’s going on or seeing something they hadn’t quite put into words before.

Then the next step asks them to book a call, request a quote, or make a decision that feels further along than where they are.

When you look at your own content this way, it becomes much easier to spot where things aren’t making sense, and whether it really fits the moment the content creates.

A simple way to check it is to take one piece of content and ask yourself what it’s actually doing for the person on the other side. Are you helping them realise something? Are you helping them understand what’s going on? Are you helping them weigh up options?

Then look at what you’re asking them to do next.

If someone reads it and walks away thinking, “Okay, I think I get what’s happening now,” but the next step is to book a call or request a quote, there’s a gap there. The content has moved them forward, but not far enough for that kind of action.

In that case, the next step should stay closer to where they are. Something that helps them explore their situation a bit more, reflect on it, or see how it applies to them.

That small change in the way you structure and use your CTAs really changes the role they play in the overall customer journey.