How to Judge Copy When You're Not a Copywriter
At some point every quarter, a piece of copy lands on your desk for approval — a landing page, a campaign, a rebranded sales deck — and you’re expected to judge work in a craft you don’t practice. Most executives default to one of two failure modes: rubber-stamping whatever the agency sent, or line-editing adjectives. There’s a better test, and it doesn’t require writing a word yourself.
First question: does it explain, or does it move?
Copy comes in two modes. Educational copy explains what the thing is and how it works — features, specs, process. Motivational copy shows what the thing does — the outcome, the after-state, the future the buyer actually wants. “Our fitness program includes meal plans, workout routines, and progress trackers” is educational. “Imagine waking up energized, confident, and stronger every day” is motivational.
The distinction matters because of how buying decisions actually happen. Educational copy asks the reader to absorb new information — effort the brain resists — and detail-heavy pages invite the reader to generate objections until they’ve talked themselves out of acting. Motivational copy works on memory instead: it connects to feelings the reader already has and points them at a future they already want. Readers talk themselves into acting.
Most B2B copy fails this test immediately. It’s written by people close to the product, so it inventories the product. Read your own homepage and count: how many sentences describe what you sell, and how many describe what the customer’s life looks like after buying? If the ratio runs heavily to the first, you’re paying for traffic and handing it a spec sheet.
Second question: is the future doing the work?
All motivation is future-oriented — people aren’t inspired by what happened, they’re inspired by what’s possible, and they aren’t afraid of the past, only of what comes next. Strong copy is built from that material: “once you do this, you’ll have that,” “this frees you to,” “you’ll never again have to.” If every sentence on the page is in the present tense describing the product, nobody’s future is at stake, and copy with no future in it has no pull.
Third question: has the price been separated from the cost?
Good copy never leaves price standing next to nothing. It frames the investment against the value of the transformation or the cost of staying put. If your page states the price and simply hopes, the comparison is happening anyway — in the buyer’s head, against whatever they anchor to — and you’ve surrendered control of it.
The approval checklist
Before signing off on any customer-facing copy, ask four questions. Does it lead with outcomes rather than features? Is the future doing the emotional work? Is price framed against transformation? And could a stranger read one paragraph and say what changes for them if they buy? Copy that clears all four is worth your media budget. Copy that doesn’t will make even great targeting expensive — because the words are the last thing standing between your ad spend and your revenue, and they either carry the weight or they don’t.
Baron Belalov is a fractional CMO working with growth-stage and established companies globally.