Hello and welcome to a very special issue of TouchPoints! For our first four installments of 2025, I am going to collect some common themes that we saw multiple times in websites and ad copy in 2024.

These are broad strokes tips that are usually a good idea to employ. Of course, Nothing is one size fits all.

So for the month of January, our issues will be packed with lessons and examples learned from analyzing over 200 pieces of marketing collateral.

This week, we’re going to tackle a technique I saw multiple times last year: Pairing capabilities with outcomes.

Pair Capabilities with Outcomes

We saw this practice across multiple niches in the SAAS industry, and it seems to be equally important across ads & website messaging.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• A capability is something your product does. It’s like a feature, but usually a bit more broad. Things like “automate email follow ups” or “track employee spending”

• An outcome is a description of how your prospect’s life/work will be after they achieve success with your product. These are the classic “results” we often see in statements like “save time and money”, though I would heavily suggest that you get more specific, like “save 30% more money on hiring”.

• Not only should you pair them into sentences that mention both and tie them together, look for a visual way to put them together in the mind of your ideal audience.

First Example: Melio’s Homepage

We looked at Melio’s Homepage back in June in issue 31. This headline structure can be used for almost any service product. It’s simple, clear, and doesn’t waste a character.

Here’s how you can write a headline like this.

Find a really core competency of your product. Something it does on a fundamental level.

Next, figure out what your happiest customers experience after using the tool.

Then, forget about “Our product does [capability] so you can [outcome]”.

Just write the capability, then the outcome, separated by a period.

Example 2: Sparktoro’s Q & A Style Headline

Here, in issue 34, we see another way of demonstrating how a capability can lead to an outcome.

Sparktoro reverses the order, and phrases it as a question.

So for anyone looking to try this headline, here is the template:

How can you [outcome]? Through [capability]!

Again, you can use the exact same two phrases, but I would suggest making the outcome longer, as Sparktoro has, and making the capability as short as possible.

In the reader’s mind, this will give more weight to the outcome, and make the capability seem like one simple thing that gets them there.

Example 3: A Nested Outcome/Capability Pair by Instantly AI

In issue 46, we looked at Instantly AI’s Homepage. Instantly is going for that same low word count we saw above from Melio, but they are blurring the lines between capability and outcome.

The headline, as a whole, can be viewed as an outcome statement. The enabling capability is within that larger statement in the first line.

In their case, doing sales prospecting differently is an outcome, before the actual results come in. Many of us have services like that, where one of the outcomes is simply doing what we did before, but in an easier/more enjoyable way.

If we are getting strict, “Find, Contact…” is a capability, and “…Your Ideal Clients” is an outcome, but “…Close…” is doing the heavy lifting of both.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to extend our thanks to the following companies for providing examples and insights that made this edition of TouchPoints possible:

• Adfolio - For their awesome repository of B2B ads, with excellent commentary.

• Founderway.AI - An awesome resource that helped me better figure out how to run this newsletter, and forever friends of TouchPoints.

• Concise Copy - Pavlo is an absolute expert at homepage copy. Check out his value prop canvas for a super useful resource.

• Growth Therapy - Amanda is more B2C than me, but her insights about paid media and growth marketing are always welcome.

I sincerely appreciate these folks for providing great content and inspiration. It's great thinkers like these that allow me to deliver the best of modern SaaS marketing to you, our subscribers, every week in TouchPoints.