The Demand State Ladder
🔥How context + urgency multiply conversions, LLM traffic is tiny but it converts better than any other channel, and more!
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In this newsletter, you’ll find:
🔥 The Demand State Ladder: How Context + Urgency Multiply Conversions
📊 LLM Traffic Is Tiny But It Converts Better Than Any Other Channel
🏆 Ad of the Day
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🔥 The Demand State Ladder: How Context + Urgency Multiply Conversions
The person casually browsing for a new moisturizer, the one who’s been dealing with hormonal acne for six months and is running out of patience, and the one already using a mid-range serum but quietly wondering if there’s something that actually works, these aren’t just different customers.
They’re in completely different headspaces. And headspace determines whether someone buys or keeps scrolling.
The mistake: building one funnel for all three
Most brands pick an average. They write for the vaguely interested, moderately motivated, somewhat skeptical buyer. And in doing so, they convert none of them particularly well.
The discovery buyer finds it too pushy. The triggered buyer finds it too slow. The switcher doesn’t see a compelling reason to bother.
You don’t have a traffic problem. You have a pressure-matching problem.
The two levers: context and intensity
Context is what caused someone to start looking, a friend’s recommendation, a bad skin week, an ad that stopped their scroll, or two months of no results from their current routine.
Intensity is how much it matters right now.
Is this a “I’d love clearer skin eventually” or a “my skin is breaking out, and I have an event in five days.”
These two variables, combined, tell you almost everything about what your creative needs to do.
What each state actually needs from you
Discovery buyers are browsing with low stakes and an open mind. They don’t need urgency; they need education and a low-friction entry point. Heavy CTAs here create resistance, not conversion.
Comparison buyers have already bought into the category. They’re not deciding whether to fix their skin, they’re deciding who to trust with it. What kills you here isn’t weak copy. It’s the absence of direct contrast. If you won’t tell them why you’re different from the $40 serum they’re already using, they’ll stay with what they know.
Triggered buyers are in a different psychological state entirely. They’re not evaluating, they’re reacting. Someone with a flare-up two weeks before a wedding isn’t reading ingredient lists.
The job of your creative is to reduce the feeling of risk as fast as possible. Specific before/afters, fast-acting claims, strong guarantees. Every extra second of friction costs you the sale.
The funnel mechanic most people miss
As intensity rises, tolerance for ambiguity drops.
Low urgency buyers will read, explore, compare, and come back. High urgency buyers make fast decisions, but only when you make it feel safe to do so. That means proof moves higher on the page. The headline carries more weight. The guarantee becomes a core part of the offer, not fine print.
If your highest-urgency traffic is landing on the same page as your discovery traffic, you’re leaving a significant percentage of conversions on the table every single day.
The actual opportunity
You don’t need new products or new audiences. You need to stop averaging across demand states and start designing for the specific psychological environment your buyer is operating in.
One serum. Three conversion mechanics. Most brands only ever build one.
This is exactly what Motion’s Creative Strategy Bootcamp gets into: live ad breakdowns, pressure-mapped creative strategy, and real feedback on what’s working. Registration closes March 17th. You can secure your free spot.
📊 LLM Traffic Is Tiny But It Converts Better Than Any Other Channel
A 13-month analysis of LLM referral traffic across multiple brand sites reveals a channel that’s small in size but punching well above its weight in conversions.
The Breakdown:
1. LLM referral traffic is still small - LLM referrals account for under 2% of total referral traffic on average. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude combined drive fewer than 2 in every 100 referral visits, making it a low-priority volume play for now.
2. LLM traffic is growing fast- Comparing the first and second half of 2025, LLM referral traffic grew 80% on average. Some brands saw 300% increases, with overall volume tripling across the full year.
3. Sources referenced in responses are shifting - Monitoring 5,000+ prompts showed YouTube and Reddit citations rising sharply inside LLM responses. Third-party tools are the only way to catch these changes.
4. LLMs convert at a very high rate compared to other channels - LLM-referred visitors convert at roughly 18%, beating paid search, SEO, and PPC. They arrive with strong intent, making them the highest-quality referral audience available right now.
Don’t overreact. Monitor the trend lines, understand where citations come from, and watch how this audience behaves once it lands. This space is moving fast, and if you stay close to the data, you’ll be better positioned as it evolves.
🏆 Ad of the Day
What Works:
“Pretty in Ink” Is Doing Heavy Lifting - That headline is a cultural reference (Pretty in Pink), a subculture nod (tattoo culture), and a product descriptor all in one. It signals belonging before a single spec is read.
The Set Design Is the Targeting - Dumbbells + vanity mirror + pearl necklace + spilled lipstick + makeup brushes. They didn’t style this for a gym. They styled it for the woman who lives between both worlds and feels like no brand gets her
Specs as an Afterthought - Locking Lid. Stainless Steel. Full Wrap Illustration. They’re there, but floated casually around the product like graffiti tags, not a feature list. This is smart; specs don’t sell to this buyer. Identity does. The specs just handle objections quietly.
Design the scene for the person, not the product category. The moment your ad stops looking like a category ad and starts looking like a lifestyle snapshot, you’ve won attention that no amount of targeting budget can buy.
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🧠 AI Made Ads Easier. It Also Raised the Bar.
Starts March 17 | Tuesdays at 1 PM EST | Virtual Bootcamp
Volume no longer creates an advantage. Structure does. In this free 8-week live program, Motion walks you through Foundations → Sprints → Masters to help you craft intentional hooks, execute full creative cycles, and scale results with advanced strategic frameworks.
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