How To Utilize Persuasive Messaging With AI To Optimize Branding Strategy

This interview features Brian Massey, a self-made “conversion scientist” and founder of Conversion Sciences LLC. He is joined by Kent Lewis, Executive Director of NextNW. Brian will be leading our upcoming webinar, The Science of Persuasive Messaging Using AI and A/B Testing taking place on September 9th, 2025.

Kent: Brian, you’ve been called a “conversion scientist” for years, but how has the field of conversion optimization evolved since you first started? What fundamental shifts have you witnessed in how businesses approach persuasion and testing?

Brian: The biggest shift (and the thing we’ve invested most in) is that we don’t have to explain to businesses why they need to optimize their website. This was, of course, not the case for most of the 18 years we’ve been in business.

Kent: In your upcoming webinar, you’re exploring AI’s role in persuasive messaging. How is artificial intelligence changing the game for conversion optimization, and what specific AI applications are you most excited about for crafting compelling messages?

Brian: We expect AI to change just about everything. Most strikingly, AI can pretend to be any employee or contractor we want it to be. Humans have a hard time getting outside of their own heads.

Kent: You’ve built your career on understanding what makes people click, convert, and engage. What are the core psychological principles that remain constant in persuasive messaging, even as technology evolves?

Brian: People make decisions in different ways. Some of this behavior is a result of their personality. Some of it relates to their situation.

We try to make sure that the messaging we test addresses four kinds of visitors. Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg laid this out for us in their book “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?”

There are four very different “modes of persuasion” among our website visitors.

Methodicals want to know the details of your product or service.
Competitives want to know how you will make them better in life and at work.
Humanists want to know how it will feel to buy from you.
Spontaneous are looking for a way to take action.

We will find that our best customers fall into one or more of these categories. And we will also find that whoever is writing the copy and selecting the images will NOT be able to write for visitors who fall into different categories.

I write in a more Humanist style. When I’m asked to write for a Spontaneous visitor (the visitors who are just looking for a reason to take action), it feels like I’m the host of “Let’s Make a Deal!” But a Spontaneous visitor will leave the site long before I’ve finished explaining what it’s like to buy in my Humanist voice.

I’ll explain how to get the language models to rewrite copy to appeal to different modes of persuasion.

Kent: Traditional A/B testing has been the gold standard for optimization, but how does AI enhance or potentially disrupt this approach? Are there new testing methodologies emerging that leverage AI capabilities?

Brian: Let me be frank: A/B testing is going to be upended by AI.

Language models will eventually become so good at predicting the outcome of A/B tests, that we won’t need to run most of the tests we run today.

How will we know that the language models are telling us the truth? By A/B testing their recommendations.

There is a whole new area of testing that is designed to support the rollout of AI models and verify the decisions they are making.

Some tests we currently run are low-stakes (and probably should not be A/B tested anyways). Let the AI decide.

For everything else, let the AI weigh in and then verify their decision with an A/B test.

This makes your business hallucination resistant.

Kent: From your experience working with countless businesses, what are the most common mistakes you see companies making in their messaging strategies? How can AI help identify and correct these blind spots?

Brian: The biggest mistakes are these:

Writing logically, rationally. For most visitors, this means offering nothing that differentiates you from your competitors.
Not spending as much time on images as on written words. I think that AI will make it easy for us to create compelling images, just as editors allowed us to create compelling copy. I hope that we’ll stop grabbing stock photos of smiling, diverse people for our websites and provide images that move our value proposition forward.
Failing to embed your messaging in everything you do. For example, the selection of words used on an apparel website’s navigation can tell the visitor a lot. “Mens, Womens, Kids, Clearance” is one option. Every apparel site uses this. The words “Daring, Functional, Natural, Clearance” would suggest to visitors something more about how you curate your products. Only about 9% to 15% of your visitors will click on the nav menu. Should you use it for navigation or for communication?

Kent: While conversion rates are important, what other metrics should businesses track to truly understand the effectiveness of their persuasive messaging? How do you define success in the modern conversion landscape?

Brian: The ability of your brand to shine through your messaging is most easily measured by increases in sales, revenue, qualified leads, and new members of your email or SMS lists. Most A/B tests are focused on these metrics.

The measure of a brand’s ability to enlist visitors into your vision is measured on a longer-term basis.

Customer lifetime value
Loyalty program subscribers
Repeat purchases
Longevity of engagements

This is why a long-term messaging optimization program is essential. Enjoy the higher acquisition rates in the short term. But, eventually, you need to be evaluating your success over years.

Kent: As we increasingly rely on AI for messaging optimization, how do we ensure we’re not losing the human touch that makes messaging genuinely persuasive? What’s the ideal balance between automation and human insight?

Brian: Most human marketers are not good at creating persuasive copy and images. There, I said it. AI can be much more interesting. Properly trained, AI will write more consistently in a brand’s voice than any human would.

Let AI do the writing for you. Humans will teach the AI to write for their audience—their tribe. Humans will test this copy to ensure it’s delivering what the tribe expects from us. Humans will mix things up and try new things. AI provides consistency.

Few humans will be able to compete with the writing of an AI if a human has properly trained it.

Kent: What’s one specific strategy or tool that webinar attendees will be able to implement immediately after your presentation to improve their messaging effectiveness?

Brian: Attendees will be able to rewrite their website copy to better appeal to the largest segments of their visitors.

Attendees learn to love the rewritten copy provided by AI. They will not like it. They should test it anyway.

Attendees will be embarrassed by the images they choose to support their written copy. Visits to stock photo sites will drop.

Attendees will realize that their ability to teach a language model how to write persuasively will be far more valuable than their own ability to write. This is good.

The Science of Persuasive Messaging Using AI and A/B Testing

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