PASTOR Outperforms AIDA by 5x - Here Is Which Copywriting Formula to Use and When

The Formula Everyone Teaches Is Not the One That Wins

Every copywriting course starts with AIDA. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. It dates back to 1904. It is fine. It works. And on Twitter, it gets about 108 likes per post on average.

PASTOR, a formula most people have never heard of, averages 537 likes per post on the same platform.

537 versus 108. The formula that performs the best is not the one getting taught. And when you look at which formulas convert by channel, scroll platforms, email, landing pages, LinkedIn, the picture gets more interesting.

This article covers what is working right now. Which formula to use for which job. How to stack formulas for harder tasks. And the best practitioners have moved past formulas entirely, and here is what they are doing instead.

The Six Formulas You Need

There are over 200 documented copywriting formulas. You do not need most of them. You need the ones that do specific jobs well. Here is a quick orientation before we go deep.

AIDA - The Old Reliable

Attention. Interest. Desire. Action. This is the workhorse. It is over a century old and still functional across almost every medium. Sales pages, email sequences, social ads. AIDA is the safe default when you are not sure what else to use.

The problem with AIDA is that it is so generic it can become mechanical. A lot of copy that follows AIDA perfectly still reads flat because it hits the steps without doing the underlying emotional work each step requires.

On LinkedIn, AIDA shows up in 18 out of every 29 posts analyzed, more than any other formula. But it only averages 6.8 likes per post. That is the most-used formula on the platform generating near-the-bottom engagement. That tells you something.

PAS - The Direct Response Backbone

Problem. Agitate. Solve. Dan Kennedy called PAS the most reliable copywriting formula for sales ever invented. That is a strong claim. But the historical record backs it up.

Nearly every direct response letter from the golden era of mail-order advertising used PAS as its structural spine. Kennedy himself used it almost exclusively. Gary Bencivenga, widely considered the greatest direct response copywriter of all time, was a known proponent of the 4Ps framework, which is effectively PAS expanded with proof.

PAS works because it starts where the reader already is. They have a problem. They feel it. You name it, sharpen it until it stings, then hand them the exit. The agitation step is the most neglected part. I see this every week - writers naming the problem and jumping straight to the solution. Staying in the problem, making the reader feel its weight, is what separates copy that converts from copy that merely informs.

On Twitter, PAS posts average 299 likes. On LinkedIn, they average 7.5 likes, second only to BAB. It travels well across platforms and copy lengths, from a three-sentence cold email to a 12-page sales letter.

BAB - The Underrated Transformer

Before. After. Bridge. This one does something slightly different from PAS. Instead of amplifying pain, it leads with the contrast between where you are now and where you could be. Then it shows how to get there.

BAB is the highest-performing formula on LinkedIn by engagement, averaging 8.1 likes per post, beating AIDA at 6.8 despite being mentioned seven fewer times in the data. On Twitter it averages 268 likes per post, higher than PAS.

The reason BAB works particularly well on professional networks is the aspiration angle. LinkedIn users are in achievement mode. They respond to transformation framing. Showing someone their desired future state activates a different kind of attention than showing them their current pain.

BAB also shines in cold email. The three-step structure, one or two sentences each, is tight enough to hold attention in an inbox without demanding too much time. A BAB cold email reads like this: here is where you are. Here is where you could be. Here is what bridges the gap. Done.

One practitioner rewrote the copy for 18 e-commerce stores using formula-based approaches and documented an average 22% conversion lift across all 18. Same design. Same products. The prices didn't move. Only the words changed. That is what formula-driven copy rewriting can do when applied systematically.

FAB - The Product Formula

Features. Advantages. Benefits. FAB is narrow in purpose but essential in its lane. It belongs on product pages, feature breakdowns, and anything where you need to translate what a thing does into why anyone should care.

Most product copy fails because it stops at features. 12 megapixels. Waterproof to 30 meters. Ships in 24 hours. These are facts. FAB forces you to go two steps further, what advantage does that feature create, and what benefit does that advantage deliver to this specific buyer?

On Twitter, FAB posts average near-zero engagement. On LinkedIn, they average 5.5 likes, the lowest of the major formulas. This is not because FAB is bad. It is because FAB is a page-level formula, not a social formula. Use it where it belongs: product and feature pages, proposal sections, and anywhere you need to justify a specific capability.

SLAP - The Scroll Stopper

Stop. Look. Act. Purchase. SLAP is built for environments where you have under two seconds and one shot. Short-form ads, Reels, TikTok scripts, flash sale emails. SLAP is a much more action-based template. Every question it prompts is what will make my audience move, rather than why would my audience want this.

It is not built for expensive or complex products. It lives on impulse. For a $27 course, a limited-time offer, or a scroll-stopping ad creative, SLAP is the move. For a $5,000 coaching program, you need something with more runway.

PASTOR - The Formula Twitter Loves Most

Problem. Amplify. Story and Solution. Transformation. Offer. Response. PASTOR is PAS with a superstructure built on top of it. It was developed by copywriter Ray Edwards and sits at the intersection of direct response and narrative persuasion.

Where PAS agitates, PASTOR transforms. The key addition is the middle section, Story, Transformation, and Testimonial, which takes the reader from aware of their problem to believing that a specific change is possible for them, using evidence and narrative rather than logic alone. The Amplify step is also distinct from PAS's Agitate. It asks not just what is painful about the problem, but what it is costing the reader to not solve it. That is a different kind of pressure. Loss aversion, not just pain aversion.

In an analysis of nearly 1,000 tweets, PASTOR posts averaged 537 likes, the highest of any formula tracked, at a 3.01% engagement rate. Yet it appeared in only 2 of the 66 copywriting-relevant tweets isolated. It is massively underrepresented in the content ecosystem given its performance. Every major guide to copywriting formulas lists AIDA first, PASTOR rarely, and sometimes not at all.

The number one ranking page for copywriting formulas is an 11,663-word piece that lists over 200 formulas and does not meaningfully cover PASTOR's performance advantage. PASTOR's performance advantage is worth covering.

Which Formula for Which Channel

I see it constantly - copywriting resources teaching the formulas and stopping there. They tell you what the formulas are. They do not tell you where to use them. Practitioners who have spent real time testing across channels have mapped this out.

The pattern here is clear. Pain-first formulas like PAS and PASTOR work when the reader is already aware of their problem and motivated. Aspiration-first formulas like BAB and AIDA work when you need to show someone a better future before they are ready to confront the problem. Speed-first formulas like SLAP work when you have no time and the offer is simple enough to decide on quickly.

Why PASTOR Outperforms AIDA on Twitter

PASTOR at 537 average likes and 3.01% engagement versus AIDA at 108 average likes and 0.49% engagement reflects something structural about what Twitter's algorithm and audience reward.

PASTOR posts tend to contain narrative. They have a transformation arc. Someone was stuck. They tried something. It changed. Here is what they learned. That kind of post mimics the structure of a story, not a sales pitch. Twitter rewards emotional resonance and shareability, and transformation stories generate both.

AIDA posts, when written formulaically, tend to be more product-forward. Attention hook, interesting facts, reasons to want it, buy now. That sequence works in an email inbox where someone has opted in. On a social feed, it reads like an ad, and social users are extremely good at ignoring things that read like ads.

Use AIDA on Twitter if you want, but the formula is only as good as the emotional work you do inside each step. PASTOR forces you to do more of that work, the amplification step, the story, the transformation, which produces content that is inherently more engaging than a clean four-step sequence.

One experienced practitioner on Reddit put it plainly: do not hunt for the perfect formula. Build a flexible stack and let the audience data tell you which layer is weak. That is the mature version of this conversation. Formulas are a starting point, not a finish line.

Format Matters as Much as Formula

Even the right formula fails if the format is wrong for the platform.

In an analysis of copywriting content on Twitter, numbered list format averaged 110 likes per post. Plain prose averaged 53 likes. Bullet points, the most visually common format in tips content, averaged just 6 likes. Numbered lists outperformed bullets by 18x on the same platform, for the same category of content.

The top-performing single tweet in the dataset used a numbered list format for five copywriting frameworks and earned 605 likes. The format made the value tangible before the reader had finished reading the first item. That is what numbered lists do. They signal structure and completeness before the reader invests any effort.

Bullet points, counterintuitively, perform worst. On Twitter, they visually blend into the noise. On a landing page, they are essential. On a feed, they look like a listicle that ran out of context.

Length matters too. Medium-length posts, 200 to 600 characters, averaged 68 likes on copywriting content. Short posts under 200 characters averaged 62 likes. Long posts over 600 characters dropped to 20 likes. Write enough words to deliver real value, then stop.

The practical takeaway: use numbered lists when you are teaching a formula or framework on social. Use prose when you are telling a transformation story. Save bullets for landing pages and email, where they are visually appropriate and the reader is already engaged.

The Stacking Method - How the Best Practitioners Write

I rarely see a skilled copywriter pick one formula and execute it top to bottom. They stack formulas, using each one at the layer where it does its best work.

A high-converting long-form sales page typically looks like this under the hood. The hero section uses PAS or PASTOR, hooking into the pain and amplifying it before naming the transformation. The solution section uses FAB, translating each capability into benefits the reader cares about. The proof section pulls in testimonials and case studies, which is the T layer from PASTOR. The close uses AIDA's Action step or SLAP's urgency-driven CTA. And the final edit uses 4Cs, Clear, Concise, Compelling, Credible, as a quality check on every section.

Each formula is better at certain jobs than others. PAS names and sharpens pain. FAB translates features. PASTOR wraps transformation around evidence. The 4Cs act as a filter, not a structure. SLAP creates momentum at the close.

Think of it less like following a recipe and more like using the right tool in the right spot. A hammer is not better than a wrench. They solve different problems.

For shorter copy, a cold email, a social post, a short ad, the stack compresses. PAS for the hook, BAB for the body, SLAP for the CTA. Three sentences. You have used three formulas and the reader never sees any of them.

Cold Email Is Where Formula Precision Pays Off Most

Cold email is the leanest, most unforgiving format in copywriting. You have one subject line, three or four sentences, and a CTA. If anything in that sequence is wrong, you get ignored.

One operator sends 1.2 million emails per month. The approach is not AI-generated. It is written by hand, deliberately, because the humanity is where all the value comes from. At that volume, the structure stays the same every time: one problem the reader has. One statement of what changes if they solve it. One clear ask that can be answered in a single word.

That is BAB compressed to its minimum viable structure. It works because it stays in the reader's frame. Their problem, their future, their decision, rather than selling from the sender's perspective.

Another approach that converts in cold email: the three-line PAS format. One sentence naming the problem. One sentence sharpening why it matters right now. The exit gets one sentence, and that sentence does not oversell it. Subject line should be plain text with no selling and no emoji. Something like Quick question works because it promises a conversation, not a pitch.

I watch people bury their CTA under pressure and lose the reply because of it. Want to check it out beats Schedule a call now because it can be answered in one word and puts no pressure on the reader. The reply is the goal. Make the ask small enough that saying yes costs the reader nothing.

One practitioner documented this exact framework in a real campaign for a software tool. Subject line: Quick question. Body: I built a tool that does X benefit. This will help you achieve Y outcome. Want to check it out? Three sentences. That structure, built on compressed BAB, generated consistent replies and closed deals entirely over email with no demos required.

Writing Those First Emails Manually - Why It Matters

Before you scale any cold email formula, write 20 to 30 emails by hand. Not with AI. Not with a template pasted into a mail merge. By hand, one at a time, researching each prospect as you go.

Writing manually forces you to look at your prospects. You visit their websites. You read their job descriptions. You notice patterns. One operator found that CEOs in a specific niche almost all posted a photo of the view from their office to Google Maps. That observation became a personalization that increased reply rates. That kind of intelligence does not come from a Clay table. It comes from paying attention while you write.

Your problem statement determines everything. If your problem statement uses generic language that could apply to any company in any industry, no formula will save it. If it uses the exact language your prospect uses to describe their own situation, even a weak formula will produce replies.

Write 30 cold emails manually. You will find three to five data points that are more relevant to your specific niche than anything a course has ever recommended. Then scale those data points with the formula. That is how cold email works at a high level.

The Bookmark CTA Effect

One finding from Twitter that applies to anyone using social for copywriting content: posts that include some version of save this or bookmark this language averaged 244 likes, versus 26 likes for posts without it. That is an 836% lift for a two-word instruction.

The mechanism is simple. When you ask someone to save a post, you are reframing its value. You are saying: this is reference material, not just entertainment. That reframe changes how the reader evaluates what they just read, and it signals to the algorithm that the post is worth preserving, which affects distribution.

Formula-adjacent is the right word for it. The best-performing copywriting posts on social treat the content like a resource, not a take. They give something the reader will want again, a framework, a checklist, a breakdown, and then tell them to save it. The formula does the persuasion. The bookmark CTA extends the shelf life.

A formula-driven structure gets you partway there. Pairing it with a save CTA that tells the reader this is worth keeping is what drives the engagement numbers at the top of the data set.

Platform-Specific Formula Selection

If you need a quick reference before you sit down to write, here it is broken down by platform and format.

Writing a tweet or X thread about a framework or insight: use PASTOR structure if it is a transformation story. Use numbered list format. Include a save CTA. Keep it between 200 and 500 characters.

Writing a LinkedIn post: BAB outperforms everything else by engagement. Start with the Before, where your audience is right now. Make it specific. Then show the After. Then bridge to how. Keep it to 150 to 300 words.

Writing a cold email: BAB or compressed PAS. Three sentences max for the body. End with a yes or no CTA. Write the first 20 to 30 manually before automating anything.

Writing an ad for a low-ticket offer or flash sale: SLAP. Stop them. Make them look. Ask for the act. Get the purchase. Do not explain the product in depth. Explain the change.

Writing a landing page: PASTOR for the hero and intro. FAB for the features section. Testimonials in the transformation layer. AIDA or SLAP for the CTA section. 4Cs as a final edit pass on every section.

Writing an email nurture sequence: PAS for the problem-framing emails. BAB for the re-engagement emails. PASTOR structure if you are building toward a launch or a webinar. The Offer and Response steps of PASTOR become the pitch email and the follow-up sequence.

What Formula Stacking Looks Like in Practice

The highest-performing copy in almost every category uses formula stacking, but the stacking is invisible to the reader. Here is how it maps out across a landing page built for a mid-ticket offer.

The headline uses a PAS-style problem statement. It names the pain in the reader's own language. The subheadline uses BAB-style contrast, where you are versus where you could be. The first body section uses PASTOR's Amplify step. What is it costing you to not solve this? Quantify if possible. The solution introduction uses PASTOR's Story step. How this solution came to exist. Why it is different. The features section uses FAB. For each feature: what it does, why that matters, what the buyer gains. The proof section uses PASTOR's Transformation and Testimonial steps. Real outcomes. Named or attributed results where possible. The offer section uses PASTOR's Offer step. What is included, what it is worth, what you are paying. Make the math obvious. The CTA section uses AIDA's Action step plus SLAP's urgency. Make the action small. Lower the steps between them and the purchase. Remind them what changes when they say yes. The final check uses 4Cs. Is every sentence Clear? Is the copy Concise? Is the argument Compelling? Is the evidence Credible?

That is eight copywriting formulas working in sequence on one page. None of them are visible to the reader. What is visible is this: this person understands my problem, has a solution that is proven, and is making it easy for me to say yes.

The Anti-Formula Backlash - And Why It Is Partly Right

There is a growing counter-movement in the copywriting world. Practitioners with years of experience are pushing back on formula obsession. One LinkedIn post with real practitioner engagement put it directly: if your copy sounds like a formula, your audience can feel it. Customers think: I have this problem. Does this work?

That is a legitimate critique. The best copy does not feel structured. It feels like a conversation between someone who understands you and a version of your future self who has already solved the problem. Formulas applied robotically produce the opposite. Copy that feels like it was assembled, not written.

A similar sentiment came from Reddit: someone is studying their 47th copywriting framework, meanwhile they cannot write one clear sentence. Studying frameworks instead of writing is the trap. Knowing that PASTOR outperforms AIDA by 5x on Twitter is useful. Spending six hours picking the right formula while avoiding writing is not.

The resolution is this: formulas are scaffolding. You build inside them until the structure is sound, then you pull the scaffolding away. At that point, good copy does not look like any formula. It looks like someone who knows exactly what the reader is thinking and meets them there.

Dan Kennedy understood this. He called PAS the most reliable formula ever invented, and then wrote letters that felt like they were written specifically for you. The formula was the invisible skeleton. The humanity was what you read.

The Rookie to Pro Progression

There is a clear progression in how practitioners use formulas as they develop.

Stage one is formula dependence. Every piece starts with picking a framework. PAS for this, AIDA for that. The formula is the plan and you follow it. This is correct for beginners. It removes blank-page paralysis and forces structural thinking. I see it constantly - writers producing bad copy because they follow no structure at all, not because they followed a formula badly.

Stage two is formula fluency. You know the formulas well enough to mix them. You write PAS hooks instinctively. You know when a BAB setup is better than a problem-agitate structure. You stack without thinking about it. After a year or two of consistent output, this is where you land.

Stage three is formula intuition. You do not think about formulas while writing. You think about the reader. What do they know? What do they fear? What do they want that they have not admitted yet? The formulas are internalized and invisible. The copy feels human because you are not following steps. You are following the reader's emotional logic.

Formula content online targets stage one readers with stage one answers. The goal here is to get you to stage two and show you what stage three looks like from the outside.

Which Formula for Which Stage of the Funnel

Platform is one dimension. Funnel position is another. The same product needs different copy depending on whether the reader just discovered you or has been on your list for six weeks.

Cold traffic, people who have never heard of you, responds best to PAS or SLAP. Name the pain immediately. Do not assume familiarity. Do not lead with your brand story. Lead with their problem. SLAP is useful here for short-form because the Stop step does the filtering work for you, attracting readers who have the problem and letting everyone else scroll past.

Warm traffic, people who know who you are but are not ready to buy, responds best to BAB or PASTOR. They understand the problem. They need to believe the solution is possible for them specifically. The transformation layer in PASTOR, the story, the testimonial, the proven path, is what converts a skeptical warm audience better than any other structure.

Hot traffic, people ready to buy who are comparing options, responds best to FAB plus social proof. They have already decided they want a solution. What they need now is confirmation that your solution is the right one. Feature by advantage by benefit, backed by proof. Make the decision easy. Remove anxiety. A long PAS sequence loses them. They are not in pain. They are in decision mode.

Re-engagement audiences, people who have gone cold or not opened in months, respond best to BAB. Show them where they were when they last engaged. Show them where they could be. Bridge back to your offer. This format works for list reactivation emails, retargeting ads, and winback sequences because it does not assume they remember why they signed up. It rebuilds the case from scratch.

The One Question That Makes Every Formula Work Better

Every formula is a scaffold. The question that fills the scaffold with real copy is this: what does this specific person say to themselves at 2am when they are lying awake thinking about this problem?

Robert Collier said the job of copy is to join the conversation that is already taking place in the reader's mind. That is the whole game. If you know the exact language your reader uses to describe their problem, the specific words, the specific fear, the specific outcome they are hoping for, then you can fill any formula with copy that feels like it was written for one person.

If you do not know that language, no formula will save you. The formula is the structure. Voice-of-customer research is the content that goes inside it. The practitioners who write the best copy do not start with a formula. They start with a conversation. They talk to customers, read reviews, and study support tickets. Then they pick a formula and fill it with what they have learned.

PASTOR becomes most powerful when the Problem step uses the exact language a customer used in a review or support ticket. PAS becomes most powerful when the Agitate step names a specific consequence the customer has already experienced. Read a few support tickets and you will hear exactly what the Before step of BAB should sound like - not a marketer's summary, but the customer's own words to a friend.

That is the difference between using formulas and mastering them.

Building the List That Makes the Formula Count

Copywriting formulas convert the traffic you have. But the formulas do you no good if you cannot reach your audience in the first place.

For B2B operators who write copy and need to reach decision-makers at scale, the list is where everything starts. You can have the best PAS email ever written. But if you are sending it to generic inboxes scraped from an old database, the formula is wasted. The list quality determines the ceiling.

Tools like ScraperCity let you build targeted prospect lists by job title, industry, location, and company size. So when you sit down to write a BAB cold email, you already know exactly who you are writing it for. That is when the formula does its best work. When the Before is specific because the prospect is specific, and the Bridge is relevant because you know what this type of person cares about.

The Honest Answer About Which Formula Is Best

A best formula exists for a specific job, a specific platform, a specific stage of the buyer's journey, and a specific reader who has a specific problem and a specific level of trust in you right now.

PASTOR generates the most engagement on Twitter. That does not mean you should write all your landing pages in PASTOR structure, though it is a solid choice there too. BAB wins on LinkedIn by engagement despite being used less than AIDA. That does not mean AIDA is broken. It means the execution inside it is often weak.

PAS is the most reliable formula for sales that has ever been documented. That comes from Dan Kennedy, who ran direct response at scale for decades. It does not mean PAS is the only formula that works. It means PAS rarely fails when executed well, which is a different thing.

The sophisticated practitioner's answer is this: learn AIDA, PAS, BAB, FAB, SLAP, and PASTOR until you can execute each one without thinking. Then forget which formula you are using and think only about your reader. The formulas will show up in your copy automatically, stacked correctly, because you internalized the emotional logic they each represent.

Until you get there, use the channel table above as your guide. Channel-specific, funnel-specific, format-specific. Pick the right tool for the right job. Write something real. Send it. Look at what happens. Adjust the layer that is weak.

That is not a formula. That is what copywriting looks like when it works.