Copywriting Friday: Succeeding in a Darn Tough business

Published: November 2025

Copywriting Friday highlights the tools and techniques of persuasive content. Some of the examples may seem dated, but the principles are timeless (and critical for conversion rate optimization). Enjoy.

Whatever business you’re in, we’re sure you have competitors. Quite possibly, fierce ones. Even so, it’s likely that you don’t have quite as many competitors as sock manufacturers do.

If you head over to Walmart.com and type in “socks”, they’ll show you over 1,000 results. Here are a few of the lower-price offerings we found.

A Walmart.com product grid showing low-cost socks in various styles and colors, highlighting cheap competitors to Darn Tough.

By contrast, the subject of this article is a company called Darn Tough Socks. A pair of their socks won’t set you back 9 cents or even 9 dollars, but 18 dollars (and that’s Darn Tough’s cheapest pair). That’s 200 times as much as the cheapest Walmart socks.

Here’s their homepage.

The Darn Tough homepage featuring hikers wearing socks in muddy terrain and showcasing various sock styles for men and women.

Are Darn Tough socks worth it? The answer lies in copywriting, branding, and storytelling… and we’re going to find out by asking four questions.

As you read them, think about how you would answer these questions for your own business.

Four questions to assess your competitive dominance

1. Do you hide from your guarantee… or lean into it?

It’s common for businesses to say ‌something is “guaranteed” but just as common for them to stop there. They make visitors hunt for the details of the guarantee, and if they find them, visitors may well feel let down. That’s because the guarantee is larded up with fine print about pre-authorizations, restocking fees, time limits, packaging requirements (“…in new, unused, unopened condition in original packaging with all tags intact….”), and so on.

Here’s the hidden good news: We all expect this sort of bait and switch; so when we come across a company that truly does guarantee its products and is proud of it, that company stands out.

A pair of blue and orange Darn Tough socks beside the headline “Guaranteed for Life” describing the lifetime replacement promise.

The copy here is worth reading again:

Guaranteed for Life
With seven pairs of Darn Tough socks, you’ll be set for life. Not only is that one pair for each day of the week, but since they’re Guaranteed for Life, you’ll never need to buy another. If they ever rip, tear, or lose their fit, simply send them back and we’ll replace them for FREE.

Not much wiggle room, is there? Simple, straightforward, and impossible to lawyer out of.

Here’s an excellent video about Darn Tough, which includes the guarantee. Note the title, “We Don’t Have a Great Story, We Are a Great Story.”

Notice how they not only guarantee their socks, they’re proud of the big bags of returned socks!

We can imagine that another company might panic and say:

“You can’t show that! It’s implying that our socks are rubbish because so many are being returned! This will bankrupt us! We need to water down our guarantee!”

But that’s not the impression viewers or visitors get. Instead, they hear about how people are sending in their well-worn socks with testimonials that come across more like love letters about their sock adventures. Talk about standing apart from the crowd, and above it. Part of that is because of the guarantee isn’t qualified in a dozen different ways.

By the way, it would be a mistake to think: Well that’s easy for low-ticket products like socks. We sell high-ticket items, and a strong guarantee could bankrupt us. We recommend you read an excellent book called 80/20 Sales and Marketing by Perry Marshall. In it, you’ll learn that a company did very well by standing behind its very-high-end specialized valves for the pharmaceutical industry to the tune of $40,000 per installation. Guaranteed. Here’s how they describe their guarantee:

ASEPCO’s Unique Tank Valve Guarantees
• Lifetime Free Replacement Of Any Broken Valve—No Matter Who Broke It!
• Top-Quality Product, Or It’s Free!
• On-Time Delivery, Or It’s Free!
• Performance As Promised, Or We Pay You!

They have an average of four claims a year, so they’re out about $160,000. They also have a 90% market share.

2. Do you handle your visitors’ concerns before you think of your own?

We all need to make sales, but are you putting visitors’ minds at ease first?

After all, socks get worn out pretty much before any other garment. If you’re laying down $18 or more for a single pair, you may wonder if that’s a good trade.

In emails from Darn Tough, we first can’t miss two references to their guarantee at the top:

An email from Darn Tough Socks showing colorful spools of yarn and the headline ‘Unconditionally Guaranteed for Life,’ promoting limited edition knits.

By getting customer concerns out of the way first, the company is free to focus on other things they may be interested in, like “limited edition knits.”

What is the “top of mind” concern for your customers, similar to the durability of socks? And how do you address that concern right at the beginning of your messaging?

We eat our own dog food at Conversion Rate Experts. Even though we have a ridiculous number of testimonials, we know that your business is not exactly like any other. You may justifiably wonder if our methodology will work right now, in your particular situation. That’s why our guarantee is straightforward:

We offer a six-week money-back guarantee. You must think we’re a good fit, or we’ll give you a full, prompt refund.

Our goal is to put your mind at ease, allowing you to focus on the fun part—the ROI upside.

3. To what degree are you likely to be “the one,” and they can stop searching?

You’ve probably gone through your share of doctors, auto mechanics, accountants, and other specialists over your lifetime. If you’re lucky, you’ve found someone who’s a real “find”—someone who does the job well and on whom you can now implicitly rely. For this one specialty, you can stop looking, and hope they don’t retire soon.

That’s the feeling you get from Darn Tough. You buy a pair of their socks and will have them basically forever, given the guarantee.

A dog tugging on a sock in a Darn Tough ad with the caption ‘Ate it? We cover that,’ illustrating their durability guarantee.

To what degree do you think your own customers feel like they’re done looking? How many of them renew again and again? How many refer their friends to you? How many testimonials have you collected, and what do they say? You can never do too much in making the case that you deserve the title of “The One.”

4. Does your brand resonate with the values of your customers?

We’ve talked about Patagonia, which is famous not only for durable products but also for its environmental advocacy. Even if you’re just buying a jacket, some of that caring for the earth feels like it rubs off on you.

Darn Tough has done the same thing. It recently marked a milestone for giving away its millionth meal to Vermont families in need.

A group of Darn Tough employees celebrating outside the Vermont Foodbank after donating one million meals.

Another example: H-E-B is a grocery chain that operates only in Texas and Mexico and is in an industry with razor-thin profit margins. Even so, it found a way to create a fleet of disaster-relief vehicles and has facilitated more than one billion pounds (in weight) of food bank donations.

A lineup of H-E-B disaster relief and mobile kitchen trucks arranged in a semicircle, ready for community support.

None of these examples came about because the companies were hugely successful and then acted on their corporate values—it’s the other way around.

Darn Tough is a great example of doing well while doing good.

Have you shared your values with your customers?

Maybe you have a great story that’s buried on your site, or not there at all, because you thought it wasn’t relevant to whatever product or service you sell. The legendary copywriter Gary Halbert said that people seek two things—content and contact.

Your values may very well provide some of the contact that not only resonates with your visitors, but that they can remember you by. It’s easy to imagine Darn Tough customers telling their friends: “It’s cool that they let their employees design their own socks, plus they’ve given away a million meals.”

Four questions, one blueprint

When you rate well on these four questions, imagine the word-of-mouth advertising, good will—and market share—you will generate. And if you’re not there yet, you now have a blueprint for what you need to work on.

See you next time on Copywriting Friday.

How much did you like this article?

“£1 million a year in additional revenue,” says Mert Yashar, co‑founder, House of Worktops

What’s your goal today?

1. Hire us to grow your company

We’ve generated hundreds of millions for our clients, using our unique CRE Methodology™. To discover how we can help grow your business:

Read our case studies, client success stories, and video testimonials.
Learn about us, and our unique values, beliefs and quirks.
Visit our “Services” page to see the process by which we assess whether we’re a good fit for each other.
Schedule your FREE website strategy session with one of our renowned experts.

Schedule your FREE strategy session

2. Learn how to do conversion

Download a free copy of our Amazon #1 best-selling book, Making Websites Win, recommended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Moz, Econsultancy, and many more industry leaders. You’ll also be subscribed to our email newsletter and notified whenever we publish new articles or have something interesting to share.

Browse hundreds of articles, containing an amazing number of useful tools and techniques. Many readers tell us they have doubled their sales by following the advice in these articles.

Download a free copy of our best-selling book