Confidence is a funny thing.
How confident are you that you can park your car without crashing it?
How confident are you that you could tightrope between two buildings without a safety net? Or deliver a presentation without notes, to a room of 1,500 people?
Everyone has a variety of scenarios, situations, or tasks that result in differing levels of confidence. I feel fine grabbing a mic and blasting through La Bamba at karaoke, but get the sweats walking into a pub on my own—even if I’m meeting friends.
You probably also have a patchwork of confidence situations ranging from a ‘hey that’s a breeze’ to a ‘not on your Nelly can I do that’!
Apparently there are techniques that can help you condition yourself to feel the same level of confidence you have when doing something simple—like picking up a pencil on your desk—when faced with a situation that you normally wouldn’t feel confident in. This isn’t an email about those techniques, I’m not an expert in any of that there stuff.
BUT here’s what I do know.
As marketers, we can make the mistake of assuming our confidence fingerprint—the things we feel confident about—is similar to that of our customers.
And it’s probably not.
You know your product works. You know what you have gets people results. You know people will love and enjoy your offer…IF they accept it.
But your customers don’t know your product like you do. If there’s even a tiny crack in their confidence armour, they can quickly talk themselves out of making that purchase.
In fact, I’m sure there’s been times you’ve talked yourself out of:
- Doing something
- Which would get you something you want
- Because you weren’t confident it would work
I’ve split those out, not because I love bullet points, (though they are a good friend to copywriters) but because they are 3 key elements of any sales message:
- Do this thing
- To get these results
- And here’s why you can trust this will work for you
It’s easy to miss point number 3, especially driving home the ‘for you’ part.
If you don’t think about that potential lack of confidence in your customer when you write your copy, you risk not doing enough to convince them that what you have will work.
If they don’t think it will work for them, it doesn’t matter how attractive your benefits are, they won’t be tempted to buy because they will feel those results aren’t possible.
That’s what this week’s podcast is all about. In 17 minutes I cover 5 common ‘it won’t work for me’ objections with tips about how to combat them when writing your copy.
And be sure to check out the sketch where I overcome my lack of confidence to perform for the Queen…
Till next time, have the confidence to keep believing. I’m rooting for you.