This show is all about tackling beliefs – beliefs that can stop your customer, not just from buying your product, but from listening to you completely. I’m focusing on the three key beliefs that hold people back and I’ll be telling you how to:
- Make people believe you.
- Convince people that you have the solution to their problem.
- Show people that your product/service will work for them.
I’ve created some fun sketches to exemplify the points above in a way that I hope you’ll find entertaining. Included this week is: my dad’s guide to an easy life, a milkman with big shoes to fill and the story of how an ordinary guy with a big dream and few egg boxes conquered the World Fencing Championships!
But seriously, I want to help you gain your customer’s trust straight away and overcome the initial obstacles that get in the way. This podcast will help you to tap in to what is really holding your customers back from being more receptive to your marketing so that you can cater to their needs. I’ll show you how to get your customers to believe you, realise you have the solution to their problem and trust that your product/ service will work for them.
As always, please feel free to post any comments or queries below and remember, every Thursday at 4:00pm UK time, I’m going to be online for 30 minutes doing a Q & A session so if you have anything you’d like to ask me or if you’d like me to review your copy and do a copy critique, I’d love to see you then.
Links:
- Register for the Thursday Q & A session
- Register for the Write with Influence course
Show Transcript:
Amy:
Hello and welcome to yet another round of Write with Influence, the pocket size podcast that helps you write better copy and make more sales. I hope you’re keeping well. In the UK we’re still on a lockdown, so no public gatherings, staying at home. . . personally, not much has changed for me as most of my work is online and Malc is still having to work because his firm is making components for the emergency hospitals that are being built. I suppose a slight difference is that I’m doing a lot more video conference meetings right now and I’ll be honest, I’m getting a little bit lackadaisical when it comes to my appearance. It used to be that I would try as hard as if I was, for example, going up to London to meet someone in person – smart clothes, hair done, makeup on, but with so many more video meetings I just, I can’t be expected to sustain that level of personal grooming. This is someone who works from home -my regular, hair style is a bobble and my attire is conference t-shirts and jeans. So, I am having to relax my standards a little bit. . . well, quite a bit. It’s got to the point now where, because my eyebrows are fair, normally if I was having a video meeting or just a meeting I would pencil them in so that people could see my eyebrows and well, it has got to that stage now where I only draw them on if I really want to impress someone or if I don’t know them well enough and I worry that they’re not going to be able to interpret my facial expressions without said eyebrows. Is she surprised? Is she annoyed? No idea!
These are very strange times indeed and don’t forget that right now, I am offering some additional free resources for you.
So, on Mondays I’m releasing a short lecture and that’s based on my workshop training materials where I share some of the specific copywriting techniques and exercises that I use with clients. On Thursdays I’m doing a 30 minute ask me almost anything session that’s at 4:00pm UK time. I’m really enjoying them. I haven’t been promoting them a lot right now with everything else that I’ve got on, but I love spending 30 minutes with a handful of people and helping in any which way that I can. And yes, I will draw on my eyebrows for those sessions!
So, let’s get on with today’s episode. Today we’re talking about beliefs and in particular beliefs that can stop your customer, not just from buying your product, but from listening to you completely. We all know that in marketing, you sell the benefits, you agitate pain points, but if you don’t first tackle the beliefs that can stop someone even considering your product or service, it almost doesn’t matter how much marketing you throw at them, they’re not going to budge. For example, you could tell me about all the amazing benefits of skydiving, the feeling of flying, the views, the thrilling experience, the once in a lifetime opportunity that I’ll remember for the rest of my life, but if you don’t first tackle my belief that skydiving is dangerous, that my parachute will not open and that my reserve parachute will also not open, well, I don’t care how wonderful it sounds because, not to sound like Mr T but, I ain’t going on no plane (it sounds way better when he says it). Look, dismantling these beliefs is the first gate that you have to get through before any of your other marketing is going to work and I’ve identified three common beliefs that can hold people back. The first one is that people don’t believe you. The second is that people don’t believe there is even a solution to their problem. And finally, they don’t believe that your product or service will work for them.
So first up, people don’t believe you. I know this is crazy – you’re trustworthy, reliable, you offer a great service, but, you know, people may have been burned by other companies in the past or they may have preconceived ideas about your industry. For example, sales people are sleazy, marketing agencies are full of bluster etc, but you can use this to your advantage. In episode seven of the podcast, I talk about this in more detail. In the episode ‘Why do people hate what you do?’, featuring some of my dad’s favourite rants about things that annoy him. The first thing you need to do is identify what the stereotypes or assumptions might be about people in your industry. One of my favourite copywriting stories (and since I’ve read about this, I’ve never been able to find the reference, which is really frustrating) is, apparently back in the day of phone book advertising, a plumbing company did research about what people didn’t like about plumbers, and then they created this knockout advert titled ‘We’ll turn up on time and smelling nice!’. So, they’d done their research, they’d found out that people were frustrated by having to spend time waiting around for someone to show up, only to be greeted by a plumber who smelled like a giraffe. Now, that’s a great example of tackling the false belief that plumbers are all the same and if you hire a plumber, they’re going to be late and stinky.
So, think about what the possible frustrations are with your industry, and then make sure that you’re showing and explaining why you are different in your marketing to break that belief and that stereotype. Because as I said, your customers may have been burned by others in the past.
[New Scene]
{Doorbell rings}
Milkman:
“Good morning! I’m your new milkman.”
Customer:
“Oh?”
Milkman:
“I took over from Ben haha! Ben! It’s been a while since I heard that name!”
Customer:
“What are you here to do?”
Milkman:
“Well, I can deliver your milk. Just let me know what you need.”
Customer:
“What I need is someone reliable, someone I can depend on.”
Milkman:
“Well, I deliver every day, except Sundays.”
Customer:
“I suppose you’re going to tell me you can bring orange juice as well?”
Milkman:
“I can actually, we’re even launching into bread.”
Customer:
{Laughing}
“Bread! Oh, this is too much! Bread, you say? Well, I tell you what . . .what did you say your name was?”
Milkman:
“My name is James.”
Customer:
“You talk a good talk, James, I’ll give you that. Here, every day, with your milk, with your orange juice and now bread. I bet you’ll be turning up at 5:30am . . . so dependable you can set your watch I’ll bet! And then three months of bright and early deliveries. . . what’s going to happen then James? Are you just going to disappear? Leave me for a bigger, newer patch at Rottingdean? You can make your fancy promises James and, you know what – we’ll probably have fun for a little while – exchanging little smiley faces on the invoice you leave on top of an empty bottle, me, leaving my cash on the doorstep.”
Milkman:
“We don’t take cash anymore Miss. . . you can pay by direct debit . . .”
Customer:
“But then it’s all just going to be empty bottles James, isn’t it – when you leave? You’re going to fill my life up with orange juice, bread . . .and then leave me to be an empty bottle.”
Milkman:
“Oh, I’ll come, I’ll come back later.”
[End]
OK, the next belief that can hold customers back is the belief that there is no solution. Now, this might be because your customer isn’t aware of a solution or your customer just doesn’t believe that the solutions on offer will work. I think everyone at some point in their life has purchased some form of gadget that has promised to be too good to be true. I’m thinking of those kitchen gadgets, you know, that promise to take the pain out of measuring spaghetti or stopping you cry when you’re chopping an onion, you know, or cutting some kind of fruit or vegetables into perfect slices. But then you grow up and you realise that most of these gadgets are not the solution that was promised. They just take up space in that kitchen drawer (you know the one) or end up gathering dust on a shelf or at the back of a cupboard and then you grow up even further and you realise, just stop buying this crap, Amy!
So, there may be a level of cynicism around your product that you have to overcome. The example I like to use for this is by a company called ‘Audio Flair’ and the way that they market their earplugs. They have a strand of their marketing that is just directed at people who have a partner that snores. So, these people probably think, you know, I’ve tried everything – I’ve tried earplugs, we’ve tried the strips on their noses, some crazy thing that wires the jaw shut . . . whatever it is! Audio Flair understand that their target market could be sceptical if they have not yet found a solution to the problem and so what’s really interesting is their copy doesn’t start by saying,
“Hey, we have these revolutionary earplugs. . .”
Instead, they tackle the disbelief first and, I’m going to read out the copy that is on their site because I just think it does it really well – they sort of talk to the customer where the customer is at in that moment in time where they might be thinking, earplugs? I’ve tried earplugs – they don’t work.
So, here’s what they write:
“Traditionally ear protection has relied on plastics, foams, silicones, and if you’re desperate, cotton wool. These are used to absorb sound, but they still allow low frequency sound to penetrate. The density of metal prevents sounds from penetrating. Now, metals have always been good conductors, so convention would suggest they’re not a good choice for blocking sound. However, metal has to have a direct connection to conduct sound. So, isolate the metal with a soft foam inside your ear and you end up with the most effective earplug ever made.”
So, what they’re doing here is, they’re tackling the disbelief first instead of jumping into how great the product is and they’re also introducing something new – the idea of an earplug that has a metal centre surrounded by foam. That is perhaps enough for people to think, do you know what? I’m willing to give this a try. In fact, when I’ve used this as an example at conferences, every time I show this, I have people coming up afterwards asking me, “What was the name of the earplugs please? Before I kill my spouse!”.
So, you may be able overcome cynicism by telling your target market perhaps something new or something they may not realise about the way your product is manufactured or the way you deliver your service in a way that is different to other products and solutions that they may have tried and failed to get results with.
Now, the other lack of belief relating to your product is that your customer may not even be aware that there is a solution to their problem.
In the past, I’ve used this example about my dad at conferences (which I’ll explain) and what follows is a traumatization of those events. . .
[New Scene]
Amy:
“Hi Mum. Where’s Dad?”
Mum:
“He’s in the office, erm, clearing out junk.”
Amy:
“Wow! Uh, what, Dad, what are you doing?”
Dad:
“What am I doing? I’m just sorting this room out – I told your mum I’d go through some old things, clear some space . . . so I’m just, uh, sorting through all my old records and cassettes.”
Amy:
“Oh wow.”
Dad:
“Some awesome little crackers on this lot Amy, early rock and roll. . .”
Amy:
“Oh, some Lonnie Donegan, an Acker Bilk!”
Dad:
“We’ve found a cassette of you singing – remember when you wanted to have a radio show? It’s here somewhere.”
Amy:
“We don’t have to listen to that.”
Dad:
“Your mum wants things cleared so, what I’m going to do is; I’m going to take everything here, somehow record it onto my computer and then put it all onto my MP3 player.”
Amy:
“That’s going to take forever Dad.”
Dad:
“Well I can’t not have these! I love listening to them and then I’ll just, I’ll have everything in one place.”
Amy:
“You could get most of this on Spotify you know? Or download them online? All you need is a list of songs that you want and then we can look for them online. Do you know what . . .it’d probably only take about an hour to find everything.”
Dad:
“That sounds great, but your mother is expecting this to take me a couple of days. I had all of that time to myself. If I finish up now, she’ll get me a new job to do.”
Mum:
{Shouting from downstairs}
“How are you two getting on?”
Amy:
“Fine! Just helping dad. There’s a lot to get through here.”
Dad:
“Well, we best find something else to do then in the meantime . . . game of darts?”
Amy:
“OK!”
Dad:
“Perfect!”
[End]
This is almost a true story. So, my dad was looking for a way to consolidate all of his music and he thought the solution for having all of his favourite records, all his favourite songs in one place was to catalogue everything he had and transfer it to an MP3 player. He didn’t know Spotify existed or that he could download songs online so he had no idea to even look for it. To tackle this in your copy and your marketing, you’re going to have to try and imagine what it would be like if your ideal customer didn’t know that what you did existed – what are they doing instead? So, in my dad’s case, we could mention no longer needing to catalogue favourite CDs and records, you know, freeing up space of CDs and records without losing the music you love, having all the favourite music in one place and accessing it any time he likes.
Finally, the last belief is that people don’t believe your products can get results for them. It can be very easy for us to believe that something that will work well for other people won’t necessarily work well for ourselves. And I was thinking about this, and in some ways it’s almost like a way of protecting ourselves against perhaps trying to go for something that we want and failing. So, for example, when I was younger, probably in my early teens, I had a really hard time at school and internally tried to build up sort of a mental defence. One of the things that I would do (one of the daft things I would do) is, I would internally sort of knock people down in my mind by judging myself against them in an arena that I could win. For example, I would see someone popular and I would think, well, OK, they’re popular, but they’re terrible at maths and I really liked maths – I was good at maths and I would say to myself, yeah, I mean, I could go to parties if I wanted to and I could probably get kissed by loads of boys, but I don’t want to risk my ability to solve algebra by wasting my time on that. You know, there’s no point in me trying to be popular because it just doesn’t work out for smart people like me. Now, obviously this is bunkum and if I was being honest with myself, I desperately wanted to go to parties and I really wanted to try and fit in, but I was convincing myself that there was no point in trying because being popular was not for the likes of me, and anyway, I had algebra! Thankfully I grew out of that craziness but I do acknowledge that people can still have that, it won’t work for me/ it’s not for me/ it’s for other people, mentality and you don’t want people thinking that when it comes to your product. One way around this is, similar to the other disbeliefs, to identify those possible things that are holding people back and tackle it head on. Don’t pretend that people aren’t thinking this way – for example, if you have software, tell people that it’s easy to use even if you hate computers or let people know that they don’t have to be an SEO expert to use your SEO plugin and get results, or you don’t need a million dollar budget to advertise your business and get regular high paying clients to get in touch with you. But here’s a warning; it has to be true. So, you don’t want to tell people that they don’t need to be an expert in your Google Analytics course if they do need some foundational understanding, otherwise, it’s a slippery slope into quick fix marketing where all you need is an idea and your credit card and you can build a huge audience of raving fans and generate income while you sleep. No, it takes a lot of hard work to do that and you do need skills, a great product and a lot of tenacity.
So, in summary, the three beliefs that can hold people back is:
They don’t believe you – you’ve got to get over that trust hump and show them that even if they’ve had a bad experience with other companies in the past, you aren’t different.
They may not believe that a solution either exists or they may not be aware that the solution exists. So, one of the things that you can do is to show them why what you have is different, if they’re not aware of the solution, acknowledge what they are doing today and explain why they no longer have to do that.
Finally, they may not believe in themselves. So, explain that they don’t have to be an expert, an athlete, super popular, have a huge budget . . . whatever it may be that could hold them back from being more receptive to your marketing offer. But of course, it has to be true.
That’s all for today. Don’t forget to let me know what you think in the comments. If you haven’t left a review and would like to do that, that would be awesome. Let me know as well if there’s something specific you’d like me to cover in an upcoming episode and I will always do my best to help.
Until next time, keep believing and remember, you can’t ignore what people believe because beliefs – they can be a powerful thing.
[New Scene]
Amy:
“I was a bit surprised to hear John had entered this fencing tournament. I didn’t even know he played. Played? Fought? Competed? I don’t know what the word is! He just got it into his head that fencing was for him and he could win.”
Amy’s friend:
“Where is he?”
Amy:
“He was getting changed . . . here he comes.”
Amy’s Friend:
“What on earth?”
John:
“Hiya, I’m just about ready to go on.”
Amy:
“Are those egg boxes?”
John:
“Yeah, I made my own protective body gear . . . pretty good, I think.”
Amy:
“That’s not the proper gear. Where’s your sword or your foil or whatever it is they call it . . . is that a car radio aerial?”
John:
“Just as good as their fancy foils, look, Amy, whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re usually right. I believe I can win, so I’m right.”
Amy:
“What did your life coach say about this endeavour?”
John:
“Told me I had delusions of grandeur – that was nice wasn’t it!”
Organiser:
“Excuse me, we’re about to announce . . .what on earth you wearing?”
John:
“I call it ‘fencing chic by John’.”
Organiser:
“None of that is regulation apparel.”
Amy:
“You can’t go on John; you’ll just have to cancel.”
Organiser:
“Oh, we’re not cancelling. This is televised. We have no other game scheduled. If we don’t broadcast something now we’re going to lose millions in network revenue. Just, just go. . . just get on.”
Commentator:
“Announcing three times fencing champion Derek Riggleby and up and coming newcomer. Nope, sorry, just checking my notes . . .just a newcomer, no one’s heard of him before – John – just John. OK and in three, two, one, and fight!
{Pause}
It’s an unusual start.
John seems to be wearing a homemade protective jacket made from egg bosses and he seems to be using a car radio aerial swiping into the air with no particular goal or strategy. Just haphazard, albeit with, I would say, unbridled enthusiasm.
Derek is understandably cautious, circling his opponent with cat-like precision and oh . . . John has managed to land one of his wayward strikes and caught Derek off guard!
And there he goes again – Derek’s foil is stuck in the cardboard egg box, leaving him without a weapon.
John sees his chance and, I guess you would call that ‘bashes’ Derek with the aerial again and again and again and rapidly the points are clocking up for John.
Poor Derek can only stand there in amazement.
And then we have it.
The new reigning World Fencing Champion is John – just John.”
John:
“See, what did I tell ya?”
[End]
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