Trust

A Shortcut to Irresistible Trust

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I remember exactly when my favorite marketing guru… became my favorite marketing guru.

In fact, I remember the SENTENCE that won me over.

He said “The key difference between rich people and poor people is that rich people get paid upfront.”

(Ten brownie points if you can name the guru. Now that I think about it, that oversimplified bit of wisdom may be attributed to people I’m not aware of. So I’ll still give you brownie points if you name anyone who said this)

Not sure how true that statement is… but that one single idea gave the guru a patch of real estate in my mind. That patch continued to grow for years… and made me happy to spend a whole lot of money learning from him.

You may have your own memory of a paradigm-shifting concept or mental picture that impacted you in a similar way.

This kind of big idea can be a shortcut to irresistible trust.

When you reframe how your prospect sees himself, his goals, challenges or even his place in the world, you can gain permanent residence in his brain, too.

Your insights can become the lens through which he sees everything else in your area of expertise.

It’s almost impossible NOT to trust a person who helps you understand yourself and your world. Then, once the idea takes root, confirmation bias kicks in, and the Semmelweis reflex guards the door.

(Semmelweis reflex, in case you’re unfamiliar, is a behavioral tendency to stick to preexisting beliefs and to reject fresh ideas that contradict them, even in the face of solid evidence to the contrary.)

How do you create these epiphanies, practically?

Look for common, relevant questions your dream prospects don’t have a clear, concise answer for. Or mysteries that befuddle them. Then fill in the blank.

Take life insurance, for example.

People have long wondered what kind of policy they should buy.  Salespeople give answers that sound self-serving. Well-intentioned advisors give the real but complicated answer, “it depends.”

Dave Ramsey took the shortcut.

“Buy term and invest the difference” is a clear and simple recommendation that cuts through the confusion.

No one follows half of that advice, but Dave’s business seems to be doing pretty well. Countless adoring fans swear by his advice.

And who knows how many people have bought life insurance from somebody because he gave them a clear direction to move in?

Argue against the quality of the idea if you like. You can’t deny its influence.

Here’s my advice for the day:

If you’re trying to figure out how to gain credibility with your target audience – and who isn’t? – prioritize your perspective-shifting big idea as a proof element.

Giving your reader/viewer a clearer view of the world will often sink in more deeply than traditional proof.

Your big idea may be the shortcut to trust you’ve been searching for.

Becoming Irresistibly Trusted

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The first time I needed to file taxes, I was clueless.

But my brother seemed to get it. He’d been working longer than me, so it was easy for me to defer to his judgement. I just got my taxes prepared where he had his done.

A couple years later, he learned about another firm that could (supposedly) get even bigger refund checks. He switched, so I switched. No critical thinking involved, no hesitation. I didn’t need a relationship with the accountant. I trusted my brother.

Then we both got audited by the IRS… right around the same time the accounting firm went out of business.

After that experience, I filed with a big-box preparer. It seemed like the safe choice.

But just a few years later, my brother told me about a solo CPA who told him she’d get him a good return. So I switched again. No critical thinking involved, no hesitation. Because I still trusted my brother, despite previous outcomes.

Now, when you read that, it sounds crazy. And it is a little crazy.

It should have been obvious to me that I needed to do my due diligence, especially after the whole audit situation.

Here’s the thing: your average prospect goes through similar thought processes and experiences when it comes to trust.

Before going further, I think it’s important to clarify…

The Distinction Between Trustworthy and Trusted.

Because there is an important difference.

  • Trustworthy means “I (probably) won’t get burned if I trust this person/firm.” It’s safe.
  • Trusted means “I want to trust this person/firm. It’s in my best interest to trust this person/firm.” It’s attractive & desirable.
Contrasting two images. One is a grassy field with no people and a sign saying "there are no mines in this field." This represents being trustworthy. The second is a packed playground, which represents being trusted.

It’s possible to be worthy of trust but not be trusted by the people who need your help the most.

Showing off certifications, listing licenses, even bragging on your solid track record (in instances where you’re allowed to do that) can make you appear trustworthy.

That’s a good thing, but is it good enough? I’d argue that it’s not. Even the rarest of financial designations are shared by hundreds, if not thousands, of other experts.

Which brings us to the topic at hand: Elevating yourself and/or your firm from trustworthy to irresistibly trusted.

You’ve undoubtedly consumed a lot of educational content on building trust.

I’ll be focusing here on concepts and ideas that haven’t been hammered into your head already.

One Little-Known Key Unlocks Your Influence

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Unlock Influence

There’s one pain point every single one of your would-be customers is painfully aware of:

The pervasive complexity of life in the 21st century.

Whether they use these words or not, every one of them craves more simplicity in some area of his or her life. (Or more likely, almost every part.)

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to be a simplifier in your area of awesomeness.

Do that — and communicate it well — and your power to influence will stun you.

Keep in mind, there’s an important difference between simple and easy.

For example, “97 Easy Ways to Save Money” is NOT simple.

There may be a ton of value there. Someone who has tried everything may still find a new idea worth trying among the 97.

But people don’t want 97 ways to save money, really.

They want 3 ways to save money. Or, better still, the single most effective way to save money… the one trick that will save so much money they don’t have to do anything else.

That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.

With that in mind, here are 3 things you can do to increase your simplifier status:

  1) Eliminate the clutter. Your reader has an overwhelming array of options and choices to make in every segment of his. As the expert, you have the ability to tell him which options will give him the best results, and which he can flat-out ignore.

Thinking is hard work; most people avoid it at all costs. If you can earn someone’s trust, he’ll gladly allow you to do some of his thinking for him.

  2) Make fewer recommendations & communicate them with conviction. Again, don’t give people new instructions and new systems every week. 97 ways to do anything is intimidating. Spend most of your time talking about a few powerful ideas. Come back to them continually.

It’s much easier to trust someone when he seems 100% certain about what he’s recommending. So speak with conviction!

Here’s the one we really want you to grasp. This is single most important thing you can do establish yourself as a simplifier for your audience.

entrepreneurs mission copywriting

  3) Establish a core “operating system” or personal philosophy.

Your followers should quickly be able to figure out what you stand for, what you KNOW works.

That means YOU need to know what you stand for. What’s the one phrase you’d like to be known for? Decide on that, then pick a small number of big ideas to revolve around your philosophical core.

Your intense focus will make you unique. More to the point…

  • you’ll be simpler to understand
  • your recommendations will be simpler to follow
  • your “brand” will be simpler to categorize, so you’ll fit into the mind of your readers/listeners/viewers more distinctly
  • your expertise won’t be diluted. Your reader’s mind automatically divides your perceived authority by the number of things you claim to be an authority on. You’ve never heard of a neurosurgeon who’s also an expert heart surgeon.

So the message is simple:

Strive to make your would-be customer’s life simpler (not just easier).

You can do it.

Here’s a helpful analogy:

The Supreme Marketing Advantage (Copywriting Tip #6)

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Copywriting Tip 6 Trust

Quick Copywriting Tip #6: Trust is EVERYTHING.

I got a bunch of hate mail a few weeks ago. Actually, the Vice President of one of my clients got hate mail…because of something I wrote.

Here’s one of the notes:

“I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE BUT YOU SENDING ME INSULTING EMAILS IS UNPROFESSIONAL AND I’M GLAD I DIDN’T GET INVOLVED WITH [ client name withheld] AND THANKS TO YOU NEVER WILL.” (Emphasis mine)

The sales reps were upset that they had to deal with a barrage of emails like these.

The VP, whose name was on the offending message, had mixed feelings. Sales were through the roof (relative to the norm)…on a product that’s somewhat difficult to sell. But “potential buyers” were upset with him.

As I said to the Mr. Vice President, “The people who complain are probably never going to become paying customers anyway. This kind of reaction is how you know you’re doing it right!“

Direct response involves forcing people to pick a side and being willing to lose some people along the way — if you’re doing it right.

“I’m glad I didn’t get involved with you…”

Let’s focus for a moment on the angry, all caps email I shared above.

The final line brings a crucial issue to light: you need to get good at gaining people’s TRUST.

This guy suspected that he couldn’t trust my client – and the marketing message that pushed him over the edge proved (in his mind) his suspicion was correct.

We all face this obstacle. But we don’t always use trust as an opportunity.

In the copy I wrote, my client came across more as a salesperson (which he is) than an expert or leader (which is is). And it’s hard to trust salespeople.

Everything in the message was true. Honesty isn’t enough to make people trust you. It’s just the beginning!

Earning the kind of trust that makes it easy (or at least easier) for prospects to become clients takes work.

Pillars of Proof

At a conference in Denver earlier this month, Patrick Bove, Senior Copywriter at Stansberry Research described 5 Pillars of Proof you should be using to defeat skepticism and win trust from your should-be clients. Here’s a very quick overview from a mind-blowing session:

Financial Copywriter Patrick Bove Stansberry

Proof of Character

  • Who are you? Why should I believe you?
  • What’s your track record? What achievements can verify your expertise?

Proof of Story

  • How do I know you’re not making this stuff up?
  • Are there 3rd party sources that verify the point you’re making?

Proof of Catalyst

  • Why is your story important to me NOW

Proof of Product

  • Demonstration: Don’t just tell me about your product. Show me it works.
  • Who does it work for and when? Who is it not right for?

Social Proof

  • Testimonials, case studies, etc.

Notice how testimonials are great, but they’re just not enough to convince people anymore. If you want to make trust your supreme marketing advantage, you’ll have to go much further.

The good news is, your competitors aren’t doing any of this. Once you start implementing these ideas, you’ll probably be light-years ahead.

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Check out the other 13 Quick Copywriting Tips here.

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures (Copywriting Tip #3)

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copywriting tips

Quick Copywriting Tip #3: Force your reader to “pick a side.” Don’t allow him to sit comfortably on the fence.

They say “desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“They” are wrong. Desperate measures are always called for. More accurately, they’re almost always necessary.

Why? Because most of your should-be customers, the ones who desperately need your product or service, are sitting on the fence. I guarantee it.

A small percentage of prospects will buy with minimal effort on your part. Most of them take more work. It’s your job to lead them into making the smartest decision.

You can’t lead them anywhere while they’re sitting up there, can you? You’re going to have to push/pull them down.

Here’s an example you’re probably familiar with: Proactiv Solution. If you’ve seen the TV commercials, magazine inserts, online banner ads and who knows what else, you know they use every tool in the shed to make you choose:

  • up-close before and after photos that remind you of the pain you feel and offer relief
  • celebrity spokespeople to grab your attention and win your trust
  • clinical research for credibility
  • showing up in your face every day, in as many places as possible
  • storytelling which push emotional hot buttons like embarrassment, guilt, and even the shakiness of your romantic life (see below)

Proactiv emotional copywriting tip

Your message should repeatedly attempt to force your audience to pick a side.

“Struggle with the problem, or choose the solution.”


Does Proactiv play dirty? Maybe. But they believe their cause is a righteous one. They believe they’re improving people’s lives — and providing jobs in the process.

The cost is too high to be soft-spoken.

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Check out all 13 Quick Copywriting Tips

4 Steps to No-Brainer Status

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If your target market had to make an instant decision, without thinking, would they would still pick you?

The mind is always doing something, always focusing on something. We even dream while we’re sleeping. Your brain never really stops working.

My fellow Chicagoan James Ford taught me a very interesting lesson (inadvertently, through the radio). He pointed out that we often look for distractions to give our minds a break. We call that amusement. A-muse-ment is, literally, the act or state of not-thinking.

While I generally discourage the use of funny marketing messages, you should consider being appropriately amusing.

With that in mind, here are some amusing marketing ideas:

1) Make your offer a “no-brainer.” If your offer is just right, the prospect literally doesn’t have to think about it.

It’s not good enough to have the best product on the market or to be the most logical choice as a service provider.

Plenty of outstanding businesses struggle while waiting for the world to beat a path to their door to buy their better “mousetrap.” Marketing is still critically important, and the message it conveys must still engage the motivational drives and desires of the target audience.

There are several factors involved here. No matter how much a prospect wants what you sell, there are obstacles to overcome:

a) You have to be trustworthy. No doubt you’ve heard a lot of talk about getting potential clients to “know, like and trust” you. This is not only because we like to do business with people we like, but because we have a hard time doing business with people we don’t trust.

  • This is part of the reason marketers are enamored with social media, and it’s definitely the driving force behind Facebook Sponsored Stories and Google’s social search. You trust your friends, so when they “like” something, that something inherits some of that trust.

b) Your offer itself has to be credible. I imagine if you got a letter in the mail offering “Buy 1 Mercedes, Get 2 FREE.” It might grab your attention, but you’d dismiss the idea pretty quickly. We instinctively believe “if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.”

By all means, make the strongest offer possible, but make sure it’s believable.

c) Eliminate as much risk as possible. The plumbing in my house is not great. At one point, we had to call a plumber every few weeks. When we finally found a guy we liked, one of the biggest reasons he got repeat business from us was because his 90-day guarantee. If the toilets clogged up in that time frame, he’d come out and fix it for free.

How strong is your guarantee? Do you provide excellent customer service after the sale? Do you share additional information or resources to ensure customers enjoy every possible benefit from their purchase?

  • Make testimonials prominent. This form of social proof can be effective at communicating the fact that lots of people just like the prospect has had a wonderful experience doing business with you. What more is there to think about?

2) Get to know your audience so well that you can describe their needs better than they can, using words they’d use themselves. When people feel like you know them, trust comes naturally. Add to that a comprehensive understanding of the challenges they’re facing and the dreams they have, there’s no need for them to look to anyone else when they’re ready to buy. Choosing you is a “no-brainer” decision.

3) Find a way to make buying from you habitual, or attach your offering to the habits of your target audience. That which people do habitually, they do unthinkingly. Here are two terrific articles explaining the power of habits and how they apply to marketing and buying decisions:

The Power of Habit
How Companies Learn Your Secrets

4) Your offer must be obviously valuable. The more clearly you describe what the customer will get after he buys, how wonderful his experience will be, the less he has to justify the purchase to himself. The less internal negotiations have to take place.
The longer he argues, the less likely he is to buy. He’s also more likely he is to either ask for a refund or suffer from buyer’s remorse – a serious problem for repeat business and referrals.

Your Action Steps

1) Get to know what you really sell. Homebuilders don’t sell structures; they provide safety, security, a feeling of family, the American dream, etc. Authors don’t sell ink on paper, but wild adventures and escapes from reality in packages that fit in the palm of your hand.

2) Get to know your prospects better than ever. Always remember, marketing is not about you – it’s about your would-be customers.

3) Speak to the soul. Go beyond having rebuttals for objections and answers for questions.

4) Work on ways to clearly communicate that the solution to your prospects innermost drives and desires is within their grasp – if they enter the door you show them. Help them see it.

5) Find effective ways to deliver that message.

This will take some work, but it will pay off in big ways.

Henry Ford: Misunderstood Marketing Genius

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Henry Ford is widely regarded as one of the greatest entrepreneurs in history. When you hear his name, you automatically think about how he innovated the use of assembly line techniques to revolutionize the automobile industry.  Listen to what Harvard Business school professor Theodore Levitt wrote about Ford:

“We habitually celebrate him for the wrong reason, his production genius. His real genius was marketing. We think he was able to cut his selling price and therefore sell millions of $500 cars because his invention of the assembly line reduced the costs. Actually he invented the assembly line because he had concluded that at $500 he could sell millions of cars. Mass production was the result, not the cause, of his low prices...He was brilliant because he fashioned a production system designed to fit market needs.” (Author’s emphasis)

Ford understood an indispensable key to successful marketing: the needs and desires of your target market must dictate the products and/or services you provide. That should be obvious. Unfortunately, many businesses work hard to sell what they want to sell (their latest invention or a gadget they think is really cool) instead of what the market wants or needs to buy. Those businesses fail.

Now, let’s look at this point from another angle. What did Henry Ford himself say about his market? “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” Doesn’t that negate what we’ve said thus far? Far from it.

Nobody wanted cars, it’s true. But they did want to travel more quickly. So Ford did manufacture and sell what people already wanted; it just came in a different package than they expected.

I think there’s an important lesson here. According to another Harvard professor, Paul R. Lawrence, all the decisions we make are based on 4 basic drives: to 1) acquire/achieve, 2) bond, 3) learn/comprehend and 4) defend. If you think about it, everything you purchase satisfies at least one of these motivations. For example, I may buy a Rolex watch to acquire the admiration of my peers. Or, maybe I’ll get the Timex to defend my bank account.

Of course, these drives are unique for everyone. That’s why you have to dig deep and really get to know your ideal clients. What drives are dominant in their decision-making process? What shape do those drives take? What stimulates those drives?

Creating your ideal customer profile is great, but make sure it’s rooted in reality, not your imagination.

Give ‘Em a Reason

Having a product people want usually isn’t enough to make you successful. We see companies with great products or services fail all the time.

Think about the multimillion dollar ad campaigns we see during major political elections. Candidates don’t settle for “getting their name out there.” They beat up the other guys and present specific “evidence” to demonstrate that they are the best choice. (Whether or not their statements were true is another conversation.)

Remember Paul Lawrence’s 4 Drives theory. Your sales and marketing messages should communicate the specific ways your offer will address these deep-seated drives in your audience. How does your product satisfy their desire to acquire something they badly want? How will they come to learn something they desperately need to know by working with you?

Just being the better choice won’t get a candidate elected; it certainly won’t convince people to buy from you. You have to give them a compelling reason why they should buy. Paint an accurate picture of life as they know it, then paint one showing what their experience will be like after they get their hands on your product. The more vivid the image, the more compelling it will be.

Back up your claims with proof: scientific or clinical evidence, testimonials, case studies, awards, etc. Make it real for them.

Once a prospect sees himself enjoying their new life, making the purchase is the next natural step. This usually takes work (research, writing, rewriting, testing). So does filing bankruptcy.

 

 

7 Email Marketing Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make

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Nowadays, I don’t spend very much time on LinkedIn Answers, but the other day I saw a question that I could help out with.

The question: What should never be included in an email marketing campaign?

My (slightly modified) response: 
1) Don’t make claims without proof. Skepticism is at an all time high. Everyone is scared of getting burned. If you make claims that you don’t back up in the body of the email, you’re setting your campaign up to fail.

2) Never use deception.

3) Generic language is a bad idea. Craft your message so that you’re talking to ONE PERSON. Be as specific & vivid as possible.

4) Don’t use untintelligible language. Overly technical terminology can kill a sales message especially in B2C campaigns. Refrain from using jargon unless you know for sure your audience will understand.

Confused customers don’t buy.

Use the language that your readers use in their own conversations.

5) Avoid links to unrelated sites. If the body of the email is about consumer electronics, don’t insert links to a Viagra vendor.

5.1) Don’t use any links or make any reference whatsoever to Viagra.

6) The copy should not focus on YOU (the sender). It really shouldn’t even be about your product or service. Rather, speak about the recipient and his/her needs/wants and how your offering can satisfy those desires.

7) Each email should try to accomplish ONE objective. You lose readership when you go off in too many directions.

Direct mail legend Dick Benson once said that “you cannot sell two things at once.” Choose one thing.

That’s what autoresponder sequences are for. Multiple emails allow you to focus on or sell more than one product or service
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P.S. If at all possible, the emails should come from a recognizable sender. Even non-spam messages look like spam if they’re sent from strangers.

If you’re emailing cold, attach/associate yourself with someone your list knows and trusts/