Successful Content Marketers and Copywriters Think Like a Lawyer or Speaker
Successful content marketers and copywriters are successful because they realize that their job is very similar to the job of a lawyer or speaker.
- No successful lawyer ever wins a case without considering the questions or objections people listening will have to their arguments.
- No successful speaker puts together a powerful and convincing talk without considering the same things.
Successful content marketing or copy is written with an understanding that the task before you isn’t to influence the convinced.
Your job is to convince the unconvinced and inspire the uninspired.
It’s only when you do that that your content or copy is successful and produces sales.
That means that creating successful content or copy comes down to creating content or copy that powerfully overcomes the objections and questions that your market has. (I touched on this briefly in #7 of The 11 Indispensable Elements Behind All Great Content or Copy.)
What are the objections and obstacles that are keeping your prospects from buying?
The answer to that question comes from something powerful that Zig Ziglar once said.
The Five Basic Objections and Obstacles Keeping You from Making a Sale
As a former door-to-door salesman, Zig Ziglar had amazing insight into the common things that keep people from buying.
In fact, he broke them down into five obstacles. He said…
“Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.”
Zig Ziglar
Important Disclaimer and Why I Hope Some of You Fail:
The advice I am about to give you can be used in honest or dishonest ways.
It can be used to manipulate people for your own gain or to motivate people for their benefit.
In pointing these things out, I am assuming that you will use them in honest ways in order to motivate people for their benefit. In other words, I’m assuming you are offering a legitimate solution that really helps people.
If you aren’t planning on using these things in honest ways, to motivate people for their benefit, so that you can really help them, then I hope that all your marketing fails. 🙂
Otherwise, any “success” you achieve through dishonest marketing will ultimately make you, your business, and your life a failure.
Alright, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let me reveal the five obstacles your content or copy must overcome.
The 5 Obstacles All Successful Content (or Copy) Must Overcome
1. No Need
Your content or copy must help your prospect to see their need for your solution.
It should do that by revealing and amplifying the problem that it helps them overcome.
Why? Because all of us tend to overlook or downplay the problems in our life because we’ve become so used to them.
If you don’t help them to see the seriousness of their problem, they will stay stuck.
And they definitely won’t buy from you.
2. No Money
Your content or copy must make your prospect see such a great value in the solution you offer that the price you’re asking for it seems like a deal.
You must also help them see the cost of staying in their situation with their sane problem.
Why? Because we all spend money on things that are valuable to us. Even those of us who say we don’t have much money, spend all sorts of money on things we value.
Do you want proof?
- How much total money do you spend monthly on streaming services? According to Cord Cutters News, the average American household spends $47 a month.
- How much money do you spend on going out to eat every month? According to The Simple Dollar, The average American spends $232 per month eating meals prepared outside the home.
- How much money do you spend every month at Starbucks (or Pete’s, Dutch Bros, or ?)? According to Cliff & Pebble, the average American spends $12 a month at Starbucks.
- How much money did you spend to buy your smartphone? According to Statista, the average price of a smartphone in the consumer segment in the United States is forecast to reach $580.27 in 2020. (NOTE: According to Engadget, the average American gets a new phone every 3 years. That means these phones cost us about $193.42 a year.)
- How much money do you spend on your smartphone every month? According to Money Saving Pro, the average American spends $114 a month on their phone bill.
If you take all of these together, the total amount the average person is spending every month on these things is $423 a month!
Remember, this is all based on the average American, not wealthy Americans.
Look, I am not suggesting that you don’t need things like a smartphone. But do you need to pay the amount that you are actually paying for them? No!
So when any of us say that we don’t have the money to purchase something, it might be true.
But it’s only true because we’re already spending money on the things I listed above (and many other things I didn’t list), things that are valuable or important to us.
That means that the thing keeping people from purchasing from you really isn’t a lack of money. It’s that they don’t see what you’re offering as valuable or important.
Your job is to change this perception.
3. No Hurry
Let’s face it. If you don’t give people a compelling and valid reason to purchase now/today, they will probably delay the purchase.
Why? Because most of us are afraid to make decisions – especially purchasing decisions. We don’t want to waste our money, get ripped off, or look/feel stupid.
We don’t necessarily delay our purchases because we don’t need or want the solution today. We delay them because we are afraid to make a mistake.
Now, there obviously are some purchases we should delay. There are also some that we should probably never even make. (Maybe because we’re already in debt and/or we don’t really need the item.)
But there are other purchases that we shouldn’t delay (once we gather enough info) because the cost of delaying the decision ends up ultimately costing us more.
What kind of purchases cost us when we delay them? Here are just a few that I quickly thought of:
- Certain insurance
- A solution that can improve our health
- A solution that can improve your business
- A purchase that replaces another more costly, regular expense
- Etc.
If you are selling something that can really help people right away, you should always make sure to give people enough information to understand that and to see the benefit of purchasing it now.
I’m not saying you should create content or copy that forces people to make a rushed decision. You shouldn’t do that.
But you also need to balance the fact in knowing that, by default, most of us will delay a decision, even when it’s to our own detriment.
That means that you will need to create content or copy to overcome this fact. If you don’t, you will not make as many sales and/or help as many people as you could.
4. No Desire
People won’t purchase your solution if it is not desirable to them. Why would they, unless someone or something is forcing them to?
That means that unless someone is forcing or requiring people to purchase from you, you will have to overcome this obstacle.
That means you have one of two choices:
- You need to make your solution desirable.
- You need to tie your solution to what your prospects already desire.
To accomplish that second choice, you have to know what people desire.
Here are some of the basic things we all desire:
- What is attractive
- What is helpful/useful
- What is entertaining, fun, or pleasurable
- What relieves current or future pain or problems
- What helps us achieve our goals or desires
If you want to make your solution more desirable, it must honestly possess some (or many) of these qualities.
Or it must be connected to something that your prospect already wants that possesses these things.
5. No Trust
I will never, ever purchase anything from someone I don’t trust. Neither will you. Your prospects are the same.
That’s why you want to make sure that your prospects trust you or your company. You might think, “Why wouldn’t they trust me or my company?” Well, how about the fact that they’ve been burned by people like you or companies like yours?
That means that they’re not going to assume that they should trust you. They’re going to assume that they shouldn’t.
They’re going to want to trust you, and even look for clues that you or your company is trustworthy, but the burden of proof is on you and your company, not on them.
What are some ways that you can prove that you and your company are trustworthy? Here are a few ways that come to mind:
- Share what customers think about you by using customer testimonials
- Share your product or service’s ratings or reviews from third-party sites and sources
- Share what industry experts or influencers think about you by asking for and then sharing what they have said about you
- You should also share the names of influencers and experts that you/your company have worked with, alongside, or worked for.
- Only create and/or sell solutions that actually work
- Only offer them for a fair price
- Have great customer service that helps and takes care of every customer or client
- Have guarantees to take the risk off of your purchases and put it on you and your company
Those are just some of the ways you prove that you and your company are trustworthy.
But the key thing for you to remember is that you do need to prove this fact.
You cannot assume that prospects will automatically believe or think that you’re trustworthy.
Greater Results Than the Competition
There are other objections, questions, or obstacles that you might need to overcome for your specific niche or market.
But if you make sure to always address these 5 obstacles, your content or copy will produce greater results than many of your competitors will see.
And you will have a much better track record of creating successful content or copy.
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