That one article has generated hundreds of thousands of dollars since the day it was written. But it is just one of many comparison-based pieces of content we’ve produced over the years, all because we’ve been asked so many times, “So tell me the difference between. . . .”
Putting It Into Action
Write down every question you’ve ever received from a prospect or customer who was asking you to compare two or more things. This could include products, brands, methods, companies, and other subjects. It could also include your products and services or ones you don’t even sell. The key, though, is that you consider the many comparison-based questions that potential buyers and customers are asking (and searching) in your industry right now. Once you’ve made this list, address these questions honestly and transparently throughout your digital marketing efforts—be it with blog posts, e-books, webinars, and so on.
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The Critical Need for Unbiased Content
Whenever I’ve taught audiences about the need to address the comparison-based questions we continually hear from customers, someone will inevitably say something like “It’s impossible for businesses to address that type of question well. They’re biased, and consumers know it.”
Let me simply say this statement is fundamentally false.
Consumers do want to know what your business believes about these types of questions; otherwise, they wouldn’t ask you the question in the first place.
But the response you give them . . . now that’s where you’ve got to overcome this incessant need to brag, exaggerate, and only focus on why your company (or product, service, and so on) is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
So how do you do it? How do you immediately gain the reader’s (or viewer’s) trust while overcoming this hurdle of sounding biased? Well, let’s go back to the example of writing an article (or producing a video—they’re very similar in a way) that compares fiberglass, concrete, and vinyl-liner pools. If you’re going to write an article like this, the proper way to do it might sound something like this:
Each year customers come to us at River Pools and Spas and ask us, “What is the difference between a concrete and a fiberglass pool?” This is a very good question. We can certainly understand the need to know the difference, as it is a choice a pool buyer is going to have to live with as long as they’re in their home. Here at River Pools and Spas, we only sell fiberglass pools, but the truth of the matter is, a fiberglass pool might not be the best fit for you. In fact, a concrete or vinyl-liner pool might be the better option. What this article is going to do is explain the pros and cons of each type of swimming pool in an honest and transparent manner. This way, by the end, you’ll be able to identify which is the best fit for you.
Disarmament: The Quickest Way to Build Trust
The principle at work in the opening you just read is a principle we’ve used many times with our clients all over the world, and that is the principle of disarmament, which is arguably the least understood element of great communication and copy—online and offline.
To understand the principle of disarmament, imagine you are negotiating in a hostage situation. As a trained negotiator, the first thing you ask the gunman to do (in most cases) is to request that he put his weapon down.
We’ve all heard this phrase in movies before, but believe it or not, it has serious significance in the world of sales and marketing too.
The reason for this is simple: In a hostage situation, unless someone puts their weapons down, it’s almost impossible to communicate with them, much less earn their trust.
But once they do put their weapon down, the process of negotiation (trust building) can begin.
Believe it or not, it’s much the same with sales and marketing communication—in order to make progress and earn trust, especially when the buyer senses the business is biased, proper use of disarmament is a must.
For example, if I’m going to write an article comparing fiberglass and concrete swimming pools (as shown previously), I must first eliminate the elephant(s) in the room, and I would do this by:
Stating first that our company sells only fiberglass pools.
Admit immediately that fiberglass isn’t necessarily the best choice for everyone.
State that concrete pools might, at times, be the better option.
Explain how the article (or video) takes an honest look at the pros and cons of each, allowing the reader to therefore decide the best choice for them.
When you come out of the gate and mention these things, the reader will immediately sense the honesty (and sheer uniqueness) within the company or brand, and therefore place more trust in what is being said.
You should always look for examples of what is good about the other choice or option when explaining things to your prospects and customers. If you’re willing to give them both sides of the coin, they will look at you as the trustworthy voice. And they are going to think, This person truly does have my best interests at heart. That is the essence of disarmament.
Let me again stress, though, that disarmament goes well beyond the things you say on your company website. Essentially, it’s the way we approach customer questions with our business, be it face to face, online, or other situations.
For example, let’s examine an offline scenario. Imagine you’re in a sales situation and you’ve just made your pitch to the prospect. You’ve spent a good bit of time explaining all of your company’s features, benefits, deliverables, results, and so on. She’s seen your proposal is at the point of making a decision. But before she gives you the “Yes” you seek, she leans back in her chair, folds her arms (the classic defensive position), and asks one more question:
“Okay, you’ve explained all this to me very well but I have one last question. Why should I choose your company?”
Ninety-nine percent of the time, most sales professionals who hear such a question would immediately go into why they (company, product, solution, and so on) are the best. But the truly elite communicators understand the defensive nature of this question, and know that this is exactly what the person who asked the question expects to hear.
But to disarm the situation, the best response to such a question is quite the opposite:
Well, to be completely frank with you, we may not be the best choice for you. We have been talking about your needs and your situation and describing what we can bring to the table to address those needs. You have also done this with other companies. You’ve seen their prices and you’ve seen ours. So, by now, you probably have a pretty good feel for things. So the question is, do you, based on what you’ve now heard, feel we are the best option for you?
The answer that comes next will be dramatically more telling than any further pitch would ever be for the prospect. As buyers and consumers, we don’t want to be told what to do or what to buy. Rather, we want to think we’ve educated ourselves enough to arrive at an informed conclusion. The best sales teams and companies in the digital age understand and embrace this reality.
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Content Subjects 4 and 5
Reviews and Best in Class
Before we dive into the powerful elements of this chapter, let me just mention here that what you’re about to read is a very, very different way of approaching business and consumer education than what most people are used to. It’s not taught in MBA programs and it’s certainly not the norm.
But that, in and of itself, should make it a good thing. After all, the most successful business innovations of the digital age happen time and time again when an organization elects to take the road less traveled, ultimately clearing a new path and a new way of seeing “the way it should be done.”
And with that, we’ll now discuss the final two elements of the Big 5: Reviews and Best in Class.
As stated in the previous chapter, as consumers and buyers we love to compare. We love knowing whom everyone else loves, hates, and how they all stack up against each other.
We’re also obsessed with reviews
.
Whether it’s a website like Yelp, Angie’s List, or even a print publication like Motor Trend and its Car of the Year award, we are a society that cares about pecking orders.
After having embraced They Ask, You Answer in 2009, as a business owner I started to look at the types of content that were experiencing success in multiple industries and I came to an interesting conclusion:
There was no Yelp or Motor Trend Car of the Year award for the fiberglass swimming pool industry.
Notwithstanding, ours was very similar to that of the car industry. You have a handful of manufacturers that make shells of pools. They’re like the Toyota, Ford, or Chevy of the fiberglass pool sector. They manufacture and distribute their shells to the hundreds and hundreds of pool installers all over the world. And most installers, like us at River Pools and Spas, carry one or two of these brands at a time—competing with the rest in the space (just as in the auto industry).
But during this time, I noticed that if a consumer wanted to know who the best manufacturers were, there was no authority there to tell him.
Also, if a consumer wanted to know the best models and shapes these manufacturers were building, again, there was nothing in the market that was designed to help.
It was during this time my mind again shifted back to the core principles of They Ask, You Answer and I thought, Consumers want to see these types of ranking systems. And they certainly want to know the best swimming pool shapes and sizes for their needs. Therefore, if they want them, it’s my job to give it to them.
And that’s exactly what we did.
In early 2011, I experimented with this type of content when I published an article entitled “The Best Fiberglass Pool Design Awards for 2011.”
To come up with this piece, I spent hours getting to know the different manufacturers in our space. I looked at all of their pool designs, focusing my attention on the various shapes, sizes, and unique features.
Next, I divided all of these designs into different classes, such as “Best Kidney Pool,” “Best Free-Form Pool,” “Best Diving Pool,” and so on.
Once this was done, I formulated the article, awarding the various manufacturers I truly felt were “best in class” of that particular shape.
Although this in and of itself may not sound that innovative, keep in mind that the very manufacturers I was giving out “best in class” awards to were the same ones I was selling against every day as an installer.
Without reading any further, can you guess how these manufacturers reacted when this article was posted online? Needless to say, they were very surprised, and the reactions were mixed.
Many of those who were included on the list contacted me, thanking me for the inclusion.
Others who were not included on the list called me and said, “Marcus, I see we are not on your list of the best pool shapes in class. Why don’t you come out to our facility and see our fiberglass pools?”
I’m sure there were others who did not contact me at all, but the end result was the same for each—before the day this article was published, I wasn’t anywhere on their radar. Frankly, they didn’t know me from Adam—I was just some thirty-one-year-old kid who was part owner of a little swimming pool company in Virginia.
But once I published it in an open forum, and they saw people were paying attention, now they couldn’t help but to take notice.
Even funnier, some of these manufacturers, upon receiving their awards, were announcing on the home pages of their websites that they had won a design award for best pool in class.
At the same time, this article was a hit with consumers. Finally, they were given something that would allow them to choose the right pool based on their individual wants and needs.
This article was so successful that we’ve produced more like it every year, all with resounding success, and all of which continued to build the River Pools and Spas brand, authority, and trust with consumers.
Today, if you go online and search anything related to fiberglass pool designs, one of these articles will likely be the first thing you see in search engine results.
Even better, these articles have built hundreds of inbound links coming from other websites over the years, many of which are coming from the manufacturers we compete against on a daily basis.
Putting It Into Action
Highlight Others and Build Your Referral Network
Contemplate ways to make reviews work for your company. Are there any “best of class” types of content you could produce in your industry? Remember, if you’ve ever been asked to compare two things, then the answers is very likely “Yes.”
Also, consider all of the companies within your industry or a similar industry that could possibly be referral sources for your business. Find ways, assuming they’re respectable organizations with good track records, to highlight who they are, what they sell, and why they’re respected in the marketplace. The key here is that you see yourself as more than just a subject matter expert within your industry, but someone who sees outside of your small circle and therefore has an opinion, expertise, and knowledge of those subjects that matter most to the consumer.
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Using Reviews to Establish Yourself as an Expert
Now that we’ve discussed how to build your referral network and industry authority by writing review-based content, let’s look at an even more unorthodox (and shocking to some) approach to building your brand and business—one that demonstrates the essence of They Ask, You Answer.
Have you ever had a prospect say to you, “We like you, and we expect we may do business with you, but in case we don’t, is there anyone else you might be willing to recommend?”
If you’ve been in business long enough, you’ve likely heard this question before. You also likely know that when most companies receive such a question, the natural response is, “But there is no one quite like us!”
When such a statement is made, you and I both know that the person asking the question is going to think, Oh, come on. Seriously?
About four years ago, I spent about two hours in a sales appointment with a couple. When I was done giving them my proposal they said, “Marcus, we really like you a lot. We do. And we think we’re going to use you. But hypothetically speaking, if we don’t use you, who would you recommend that we use?”
Alas, the last thing you want to hear as a salesperson.
That night, I did not earn their business. But I did have a long drive home. And on that drive, I thought a lot about that question, as well as our rule of They Ask, You Answer. Upon reflection, I said to myself, Well, if they asked the question, I guess I need to answer it.
When I arrived home at midnight that evening, I immediately sat down at my kitchen table and wrote the article, “Who are the Best Pool Builders in Richmond, Virginia (Reviews/Ratings)” and posted it to our site. In it, I listed the five companies I believed were truly the best builders in Richmond.
Before I go on any further, let me ask you a question. Do you think I included myself (River Pools and Spas) in that list?
If you answered “No,” you are correct. Now before you go on thinking I’m crazy, let’s analyze why I wasn’t on the list.
The first and obvious reason is that the moment I put myself on a best-of list of any kind, I lose all credibility. Any trust I might have built with the prospective customer is now gone. And as we’ve established many times throughout this book, everything comes down to trust. So, no, I did not put myself on that list.
Furthermore, consider this: If someone starts reading that article, where are they? That’s right—they are already on my site. In other words, I don’t need to prove to them that I’m awesome. They can see it for themselves. They can figure it out very quickly whether they like me or not. And in this case, let’s assume that you went online right now and typed into Google “Best Pool Builders Richmond, Virginia” —which is a very common phrase for pool shoppers in that area who are looking for a swimming pool. Upon doing this, you�
�d immediately see this article (which is ranked first for the phrase in Google search engine results) and click to read more.
You then commence reading the following:
Each year at River Pools and Spas, we meet with well over a hundred households in the Richmond, Virginia, area with respect to their inground swimming pool installation. And because so many folks know our thoughts and feelings on all things related to pool construction from this website, they often ask us, “’Who are some of the other builders and competitors in the area?” Never one to shy away from being blatantly honest about the competition, I provide you with a list of some of the companies that have a solid inground swimming pool building history in the Richmond area.
Many companies use every page of their website to try to convince viewers how superior and awesome they are. In reality, no one wants to hear (from you) that you’re awesome. Rather, what consumers want is to look at your works, judge them, and then make their own decisions on just how great a company really is.
Now, you tell me. If you were a swimming pool shopper and read those first two paragraphs, what would your impression of the company be? Do they sound believable? Honest? In fact, could you go so far as to assume they might just be experts?
If you’re like most people, you answered affirmatively to all three questions. Without the company needing to state it, you now feel like they are experts and thought leaders—all because they’ve shown you they’re willing to answer a question, honestly and transparently, that no one else in their space is.
This goes back to what we talked about with disarmament, and this is the essence of content marketing:
Honesty and transparency are self-evident, and when done with the right intentions, have a profound influence on the business, brand, and bottom line.
They Ask You Answer Page 8
