A post this week by Bob Younce over on The Writing Journey blog sparked an interesting discussion about addressing both sides of the story in your writing.
In grad school, Younce recalls being trained to state a thesis and defend it to the death, leaving the job of criticizing any weaknesses of argument to other peers in the field. And indeed, I can relate, as some professors at my university expected the very same thing.
While there was some discussion in the comments of that post about different Academic traditions and their respective expectations around this sort of thing, the main point of Bob's article was to discuss whether this academic phenomenon should apply to the production of partisan copy like sales letters and marketing materials as well.
In it, he wonders aloud if these persuasive pursuits should give both sides of the story, or stick to one side and tell it well.
Answering himself, for better or for worse, he compares copywriting to his own experience in grad school, concluding that you can't really "tell it like it is" when writing sales copy, any more than you can when writing a graduate thesis:
When you’re writing copy, you write about the positive points of a product or service- its features or benefits. You don’t write about potential problems with the product or about how another product might function in a similar way. You restrict the flow of information and leave it to the consumer to discover the counter-arguments or problems on their own. If you don’t, your copy doesn’t convert.
But is it true that your copy should always be single-sided and so narrowly focused as to ignore obvious drawbacks?
I, for one, don't think so. And I'm in good company.
The Preemptive Strike
So, before you claw my eyes out and direct me to one of the millions of available articles on the power of positive focus in sales and marketing (wait, one of them was on my own blog?), please hear me out.
I am in no way saying that the main focus of your copywriting efforts shouldn't be positive statements about the features and benefits of your product or service. They should be, and to disagree with that fundamental law of conversion would be foolish and asinine. What I am saying, however, is that preemptive damage control can be a very effective tool to add to your marketing arsenal.
Ok, so maybe the preemptive strike idea didn't work out very well for Mr. Bush, but we're not talking about breaching sovereign nations here, we're just talking about anticipating reasonable objections and handling them before they are even raised.
After all, in a sales presentation, everyone would be quick to agree that objection-handling is a major step towards closing the deal: A potential client with unanswered questions or unaddressed concerns is not likely to become a paying customer anytime soon.
But when you are writing copy for your web site, or a sales letter, or some other persuasive piece of content, you don't always have the opportunity to respond to those objections individually.
Instead, if your potential client thinks of an objection that offends them thoroughly enough while reading your information, and they don't find an answer forthcoming, they'll probably just leave.
But not if you anticipated that issue and dealt with it right from the start.
The Advantages of Shooting Straight
Putting aside any obvious ethical benefits of being honest with your audience (like being able to sleep at night, etc.), there are also many tangible reasons why marketers and sales professionals should want to shoot straight with their prospective customers.
And most of these reasons can be summed up in one statement: Your customers are not stupid, and they don't appreciate when you make them feel that way.
When you completely ignore obvious, relevant likely objections to your pitch, it comes off as naive at best and patronizing at worst.
Did you really think your customer wouldn't do the math and figure out that you're twice as expensive as your closest competitor, just because you never mentioned that in your copy?
Did you really think your client wouldn't consider the gas mileage on that car you're peddling, just because you ignored that discussion on your web site?
The reality is that consumers are more informed than ever and are more likely than ever to do extensive research on your product or service before making a purchase commitment. If you ignore their tough questions, they'll find the answers somewhere else. So why not at least try to control that conversation?
The Best Policy
Let's consider an example from my own experience.
One of my own clients offers a service: asphalt repair. This is a very competitive industry, with many companies offering a wide variety of solutions for the cracks and sinking that afflict many driveways here in Ottawa, thanks to our vicious freeze-thaw cycle.
The main drawback to my client's service, however, is that his pricing is quite a bit higher than many of his competitors. And when homeowners are being inundated with 3-4 flyers a week from different companies, they know the range of available pricing: It's not something you can hide.
So instead of omitting the fact that our pricing is higher in our marketing literature and sales pitches, I just tell it like it is.
"Look," I might say. "We are not the cheapest guy on the block, but when it comes to asphalt, you really do get what you pay for." Then I'll proceed to give a description of the shortcuts many competitors will take to lower their prices, and the thorough job we promise to do. In written materials, the same conversational technique works wonders, too.
All of a sudden, that high-price drawback has become a high-value mark of quality and the low prices of those competitors have become red flags for possible shoddy workmanship.
By coupling my frank admission with an explanation that resonates with consumers, I've increased the likelihood of a sale.
Granted, some negative aspects are more difficult to rationalize than others. It may not be as easy to explain the side effects of your drug in a positive light, for example.
But I think that if you put your mind to it, you can present drawbacks alongside and after your features and benefits, in such a way that they are at least clearly outweighed by the benefits you are purporting to offer (ie: rational humans won't even blink at a possible skin rash if what you're selling cures cancer.)
The way I see it, if you can't create a convincing sales piece without omitting every last bad thing about your product or service, maybe you need to go back to the drawing board and improve your offering first!
I'm not trying to re-write the sales handbook here, as counter-intuitive as much of this may sound. But I am trying to be realistic about the way people read and respond to persuasive copy, and in my experience, honesty is always the best policy and acting proactively is always better than having to respond to a suspicious client or losing a client altogether.
After all, at their core, sales and marketing are all about rapport. If someone likes you and trusts you, they will buy from you, plain and simple.
And in my books, there is no better rapport-builder than a compelling, true story. When your potential client feels like you're speaking on the level about your drawbacks, they will be more likely to believe the positive things you say too, and that trust will translate into more conversions, guaranteed.
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What do you think? Is there a place in sales and marketing pieces for honest admissions and explanations, or do you subscribe to the school of thought that "what they don't know can't hurt them"? Let's continue this discussion in the comments.
Excellent post, Dan'l my boy.
I certainly don't mean to sound like it isn't worth pre-emtively answering objections. But there's a difference between this:
"Why does our service cost so much? Because it's better than the competition."
and this:
"Our high-quality service puts our lower-priced competitors to shame."
One accentuates a positive; the other not so much. Is it a matter of degrees? Sure. But copywriting is all about degrees.
Part of the problem comes in identifying reasonable objections. Often, we can't identify what those are going to be; our natural objections may be different than our potential clients' objections.
Sure, identify OBVIOUS objections like Brian Clark talks about, but if you're not sure how obvious it is or a client hasn't asked, save it. Let the customer raise the objections and then answer them honestly.
Bob,
Thanks for stopping by and starting the discussion here. I agree with you that we should always try and state everything in a positive light. In a previous post on the power of positive words, I even talked about this very thing - how subbing the word investment for price can make a world of difference, for example.
But somehow I still think that sometimes being as honest as possible and keeping your copy spin-free can be quite effective.
See, when you use the high quality/low price corollary on me, as a consumer, I'm not stupid and I know what you've done. And it kind of offends me. (Hypothetically speaking ;)
I've found that truly phrasing a non-benefit as a humble admission of fault can really open up the lines of communication. Now does that mean I would say "hey we're expensive!" and let that linger in the customer's mind? Never. I would never state a drawback without explaining or rationalizing the cost-benefit balance in the very same breath. But in truth, I would be inclined to prefer your first example above, where the question gets the customer thinking "Yeah, why are they more expensive?" and the immediate answer gives them the answer they're looking for.
Now I will just wait here for James from Men With Pens to come and give me a lecture ;)
Daniel
Great post! Finally someone discusses the actual science of the selling process. Overcoming objections in your presentation or copy is not inconsistent with a positive message (as Bob commented). You noted pharmaceuticals and this is a perfect example. In spite of warnings and side effects, people still buy drugs. They are equipped with "negative" information but consumers purchase for the value it offers.
This posting touches on the adaptation of a principal we started using almost two decades ago, when we won the contract to produce an association newsletter. Right from the outset, I determined that we would tell both sides of the story -- even if this meant contacting and quoting fairly and in context the 'opposition' to the association's official viewpoint.
The result of this journalistic integrity, in an environment where such behavior is rare, is contract renewals year after year, higher readership value, and a more effective and credible expression of the association's perspective. We can in fact lift the stories from the association publication and republish in our general trade title without any problem because they certainly are not all 'rah rah, we support the cause' stories.
This doesn't mean we don't have a point of view or bias -- but much can be gained with credibly expressing and communicating the alternative viewpoint.