How do you turn leads and subscribers into buyers and raving fans? You answer four questions from Richard Lindner, Co-Founder and President of DigitalMarketer. With Richard’s four questions, you will overcome a lead’s objections and move them through the Customer Journey towards a sale. The best part? It will cost you nothing to start implementing today and allow you to monetize and re-engage members of your audience.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:
- How the four questions will positively change the dynamic of your relationship with your leads and subscribers and allow you to communicate the value of your product or service to your prospects.
- The five-word phrase that will grab your audience’s attention and articulate why a lead should pay attention to you (« Hint: This answers the #1 question).
- The big mistake companies make that will cause a customer to mistrust you and how you can fix it.
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Bravo Video Testimonial Software
Episode 96 Transcript (swipe the PDF version here):
| Molly Pittman: | Hey guys, Molly Pittman here. Welcome to Episode 96 of Perpetual Traffic. Today, we have a very special guest his name is Richard Lindner. He’s the Co-Founder and President of DigitalMarketer. Although Richard has never been on this podcast, which is an absolute travesty. |
| Richard Lindner: | I can’t believe it myself. |
| Molly Pittman: | Richard Lindner is our President and Co-Founder here at DigitalMarketer. He’s really responsible for a lot of stuff behind the scenes that he actually doesn’t get credit for. A lot of things like email campaigns, marketing promotions, most of what you see that comes out of DigitalMarketer is really from the mind of Richard Lindner. |
| Today, we’re going to be talking about the four magic questions to get warm traffic to do whatever you want. Really happy to have you on, Rich. Thanks for coming. | |
| Richard Lindner: | Really excited to be here. I too am pretty upset that it’s taken this many episodes to get here, but I’ll say big fan. But I’m a fan of the podcast, listen every week and just love what you’re doing and super excited to be on the podcast today? |
| Ralph Burns: | Did you say super excited? |
| Richard Lindner: | So super excited. |
| Molly Pittman: | We talk a lot about how to reach cold audiences. How do you grow your brand? How do you reach people that have never heard of you before, but we don’t talk a lot about what do you do after they become an email subscriber? What do you do after they become a part of your pixel led audience? Essentially how do you speak to warm traffic? It’s really interesting because when you first run an ad to a cold audience, you first start talking to someone who you’ve never spoken to before, it’s easy to start and facilitate that initial conversation, but it’s really difficult to start up the second conversation. How do you talk to them again? What do you say? How do you run that email promotion that gets these new leads to buy? What do you say in those ads to warm traffic, to get them to convert to a low dollar buyer or to even buy one of your bigger products? |
| Richard Lindner: | Most marketing is interruptive, whether or not it’s the first time they’re being introduced to your brand or the first time that you’re asking them to do something on behalf of you and your brand. Think about it for a minute whether it’s Facebook or email, it doesn’t really matter. We’re interrupting people in their everyday lives. People aren’t sitting around going, “Man, that Facebook ad that I clicked on yesterday was really great. I wonder if they’re going to email me.” |
| Molly Pittman: | I can’t wait for them to email me. |
| Richard Lindner: | I just don’t want to leave the house because they may email me while I’m gone. |
| Molly Pittman: | You’ve got mail. |
| Richard Lindner: | That isn’t a thing anymore. In fact, we’re getting more and more emails in … I’ll tell you one thing I want to make sure everyone listening understands is this isn’t about email. This is about follow-up conversations. If you’re doing email correctly, it’s a conversation. Conversations can be dome via email, via messenger, via actual conversations, people still actually make sales on the telephone. I know. It’s a new invention. The telephone. |
| Ralph Burns: | Talking to people? |
| Richard Lindner: | You can talk to people. It’s scary, it’s very scary, but you can do it. Text message, messenger, email, actually face to face selling, or on the phone. |
| What I want to talk to you about are the four magic questions to get warm traffic to do whatever you want. It doesn’t really matter how or where you’re speaking to them. Again, going back to its interruptive when we’re marketing to people. It’s interruptive of day to day lives when we’re asking people to do things. How do you make sure that you’re framing it in a them first kind of way and you’re still showing benefit to you and your brand, your product, your service, and you’re articulating the value that you add that gives you the right to interrupt them? | |
| What we found in DigitalMarketer and our other brands are if you answer these four questions, you can clearly articulate why it is you’re interrupting them and transition from interruption to transaction. | |
| Ralph Burns: | This is such a huge part of the success of your cold traffic campaigns. I think we spend so much time of this podcast talking about acquisition of cold traffic, but it’s just one part of the whole equation. This is an eco-system unto itself. You acquire the cold traffic off Facebook through all the things that we instruct you guys, every single week through the various episodes, but the point is that once you get them on your list, you’ve made a big win by getting them to actually opt in to what it is that you’re putting in front of them. Then now it’s your obligation to take them down this Customer Journey through email, through messenger, whatever it happens to be, whatever sort of warm up process that you have is so integral to the success of that ad spent. |
| You’ve already spent the money to acquire them. Now it’s about monetizing what you’ve already spent. This is a great four-step formula that you should be asking yourself and putting these things into practice each and every day and setting up campaigns so that you can warm up that traffic even more to turn that just lead into a raving fan, a buyer, and somebody who’s a long term customer. | |
| Richard Lindner: | The important part is not only are you answering these questions, but that all of your communication is the same message. What I see so many times is that people have one message or goal from their messenger campaigns when they get new subscribers and another from their email. If they have a sales force, their sales force or outbound calling and they’re all saying slightly different or asking slightly different things. If you don’t have congruency of message and consistency of ask, then you’re confusing your potential customer from go and they can’t trust you. |
| Where we see this the most is siloed businesses. Businesses that have grown really, really large. They’ve siloed the different organizational columns in their business so it’s, “That’s traffic. That’s marketing. They own that.” No, that leads owned by sales. What you see is each of these divisions because they’ve becomes so siloed are now saying different things to the same person and it’s confusing. | |
| I’ll tell you, if you’re asking yourself or asking whoever is crafting these messages, these four questions, you’ll never have that problem again. | |
| Molly Pittman: | Let’s hop into the four questions. |
| Richard Lindner: | Let’s do it. |
| Molly Pittman: | What is question number one? |
| Richard Lindner: | Question number one is why now? If you remember, we’re interruptive no matter what platform you’re interrupting on. It is still interruptive. People aren’t reaching out to you when you’re distributing outbound communication. The first question that you have to answer for people that you’re interrupting is basically why are you interrupting them? Why now? Why should they focus your attention on your right now? |
| A couple of examples, if you’re interrupting someone, the follow-up questions that you should ask is it new? Is it on sale? Is it limited or exclusive? Is it timely? Are any of these things true? Let me point out that there are likely two answers to this question. There’s your answer and then there’s the answer that you need to give to them. Both need to be factual and truthful, but if the why now is, “I paid to acquire you as a lead and by God I need to offset the cost of this acquisition” that is a terrible explanation for any outbound communication. | |
| Molly Pittman: | My boss is on my ass. |
| Richard Lindner: | Right, that’s not okay to say to your potential customers. |
| Let’s role-play a little bit. Let’s have a scenario here. If I’m selling a program that I have, whether it’s a physical product or a program and I want to send an email out, but I really don’t have or it’s not new. It’s not on sale. It’s not limited or exclusive and there’s nothing going on that makes it particularly timely, but I have customer stories, I have testimonials, I have positive feedback, I may say in an email or an outbound conversation, it could be a sales call, it could be a one to one email. I might say, “Hey Molly, I was about to go to sleep last night and I thought about you” which one, I’ll tell you, when you’re writing these communications, any communications sales scripts, no matter what it is, remember normal human interaction. Remember a little bit of psychology. Most people are only thought about by their significant other, their parents, and their offspring. | |
| When someone says “I was thinking about you right before I went to sleep last night” it’s an attention reset. You grab someone’s attention. You maintain or acquire a certain level of importance in that person’s life and you become endearing to them. If I say, “I received an email last night from a customer telling me how they were skeptical at first but they went ahead and bought the product and it the desired end result and I thought about you because I know that you requested this free report. I know that we did a demo the other day. I know that you were in the store the other day.” Whatever the case may be, bring it back to someone did something positive that made me think of you because one again thinking of someone else or being thought of is something that most people don’t experience, but it’s also a why. This happened. I thought of you because I know your desired end result. This person has already achieved it so I wanted to share it with you. I know what I have will get you the same desired end result. Aren’t you ready to start today? | |
| It doesn’t have to be all that important. It doesn’t have to be life changing. It doesn’t always have to be a major life event to answer the question why now? Mattress stores do this all the time. When was the last time it was St. Patrick’s day and you thought, “It’s St. Patrick’s day but I don’t have a new mattress.” I’ll tell you every single holiday, the 500 mattress stores within the three block radius of your home have a sale, every single holiday. | |
| Molly Pittman: | That’s the why now. |
| Richard Lindner: | That’s the why now. It doesn’t have to be a logical explanation. It’s better if it is, but if you just say, “Hey it’s memorial day. That means the best deal on mattresses you’re going to see all year.” It doesn’t make any freaking sense, but it answers the question why now. |
| Molly Pittman: | It’s interesting because most “cold” and I’m putting that in quotation marks, but most cold emails that you’ll even receive from large organizations that you wouldn’t expect from their sales department, just following up. Following up isn’t why now. You’re following up guess how much I care. Not much. |
| Richard Lindner: | They just wanted to interrupt you. |
| Molly Pittman: | Why now, I think about how this works in relationships. I saw a friend and that person reminded me of you. Therefore I’m sending this text message. Hope we can follow up. |
| Richard Lindner: | It’s the same human psychology that’s into play. Those are the messages that mean the most to your friends and to customers. Those are the emails that are immediately responded back because they’re highly personal. It’s a why now? |
| Molly Pittman: | It makes someone feel special. When we talk about hooks and reasons why people do things, one of the is an elevation in status. Not that this is necessarily an elevation in status society, but it is in a one on one relationship. I made you feel special. That’s an elevation of status in our relationship as friends. Therefore let’s chat. |
| Richard Lindner: | Think about this. The last time that someone called you and said I was thinking about you, it was probably one of your parents or distant relatives. The last time you received a standing ovation or someone clapped for you, you were likely walking across the stage at your high school graduation. How do you evoke emotions out of people that are real human interactions? Hey, Ralph, saw this the other day. Made me think of you. I know you said you wanted to do this. Here’s a company that did. I don’t know if this is going to be of any help to you, but check it out. Even if there’s no commercial intent to that, I’ve now changed the dynamic of our relationship because he’s sitting there going, “Wow, he was thinking of me. He remembered out conversation. He knew my desired end result. He saw something and he went out of his way to send it to me.” |
| That’s not normal, but it’s also not difficult to engineer. I’m not saying do it maliciously. Do it with valiant effort and good heart. | |
| Molly Pittman: | You know you’re helping that person. |
| Richard Lindner: | Do it because your product or services is improving your lives. Know psychology. Know what stirs emotion and triggers people. The number one question that you have to answer is why now? |
| Molly Pittman: | Rich, with these message that you’re sending people, this doesn’t have to be a one on one message. This could be in a follow-up sequence of an email campaign. This could be a broadcast. With messenger, a big pain point for most people is, “What do I say when I follow up?” This is answering the question. It doesn’t have to be a one on one email that a sales person is sending to one individual. This can be your company following up with thousands of people, but you’re still making every individual person feel special. |
| Richard Lindner: | Such a great question because I’ll tell you. If you’re doing lead capture correctly, if you’re building your email list correctly, then you’re not using things like subscribe to our newsletter. Maybe that’s on you site. Cool, it’s likely not working all that well, but it’s there and that’s great. You checked the box, awesome. You have specific Lead Magnets that will allow you to determine what they want. You may not have spoken to them individually, but if someone downloads the Facebook ad templates or someone downloads how to hit a golf ball ten yards longer on your drive, or someone downloads how to lose ten pounds by this weekend, note you can’t, whatever it is- |
| Molly Pittman: | Sounds like you’ve tried. |
| Richard Lindner: | It’s an FTC thing right there. You know what they want. You don’t have to have a conversation with them. You can say, “Hey molly. I noticed that you downloaded the Facebook Lead Magnet the other day and requested our best ad templates. I ran across this blog post that we published a couple of years ago that really explained how we scale our Facebook ads. It made me think of you. Also, we have this Facebook ad program. |
| Hey, golfer, I noticed you downloaded how to hit your drive ten yards longer report. We have this program that is blah blah blah. I know their desired end result. Don’t think that knowing the desired end result has to come from a one on one conversation. Knowing the desired end result, you have to ascribe intent. Not what their wildest dreams are, but what they care about right now based on the action they took with your Lead Magnet and if it’s specific enough, you should be able to determine their desired after and speak to it. | |
| Molly Pittman: | Absolutely. That kind of leads us to question two. |
| Richard Lindner: | Question number two, who cares? Too many times as marketers, as sales people, we assume that people are going to connect the dots. We don’t say things like, “Molly, because you downloaded the Facebook ad template, I know you’re looking to scale and launch profitable ad campaigns. We just assume that they’re going to connect the dots that we know that we’re the vehicle to take them to where they want to go. |
| Molly Pittman: | Rich, I think a lot of that comes from being too close to things. |
| Richard Lindner: | It absolutely does. |
| Molly Pittman: | You and I talk about this a lot. Sometimes, we’ll catch ourselves missing the simple things that should be said in an email or an ad because we’ve connected those dots. We know where we’re trying to move someone in the Customer Journey, so we forget to mention it. Luckily, we have checks and balances to say, “They might not know.” They might not remember. |
| Richard Lindner: | Think about this for a second. Most of your prospects believe that you have done what you say you have done. They even believe that you’ve done it for other people. What they don’t believe, one of the big points of belief that you have to overcome is not even that you can do it for them, but that they can have success with you. If you’re not calling them out specifically, if you miss this part, if you’re not ultra-clear on who you’re speaking to, then they’re not going to not move forward because they don’t believe in you, they’re going to not move forward because they don’t believe in them. That’s dangerous for them, but it’s something that you have to acknowledge if you truly have something that will change people’s lives. |
| Think about it like this. Who cares? Who would be affected the most positively or negatively by having or not having your product or service. Go back to the analogy of the Facebook ads. | |
| Hey Molly, you added our Facebook ad templates the other day. I know that you’re really interested in either starting on Facebook or scaling your Facebook ads. Saw this thing, thought about you. I know it’s difficult for business owners and for marketing team members to really understand how to effectively run Facebook ads. Who cares in that case? Business owners, and anyone on a marketing team charged with running that. It doesn’t have to be like the old direct response sales copy to where it says, “Attention people wanting to lose ten pounds.” We don’t have to go there, but we do have to let them know this is the group that you belong to. | |
| I’m speaking to that group. You are the ones that will be affected by this. If you don’t, then people are left to say, “Is he talking to me? Is she talking to me? Will this work for me? If you can find a way to realize, what do they self-identify with and how can you call them out and say, “Yes, this is for VPs of marketing. Yes. This is for co-hosts of podcasts. Yes this is for people driving traffic to grow their business.” If you can figure out how they self-identify and you can call them out, then you will grab their attention and they will know that you’re speaking to them. | |
| Molly Pittman: | A simple example of this is if you look at some of our recent sales pages for these new workshops that we’re launching, we have a whole section that says, “Who is this for?” With big green check marks. Who is this not for with big red Xs and absolutely use that strategy in your email and your sales page. It doesn’t matter where it is. Tell people who this is for because they’re trying to say, “Is this for me?” If you can go ahead and overcome that possible doubt for them, way to go. That’s the conversation that’s already happening in their head. |
| Richard Lindner: | Yeah, absolutely. I think so many people, especially when they’re marketing their business, who’s your customer? Oh, it’s everyone. |
| Ralph Burns: | No, it’s not. |
| Richard Lindner: | No, it is not everyone. It’s not everyone in that space. Even in the sub-niches of sub-niches. |
| Molly Pittman: | We must target 30 million people because I might miss a person. |
| Richard Lindner: | I might miss somebody. No, even if you sell mattresses like our previous example, your target market is not everyone. |
| Ralph Burns: | Right. It’s a very specific sub-set. I think you niche down to scale up. I’ve always sort of thought that. That’s definitely the case here. You don’t have to bang them over the head with it like we do this sometimes in our ad campaign, attention coaches. That works only to a certain degree. You can subtly mention it. You don’t have to be hit over the head with it. You are in this group and there are other people like you. It’s okay to have this frustration. We just so happen to potentially have a solution for it. Here’s the next step. |
| Richard Lindner: | Going back to psychology, going back to the hierarchy of needs, we all need to belong. We all self-identify and need to self-identify, not with some loan wolf no one else identifies with this, but we all need to find our group, our tribe. What you said right there is so important. It’s fine in your copy whether it’s email copy or sales page copy or ad copy to say attention this. Once you’ve aggregated that attention, when you’re following up, you need to be subtly reminding them, not so boisterously saying “Because I know you’re a VP of marketing” because what if they’re not? You need to think broad enough, but niched enough. How do you pick a group that’s broad enough that they self-identify with that you’re not going to miss because what if you’re not a VP of marketing? What if you’re a director of marketing? |
| If I’m so specific of saying attention VP of marketing that worries that they’re marketing team is not trained enough to effectively grow and market your products and services. If you have that worry but you’re not that VP of marketing, you’re a director of marketing, you stopped listening right when I said attention VP of marketing. | |
| Ralph Burns: | That’s not me. |
| Molly Pittman: | This goes back to a conversation we actually had earlier today. We were writing some emails for the new traffic workshop we’re launching. We were talking about ad targeting. The email was written. It’s basically, “We’re not going to teach you how to target based off of generic things like age, gender, income.” Instead of targeting and thinking of your avatar in terms of, “Her name is Betty. She’s a white female. She is between this age range. She makes this amount of money.” We were trying to teach people to target based off intent and based off of things that they like. |
| A way to “get around this” and to make sure you’re not excluding people is to speak about what they care about which is what this question is about. | |
| Ralph Burns: | Who cares? |
| Molly Pittman: | Who cares? I know you care about growing your business through Facebook ads. That’s going to include anyone who cares about that whether they’re VP of marketing, director of marketing. Whatever their title is, we’re talking about what everyone wants, the end result, why they care, not necessarily what they’re called. |
| Richard Lindner: | DigitalMarketer, for the longest time, tried to hire an email copywriter because honestly for the longest time it was me. While email is a very high leveraged point, there are a lot of things that I should be doing other than writing emails. When I didn’t do it, Molly did it. There are definitely so many … Molly is so much more important to the growth of this business than I am with customer acquisition, so she shouldn’t be writing emails. As we’re going down the line on who should be writing emails, there are so many people that shouldn’t be, that it’s not funny.
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| We tried and tried and tried to hire an email copywriter. Really it should be easy. This is a job. This isn’t a thing that doesn’t exist in normal business. This is a real profession, a real area of specialty. Everyone that we would interview or bring in had some bad habits or didn’t really see eye to eye with our methodology. Molly said something that I’ll tell you and I hate to say this. At the time, I did not agree with her, but I’ll tell you she was so very right. She said, “I don’t think we need to hire an email copywriter. I think that we can hire someone who is a social media manager who’s used to taking control copy and taking things that have already been created and promoting them on social because really that’s all email marketing is. | |
| It kind of pissed me off at how smart that was because I didn’t think of it, but luckily I truly do love Molly Pittman. | |
| Ralph Burns: | Damn it, Pittman. |
| Richard Lindner: | If anyone was going to do it, it’s great that it was her. That’s so smart. She was so right. When we brought someone in who was smart who understood the distribution of created content, it doesn’t matter if that content is a blog post or a squeeze page or a sales page or a demo request or a webinar signup. It doesn’t matter. When we gave them these four questions, they knew how to hit those hot points and distribute the content and they were able to start writing emails because they were able to answer these four questions. I’ll tell you, having these in your business, it really is just the difference between being able to communicate your value to your prospect or not. That’s it. |
| Ralph Burns: | On to question three. |
| Richard Lindner: | This is a biggie. |
| Molly Pittman: | Question three. |
| Richard Lindner: | Question three. |
| Molly Pittman: | What is it? |
| Richard Lindner: | Why should they care? We’ve said why now, who should care, but why should they care. Again, remembering we can’t expect people to connect the dots. We can’t expect them to say, “Right now there is a flash sale on this thing that’s going to help me achieve our desired end result” but why should they care? What does their life look like before their product? What does it look like after? If you can’t clearly articulate that, if you forget to mention that in your communication, then you’re screwed. All you’re doing is talking about yourself at that point. All you’re doing is touting how great your product, service or brand is. |
| Let me let you in on a little secret. No one gives a shit. They don’t. I don’t care who your brand is. No one cares if all you’re doing is talking about how amazing your product, service, or brand is, or worse how amazing you are. To kind of close a loop on something that started a few minutes ago but didn’t do a great job at finishing was with Katie, with the person that Molly hired. One of the things that we had to explain to her other than these four questions is that there’s your prospect, and there’s your prospect’s desired end result. All you are selling is the vehicle. If you’re not the vehicle, but you can’t be the hero. You cannot be the thing that fixes their problem. You’re only the vehicle that allows them to achieve what they were destined to achieve. | |
| If you’re familiar with the hero’s journey, you’re the guide, never the hero. If you’re not familiar with the hero’s journey, please for the love of all that’s holy, go look it up. If you’re in marketing and you don’t understand this, if you’re in sales and you don’t understand this, if you’re in business and you don’t understand this, heck, if you just like movies and you don’t understand this, you’re welcome for ruining movies forever for you. In the hero’s journey, your product’s role, your service’s role, your brand’s role is the guide, never the hero. You can’t be. You’re the vehicle that allows them to achieve the desired after. Why should they care? What does their life look like before your product or service and after? | |
| Going back to one of the examples that I just spouted off on, VPs of marketing who are worried that their marketing team can’t effectively grow and market their business, you need to say something along the lines of, “How amazing would it feel to know that your marketing team can effectively market your product or service to your ideal customer. They know exactly what to say to overcome even the biggest objection to get your product in the hands of the person who needs it the most. That’s like less than a paragraph, but we just answered an entire question why should we care? | |
| Not only did we answer a question, we painted or transported them to a desired future. That’s what they want. What does your person want? Is it ten pounds? What is it? I’ll tell you. Let’s go back to the weight loss or even the golf. One of the most important questions you can ask is why does your prospect want this? Why does your prospect want to lose ten pounds? Is it usually health? No. It’s vanity. Why does your prospect want to drive the golf ball ten yards longer? Is it to improve their score? Hell no, it’s to out drive their friends. It’s vanity. So many things boil down to vanity, to sex, to these things. Why should they care? If you don’t understand why they should care, you can’t paint a narrative. | |
| If I said, “Ralph, can you imagine the next time you’re on the golf course with your buddy and you step up onto the first tee and you put the tee in the ground and you drive your golf ball out there and you know that your friend just died a little inside as your golf ball sailed in the air over theirs lying in the middle of the fairway. That’s painting a picture. | |
| Molly Pittman: | That’s why they should care. |
| Richard Lindner: | That’s what their life looks like afterwards. It’s not their consistent, they scored an average of ten points less. They out drove their friend. Imagine your neighbors face when you walk in her party wearing that dress. Imagine how you’ll feel when you step onto stage in that suit you haven’t been able to wear in ten years, the confidence you’ll have. This is their after. It’s not ten pounds. If you can’t clearly articulate the after, you can’t help them because you can’t connect the dots. Why should they care? Please, please be specific on why they should care. |
| At some point it gets a little bit too deep. Until it sort of feels weird, I think you’ve gone too far. To be able to articulate it in a way so that they can really get into self-confidence and how do you feel and overcoming all these fears that you had when you were overweight and all these other insecurities, that’s a little bit too far. You have to go- | |
| Ralph Burns: | You’re right. You have to be careful. |
| Richard Lindner: | You have to be careful there because some people say, “You need the benefit behind the benefit behind the benefit. |
| Ralph Burns: | Paint the future. |
| Richard Lindner: | Never talk about the past. |
| Molly Pittman: | Also, why they should care in a way that actually relates to them. I see a lot of people that position why they should care in terms of features of the product or service that they’re actually selling. That’s not going to cut it. You should care because you’ll love my product. No, that’s not it. Why should they care in relation to their life? Really not just in follow up or to warm audiences. This is why they should care is universal to any conversation you’re having with your audience. |
| Richard Lindner: | It’s any conversation you’re having. If I want my daughter to clean her room, then I have two choices. I’m either the parent that goes to threatening, or I can answer these four questions. I can give her a benefit driven reason why she should go clean her room. I can tell her why she should care. I can prove it. If you can think about how you answer these questions in just communication, in every aspect of life, I’ll tell you. It will get you better results across the board. |
| Question number four. | |
| Molly Pittman: | What is question number four? |
| Ralph Burns: | Tell us question number four. |
| Molly Pittman: | The fourth magic question. |
| Richard Lindner: | Question number four, how can you prove it? Again, going back to people believe that you can do what you say you can do. People believe that you’ve done it for other people. People believe that you could even do it for someone that they know, but it’s tough for them to believe that they can do it. Proof is a big deal. Even though they believe that, you need to leverage testimonials, customer stories, case studies or news stories. A lot of people … One of the biggest questions that I hear when they’re writing follow-up and they’re wanting to leverage social proof or when they’re just wanting to leverage social proof at all in their sales architecture is what if I don’t have any testimonials or case studies yet? What if I don’t have any customer stories? People love my product. I just haven’t had anyone tell me and I haven’t created a way to ask them to tell me. |
| I’ll tell you, the easiest way to do that is third party credibility. If you can go out and find a third party reputable source that’s saying the same thing that you’re saying that their story is in line with your story and your prospect heard you say it first and you can send them this third party credibility, they will assume that this third party is validating you because they heard it from you first. | |
| Molly Pittman: | Even back to the mattress analogy, if you’re doing some sort of promotion, you’re really pushing for this mattress or this type of sleep or whatever. You’re going to feel very rested. Then you find an article that has some scientific study or even not, just a new source that’s validating what you just said, you’re right in that person’s eyes. You didn’t just say it, but someone else said it too. |
| Richard Lindner: | Someone else validated it. |
| Molly Pittman: | Absolutely. |
| Richard Lindner: | Even if they said it first. Again, you have to prove what you say. We can’t just walk out and say “You’ll drive the ball 100 yards further this weekend. Who should care? People who play golf.” No, you can’t do that and expect them to believe it. You have to tell them why now, who should care, why should they care, but how can you prove it? How can you back up your claim? If you can’t back up your claim, you’re not answering a question in a customer’s mind that’s keeping them from making that buying decision. |
| Molly Pittman: | If you do have case studies, that’s very beneficial. We sent an email yesterday in brackets, in caps, “Case study. How a true dog grew to 10 million and is headed to 20 million. What is the open rate on that? |
| Ralph Burns: | It was 38%. |
| Richard Lindner: | I’ll tell you. Here’s the really cool thing about that email. It was a 38% open rate email. Here was the strategy that I’m most proud of that I thought was sort of the sneakiest strategy on that. We had been sending an email campaign for four days. All we did was take a case study that validated that we could prove what we were saying in those four days and we sent it to everyone who opened the email, but didn’t take the action that we wanted them to take. |
| Not only did it get a 38% open rate, but it tipped a huge number of people just right over the line. They were interested. We had peaked their curiosity. We had effectively answered question one through three, but we hadn’t done a fantastic job at answering the fourth question. Just sending this email, not to everybody, but only to the people who needed this fourth question to be answered before they could take our desired end result. 38% of the people who had opened these other four emails but hadn’t done what we wanted them to do opened the email. About another 5% of those people did what we wanted them to do. | |
| Ralph Burns: | I look at these as this is an email strategy that we’re talking about here. Even in cold traffic, we try to simulate the email experience to cold traffic, especially if we’re doing some kind of launch. I always think of the testimonial as you are one yard or two yards from the goal line. All these people need is just a little bit of a push, right over the edge. Give me a reason to buy. They’re thinking about it. You know they’re thinking about it the testimonial encapsulates questions one through three, then proves it in question number four. Can you prove it? Yes you can. These are actual people who got that result. Here was there before state. He is their after state. Here is who they are. Why should they care? Why now? All these other things answered all in that final piece to the puzzle. |
| We just did a launch recently. We actually got seven testimonials in video format. We put them in a carousel video ad. It was the one ad set that got quadruple digit ROI in the entire campaign. It was because so many of these people had visited- | |
| Richard Lindner: | They were right there. |
| Ralph Burns: | They were right there. They were on the one yard line. All they needed was a little push right over. The end result is they’re closer to that after state now because they ended up purchasing this product. Same thing here. It’s like sometimes you don’t realize how close you actually are, something like this that’s hugely powerful. One of the best tools that we use to get testimonials if you don’t have it and if you have some kind of list is Bravo, getbravo.com. We’ll put that in the Show Notes. It’s the greatest, easiest software to use to get video testimonials for people who have used your products. We just did it for another customer just this past week. It’s tremendous. These testimonials don’t have to be professionally produced or anything else. |
| Richard Lindner: | It’s likely better if they’re not. |
| Ralph Burns: | If they’re not, exactly. |
| Molly Pittman: | It’s more relatable. |
| Ralph Burns: | As long as you can hear what they’re saying, that’s the biggest thing. The audio has to be good. |
| Richard Lindner: | The consumer is jaded. The consumer assumes that they’re being played, that you are leveraging deceptive and persuasive tactics to get them to buy. When you have highly produced testimonials or case studies, their mind goes to, it’s fake. |
| Ralph Burns: | Totally. We all see it on TV too. Actor portrayal. You know it’s fake. |
| Richard Lindner: | You never had acne. You have perfect skin. |
| Ralph Burns: | That’s right. You always did. Come on. |
| Molly Pittman: | You’re lying. |
| Ralph Burns: | That’s right. |
| Richard Lindner: | We all think about it. I love what you said there about the carousel ad. What you just proved is screw email. Screw one to one. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how you answer it or if it’s an email or if it’s an ad or if it’s a phone call or a text message. Just answering these questions in whatever or best case scenario all. What if you ran an ad, a carousel ad to the same person that you were sending a case study email to, to the same person that your sales person was calling and saying, “Ralph, I know that when we talked the other day, you had this objection.” It made me think about this one customer that also had the same objection that overcame it. They were so successful they agreed to sit down and do this case study for us. I’d like to send that to you. |
| What if you hit them on all fronts with the same message? | |
| Ralph Burns: | Absolutely. You never know which one they’re going to … Maybe they might get all three or four. |
| Richard Lindner: | Maybe they’re busy. |
| Ralph Burns: | Maybe they are busy. Maybe your email went into spam or whatever it happens to be, but the point is it’s the thing. You have to give it to them in multiple formats. |
| Richard Lindner: | I’ll tell you, if you will seriously sit down and ask yourself these four questions, before you right your next sales script, before you make your next sales call, before you write your next broadcast or email follow-up campaign, or write your next ad or automate your next messenger campaign, it’ll work better. It really will. Not only will it work better, you’ll be asking your customer or potential customer to trust you less. When you answer three out of four questions or two out of four questions, you’ll still make sales, you’re just asking your customer to trust you for the other questions that they’re already asking that you’re not answering. If you go ahead and answer them, you’re asking less of them sight unseen. |
| That’s it. That’s the four questions. They may seem very, very simple, but I hope you don’t underestimate the power that they can bring to any media that you’re using to ask your prospect to do something. | |
| Molly Pittman: | Very powerful. Thank you Rich. These are the four questions that we ask ourselves for every email broadcast that we write, every retargeting ad that we create. How can we help overcome these objections because that’s what this is. Why not go ahead and position your product or service and sell it in a way that they don’t really have to have objections. They just want to buy. Very powerful. Thank you so much. |
| Ralph Burns: | Yeah, this is awesome stuff. |
| Richard Lindner: | Thank you guys. This was a ton of fun. |
| Molly Pittman: | Absolutely. Appreciate it. Thank you guys so much for listening today. Any last thoughts gentleman? |
| Richard Lindner: | Two last things. Thing number one, only reference the previous positive action. If you’re talking to a prospect and they don’t do something, never acknowledge that. I’m only sending you this email because you didn’t do this. I’m only calling you because you didn’t do this. Never do that. |
| Molly Pittman: | You jerk. |
| Ralph Burns: | How dare you. |
| Richard Lindner: | You’re creating an awkward experience. Think about how many people … Like my wife. My wife can’t watch the Voice or when American Idol was on, she couldn’t watch the auditions because she was embarrassed for people. That’s not un normal. We get embarrassed on behalf of other people and we change the channel in TV. What makes you think if you’re creating an awkward or embarrassing moment that people won’t archive or delete your message or hang up the phone or not look at that. |
| One, I only reference the previous positive action. | |
| Molly Pittman: | Don’t make them feel awkward. |
| Richard Lindner: | Don’t make anybody feel awkward. That’s creepy and weird and they won’t do what you want. Two, give them an out. One of our best converting ads, Molly came up with this. It was amazing. Did life get in the way? Why does that work? If the first step to buying their product is admitting they were wrong when they didn’t buy it the first time, you lose. Psychologically, we want to protect ourselves from all kinds of things including making poor decisions. We don’t want to admit that we were wrong. It’s human nature. If you can’t give your prospect an out, if you can’t change the scenario, if you made them an offer and they didn’t buy the first time, if you haven’t sweetened the deal or given them a discount or added something additional or changed the reasoning, changed the logic statement that they had to make the decision, step one in buying your product is admitting they were wrong when they didn’t the first time. |
| Only reference the previous positive action. Two, always give them an out. Did life get in the way? This probably went to your spam box. Hey, I’m sorry I didn’t follow up even with you did. Give your customer, give your prospect an out to say yes when they’ve already said no. | |
| Ralph Burns: | That’s huge. That’s great. |
| Molly Pittman: | Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on Rich. Maybe we will have you before episode 200. |
| Ralph Burns: | Yes, we will. |
| Richard Lindner: | Obviously, I’ll come in at episode 194, 192. |
| Ralph Burns: | You’re scheduled right now for 1- |
| Molly Pittman: | We’ll put it on your calendar in two years. |
| Richard Lindner: | Perfect. Can’t wait. |
| Molly Pittman: | Thank you guys so much for listening. Please check out the Show Notes at digitalmarketer.com/podcast for any resources mentioned in this episode. Thanks again to Richard Lindner for coming on today. We look forward to talking to you guys next week. |
| Richard Lindner: | Thanks. |
| Ralph Burns: | See you. |
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