This is the final post in my series on dealing with objections in web content. The first two are here and here.
The story so far: We’ve established that, for any objection that might potentially get in the way of a person’s decision to buy your product and service, there are three broad types of objector: explicit objectors (those who have the objection and will voice it), latent objectors (those who have the objection, at least at some level, but won’t voice it), and non-objectors (those who don’t have the objection at all).
We then went further and divided each of these three categories of objector into a further three subcategories. And we finished the last post by saying that the way to deal with all these different types of objector is not to try to write something that will please everybody. So what do you do instead?
How to deal with multiple types of objector
I could deal with this topic at very great length (well, OK, I could deal with most topics at very great length) but I’m going to boil it down to five steps:
- Think about the audience for this specific piece of writing.
- Try to work out approximately what proportion of this audience will fit into each category of objector.
- Work out how much impact answering the objection will have for each category.
- Write your copy for the category of objector that looks most important taking both Steps 2 and 3 into account.
- If you get the chance to address other categories implicitly, go for it.
So let’s take each of these in turn.
1. Think about the audience
Hopefully, you do this for every single piece of copy you write. But it’s just as important to keep your audience in mind when you’re answering objections as when you’re promoting benefits.
To see why, let’s go back to the example of “Gloopy Glaze donuts are ultra-fattening”. Obviously if your audience is teenage video gamers, this objection will have a completely different valency than it would if your audience was middle-aged stay-at-home mothers.
2. Assign a proportion of your audience to each type of objector.
Now we’re getting into “easier said than done” territory! Yes, you can and should research your market, but what about latent objections? By definition, people in a focus group aren’t going to mention objections they’re embarrassed to admit to, still less objections they don’t even know about!
I’m not a market researcher, so I can’t tell you how to solve this problem. (Tom?…) What I can say is that when businesses do manage to identify the latent objections their customers might have, they gain an incredibly powerful marketing advantage.
For an example of this, check out this wonderful post by Havi Brooks (I should mention that the whole idea of latent objections largely came together for me after reading this post). Havi talks about how for years she avoided trying acupuncture because she was worried she’d have to take off her clothes…something she understandably felt awkward about actually saying. If an acupuncturist had simply put something in their FAQ answering the question “Will I have to get naked?” (answer: no), they could have had Havi as a customer a lot sooner…and possibly a lot of other customers like her.
Here’s another example: I enjoy cooking, and where possible I buy meat from traditional butchers rather than supermarkets. I’ll often come across one of those recipes that says something like “ask your butcher to bone and butterfly the joint” or “see if your butcher can get hold of aged mutton” or “don’t buy pre-ground mince, get your butcher to grind it in front of you”. That’s all well and good, but I am far too shy to actually ask a butcher to do any of those things. So if a butcher decided to put a sign up saying “Feel free to ask us to bone, joint, grind, or order in anything you like”, they’d instantly get my custom for life…irrespective of price.
I don’t know that there’s any quick way of getting this kind of intelligence from your customers. I suspect you just have to build up trust and keep listening to them. (And obviously, if they write blogs, read them!)
3. Work out the impact on each type of objector.
If you’ve ever played poker, you know that some hands are foregone conclusions. If you have the second best possible hand and your opponent has the best possible hand, you’ll almost certainly lose all your money; on the other hand, if she has the third best possible hand, you’ll almost certainly get all her money.
What good players know is that, because these hands will play out the same way no matter what you do, the correct strategy is not to worry about them. Instead, you concentrate on making the most from the situations you actually have control over.
In the same way, there are some types of objector on whom answering an objection will have no impact. These people might form a large proportion of your audience. But they should play almost no part in your decision about how to answer an objection. In particular, those people who aren’t going to buy your product no matter what you do can safely be ignored altogether.
As for people who will buy your product regardless of what you say…well, don’t ignore them, because they’re your best customers and you can’t take them for granted. But recognise that when you’re answering this specific objection, it’s not these people you’re addressing. It’s the people who might change their decision depending on what you say.
This might all sound obvious, but in practice it rarely is. How many businesses waste their time trying to justify their prices to people who won’t buy their products no matter what? Or to take something closer to home – how many of us writers have spent hours trying to convince some blowhard who thinks he’s the next Hemingway that his prose is, in fact, unreadable and he should be paying us to fix it?
4. Work out who’s most important and write for them.
This is the really crucial step. If you’re Gloopy Glaze Donuts, how do you actually deal with the fact that a consumer magazine has come out and described your product as a heart attack with a hole in the middle?
First of all, you ignore the “no impact” groups. Don’t worry about the ones who won’t buy regardless; and forget (for the time being) the “Gloopy Glaze 4 Life” crowd.
Now, if you decide that of your remaining prospects, the majority will have read the magazine article and will therefore be affected by this objection in some way, it’s better to just come out and address it. Mention the magazine by name and tackle it head-on. (How you do that is another matter.)
If, on the other hand, the magazine is so obscure and little-read that you can rely on most of your customers not having read it, then you’ll probably want to take a different tack. In fact, you probably won’t even want to mention the magazine story directly, otherwise you risk turning lots of non-objectors into objectors!
Now, I’m not saying lie about your product. By all means, list nutritional information and talk about eating in moderation and so forth simply as a matter of corporate responsbility. But are you morally obliged to go out of your way to mention a publication that has panned your product? Feel free to disagree, but I’m going with no.
5. Twofers!
There is where it gets fun. As I’ve said, write your responses for one kind of objector. But the cool thing about putting this stuff in writing is that not everyone who reads what you’ve written is going to be the kind of person you’re targeting – and sometimes that doesn’t matter!
Here’s a common example: when you answer an objection for explicit objectors, you pick up some latent objectors along the way. That truck driver who’s too embarrassed to mention he’s worried about calories? That’s fine, he can happily pretend you’re talking to other customers, but he gets his objection answered anyway.
Here’s an even cooler kind of “twofer”: when you address an objection, you also send a message to the people for whom your objection is actually a point in favour. So, for instance, by mentioning the study that says your donuts are high in calories, you reassure those people who actually like the fact that it’s high in calories. Nifty!
Tell me your examples
That’s it from me. I’d love to hear what you’ve thought about this series of posts. What have I missed?
I’d also really love to hear your own examples of dealing with objections. Don’t be shy!
