I’m going to continue with our process of getting new leads and clients through cold outreach. I’ve already talked a little bit about identifying your perfect prospects, creating your NED, which is your “New Exciting and Different” offer.
Today I want to talk about the one thing that you can inject into your outbound messaging and not just for outbound messaging, but for pretty much any marketing that you’re doing that can increase the effectiveness of your cold outreach.
It’s just one word!
One word that will turn your messages from a dull knife into a sharp blade.
They’ll just cut through pretty much any other messages that your ideal prospect is getting.
Ready for it? The word is “specificity”– being more specific.
Now, let me explain what I mean by that.
Let me tell you a quick story.
So back when the Pony Express had just started and people were figuring out direct mail and advertising for the first time (this was about the time Ben Franklin’s newspaper came out), there wasn’t anybody making any promises at all.
You could make a promise that was very vague and general like, for instance: our potion gives you more health and vitality!
Or: Our new pill gives you more wealth and will cure all diseases! Huzzah!
When no one was advertising and talking about this kind of stuff, they could make really big promises because no one was making them.
And so they were believable.
Because of where we’re at with how easy it is to market and advertise, people are still making these very general promises. And it’s not really digging into what customers really, really want.
So the problem that I see, for one, is that founders are making bigger promises. And there’s nothing wrong with making a bigger promise– but the bigger the promise you make, the more proof you need to have to back it up.
So if you’re telling somebody “We can increase your conversions by 25%.”, that’s a pretty bold promise. And because it’s so bold, immediately your customer is going to think of objections.
Objections like: How do you know you can really help me? What proof do you have? Who are you? How do I know you aren’t going to make a fool outta me?
That bigger promise requires a lot of heaving lifting. You gotta have a long sales page that says:
“Here’s what I can do for you. Here are all the testimonials and the proof and charts that I can use to back up my promise. Here are all the reasons you can trust me.”
But in a cold email, you can’t really send out a long-form letter to build all that trust.
No one’s going to read it.
So instead of making a bigger promise, what you can do to instantly increase the effectiveness of your cold outreach is to inject SPECIFICITY.
Two heaping doses of specificity into your messaging.
The two doses are:
- Who You Can Help.
- What is the Meaningful Specific Result That You Can Get Them?
Notice I didn’t say what is the ABSOLUTE BEST RESULT that you can give them. You probably wouldn’t take one of your clients and say, “We can increase your revenue by 1000%”, right?
Because even if you could do that, no one’s going to believe it. I mean, you can do that. But you’re going to find that your responses are a lot fewer than if you did something MEANINGFUL and SPECIFIC to the client.
So what is a meaningful and specific result?
It’s a result that shows that you understand their industry and is often the VEHICLE to get them their desired result.
Anybody can say: “We can increase conversions!” or “We’ll increase your sales by 50%!”
Yeah, who doesn’t want those results – the problem is that they aren’t SPECIFIC to your prospect and their business.
Let me give you an example.
We’re going to make a statement and dial it in until it becomes super, super specific. Let’s take a popup builder tool for example.
If, lucky you, your SASS is a popup builder, I’m going to show you exactly how I would do that right now. So, first of all, you probably think that customers want more sales.
Your initial promise would most likely be: “We can help you get more sales. We can help increase conversions!”
But the problem is everyone’s saying that.
Any ol’ bug in a rug can say they can increase your sales, or conversions, or whatever.
If I’m running an eCommerce store, what am I totally, completely fed up with?
Well, I’m fed up with customers leaving and not buying anything! I’m paying a lot of money for traffic and there are customers that land on my site but don’t buy.
In Google Analytics I see a bounce rate of 80%, which is very high and very frustrating! Hot Dang!
That’s 80% of customers coming to my site, that I’m paying a lot of money for, and then leaving without buying anything. So that’s one thing I’m fed up with.
Another thing is I’m fed up with people adding stuff to their cart and not buying! That drives me bonkers!
What is another thing they’re fed up with if they are already using a popup tool?
I might be fed up with pop-ups that don’t work– or that actually reduce– conversions.
Keep in mind, I am making some of this stuff up because I don’t know what the true pains are. But if you’re a popup builder, then you’ll know what customers are fed up with.
Something else they might be fed up with is actually getting opt-ins from their popup and not knowing what to do with them.
Do all of those things lead back to “more sales and more conversions”? Yes! But these are the specific, meaningful results you can focus on getting them.
They’re saying in their heads:
“I wish I could stop customers from leaving the site without buying something – or follow up with them if they don’t buy.”
The more specific you are, and the more that you understand what’s going on in your customer’s head, the more likely they are to believe that you have a solution to their problem.
I didn’t come up with that; I forgot who that was. It might be Eugene Schwartz?
Anyway, it’s brilliant and TRUE. If you can communicate the problem better than your customer can communicate it in their own head, then they’ll automatically assume you have the solution to the problem and you don’t need all this proof.
You don’t need to have like a huge email with case studies and proof and testimonials.
Okay, so back to the popup builder example: let’s say your statement is “We help you increase conversions.” That’ s too big and too bland. Everyone’s saying that.
How could we stand out and be more specific?
Well, we can narrow it down and say we SPECIFICALLY help eCommerce stores increase conversions.
Okay, so now you’ve gotten one level deeper by eliminating everyone who isn’t an eCommerce store.
Now keep in mind, we’re doing this as a cold outreach, right?
So now you know that you’re targeting eCommerce stores, you can be very specific with your messaging.
For instance, “We help e-commerce stores increase conversions.”
Okay, that’s pretty good…but it could be better. Let’s dig deeper and be even more specific.
How about:
“We help eCommerce stores turn more visitors into sales.” Okay, so that’s even more specific. It’s kind of a different way of saying “increased conversions”, but it’s just a more specific way of saying it.
Is it specific enough, though?
Probably not.
Let’s go a level deeper.
How about, “We help Shopify store owners turn cold traffic into sales even if they aren’t ready to buy yet.”
I just got goosebumps.
Much better, right?
You’re not promising them a 500% increase in sales. You’re saying if you have cold traffic coming in, you can help convert those into leads and then nurture those leads into loyal customers and sales.
It’s a specific promise on who you can help and how you can help them.
Make sense?
Here’s your fun-work for today:
Look at the promises you’re making.
When you’re doing cold outreach, be specific on who it is and how you can help them.
Be as specific as you can with the result that you can give them–the meaningful result– and usually that’s tied back to something they’re fed up with, as well as who you can help.
If you want, I have a whole mind map with all this stuff in it with the templates, all this stuff that I’ve talked to you about today.
Just go to krallclientcatcher.com. It’s an absolute steal for $7 and it’s got everything we talked about, plus training videos and more examples of this in action.
Krallclientcatcher.com
Cheers,
A