Leaders don’t hesitate when a movement materializes. They lean into change and reap outsized rewards.
Back in 2005, I saw things shifting in a new direction.
I had just wound up my real estate business after a near-death experience. And I had resolved that I would start a new business that would allow me to not have clients and write more.
The blogging movement had been building steam for several years at that point, and I had been paying attention since around 2001. Plus, I had used blogs in my real estate business for SEO and lead generation, but it wasn’t what would be considered “proper” blogging.
It was interesting to see the practice shifting from a form of journaling to a commercial pursuit based on interest-based topics that could generate revenue. People recognized this as a way to “make money online” from writing.
I immediately saw that these early “pro bloggers” were trying to do what I had done with my email newsletter business seven years earlier. And they were making the same mistakes I made that led to my only business failure.
So, I registered a domain name in December, mapped out an initial strategy, and published my first post on January 9, 2006. Copyblogger was born.
The first three months were a ghost town as I dutifully published two lengthy articles per week. Finally, I found a way to break through with an innovative free report. Things took off from there to the point where other bloggers offered to write for Copyblogger for free to reach my audience by that fall.
And it went on this way for 18 months. It wasn’t until the fall of 2007 that I released Copyblogger’s first product, an online course that was its own startup company. But what happened before that was truly remarkable.
I intentionally took my time before trying to sell to my audience. For one thing, blogging was transitioning from its highly idealistic origins, and I came along and told writers they needed to sell products and services with their blogs (which later became known as content marketing). I needed their trust.
I was also figuring out what I wanted that first product to be. I knew generally what the audience wanted, but I wasn’t sure of the business model.
Anyway, the audience got impatient with me in the best possible way:
“Just take my credit card already!”
“Whatever you decide to sell, I’m buying it!”
“What’s taking you so long to sell?”
I remember one email from a reader in particular. He was actually distressed because he couldn’t figure out why I was delivering so much value without asking for anything in return.
Imagine that.
Instead of people dreading the eventual pitch they would get after enjoying my free content, they wanted that pitch and were worried something was wrong because it hadn’t arrived. They were looking forward to the offer and the opportunity to buy from me, not dreading it.
That may be why my first course took Copyblogger from 0 to six figures in revenue in a week and seven figures by the end of the first year in business. And it didn’t stop there.
In 2008 I launched Copyblogger’s first WordPress product. In 2009, its first software as a service (SaaS) product. The result was the same — a new seven-figure business by the end of the first year in business for each.
And it kept going from there. Yes, my team and I created great products (also thanks to being able to observe the audience), but the work I did in those first 18 months set the stage for the next ten years of outsized success.
Am I telling you to wait 18 months before selling? No, that was a unique situation. What I’m telling you is this: what you do before you start to sell is more important than your skill at “selling.” And therein lies the power of creating and freely distributing leading expert content.
In short, I came out of nowhere to become a leader in a movement (blogging) thanks to ideas no one had heard before. Those new ideas made me a leader in a much larger movement (content marketing), which has since become a massive industry.
And that’s what put me in a position to develop a series of products and services without ever experiencing a failure. People were primed to buy, and the only question became, at what levels would they do so?
Let’s explore both aspects: priming for persuasion and making your case for higher conversion. These two topics comprise the two primary parts of the Leading Expert Persuasion Approach that we’ll explore in detail over the coming months.
The content below was originally paywalled.
Priming for Persuasion
The most fascinating developments in social psychology from recent years tell you that what happens before an attempt at persuasion can make all the difference. And that’s a nice summary of the importance of those 18 months at the beginning of Copyblogger.
That’s why your work with the Empowerment Marketing Framework is so important. It gives you the process for developing a roadmap of what your entry into the marketing place as a leader looks like at a strategic level.
Now it’s time to dive into why it works so well and start getting tactical. At a big-picture level, this isn’t some complicated thing that you’ve never heard of:
It all comes down to knowing, liking, and trusting.
Yes, you hear that so often it borders on cliché. But that’s not the problem. The problem is most people don’t understand how those three elements work in the context of human psychology and how to make them happen.
Big brands use advertising and other marketing messages to create positive associations between their products and the people they want to buy them. This requires hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising spend and endless repetition.
As solo and small business people, we don’t have those resources, but you have something just as, if not more, powerful. That’s because you can create positive associations between yourself and your audience. You may not reach as many people, but you don’t need to in order to make significant amounts of money.
As I’ve said before, most marketing promises a positive experience after a purchase is made. Thought leadership content creates a positive experience for the right people before any transaction is even mentioned. That’s powerful stuff, and it delivers the elusive elixir of knowing, liking, and trusting in a way that truly works.
You’ve already discovered why leading with your values and sense of purpose gets your foot in the door in the right way with the right people. You also now know that challenging people’s existing values and beliefs results in the digital equivalent of having a door slammed in your face.
This values-first approach invokes the most powerful form of influence – Unity. So naturally, you’ll see that principle woven throughout these lessons, along with the other six elements of influence. The key is to understand when to use them and how they work.
Knowing
No one can like you or trust you without first knowing who you are. What I’me really talking about is attention or the top of the proverbial funnel.
The need for attention is indisputable, but the way most go about it is doomed to failure. Many digital marketers are consumed with the click without seriously considering the more important thing – what happens after the click. There are a few notable ways you can make this crucial mistake:
Use sensational headlines that your content doesn’t deliver on, much less offer a new perspective that puts you in the position of thought leader.
Focus on search-optimized content that ranks well in Google but delivers nothing in terms of your business objectives.
Post thin “thought leadership” content only on LinkedIn, where you’re constantly at the mercy of an algorithm on someone else’s property, aka “digital sharecropping.”
The Leading Expert Approach solves all of these issues by attracting attention in a way that begins a positive experience well before a transaction is offered. This experience creates a positive association between you and your audience right off the bat.
Liking
Liking is one of those seven bedrock principles of influence, so it’s certainly not a cliché. People naturally want to associate themselves with people they like, and that’s true of purchasing decisions.
Human beings like other people for all sorts of reasons, some fairly shallow, like if they’re physically attractive or if they compliment us. But we also like people similar to us, which allows us to jump from liking to the more powerful principle of Unity.
Liking is especially important in mentoring situations, which is exactly the approach you’re aiming for with a large group of people. A lot of that is understanding the language of the audience and mirroring it back to them while concurrently introducing unique language that acts as a unifying concept for your people.
And don’t forget the real-world flip side of liking: people like people who also like them. So it’s not just about getting people to like you — it’s demonstrating that you also care about them.
Trusting
When it comes to content marketing, many experts think they’ve earned the right to instant trust based solely on their credentials and what they know. There are two reasons why that’s incorrect, and it’s best if you avoid both.
First, if someone is not viewed as “one of us” by a particular group with a distinct worldview and set of values, then that person is not considered trustworthy. It doesn’t make rational sense, but then again, neither do people.
Second, those who demonstrate their expertise instead of simply claiming it come out ahead with their chosen audience. That means a relative newcomer to a topic can become the “leading” expert to their audience regardless of who else is more objectively qualified.
Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message,” meaning that content transmitted through, say, television becomes substantively different from a similar message delivered through a book. When it comes to building trust with thought leadership, you’re relying on a variation of that saying:
The messenger is the message.
This is the way to invoke the powerful influence principle of authority correctly. Add social proof that shows others trust you, and you’re on your way to priming your audience to be exceptionally open to what you eventually offer.
Making Your Case
The next section of the Leading Expert Approach is where most copywriting books and persuasion courses start — with tactics designed to convince people to buy your thing or do something else you’d like them to do.
As I said, the research now reveals that what you do before you try to motivate action is arguably much more important, and I’m living proof that it works. However, that’s not to say being skilled in active persuasion isn’t critical.
I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the world’s best long-copy sales page copywriter. But I am a highly persuasive writer across the board, likely thanks to my undergraduate degree in psychology, law school training, and early practice of law before I started studying copywriting, screenwriting, and other forms of persuasion and storytelling.
Do you also need a background in psychology and law to succeed? Of course not — you just need to learn key ways to make your case to prospective customers and clients, which starts with priming them for persuasion and then closing the deal with a compelling, beneficial argument.
So, the second part of the Leading Expert approach will cover how to do just that, including:
Intensifying the desire for your proposed solution, making it a “must have”
Transferring positive associations that the audience has for you onto the product
Ensuring that your prospects strongly believe in your solution and its benefits
Anticipating and overcoming objections to buying your product with your copy
Providing and amplifying proof that your product provides the promised benefits
Invalidating competing solutions beyond the natural affinity for buying from you
Discovering, reframing, and inventing language that uniquely positions your solution
Priming your prospects for persuasion upfront, combined with a great product or service, practically guarantees your launch will succeed. But how well you make your case will define how much success you’ll enjoy.
Leadership in the Longevity Economy
This lesson, and the most prominent portion of my career, began with noticing a shift that became a series of movements. And I became a prominent leader in blogging, content marketing, online education, WordPress, and SaaS, thanks to freely publishing content that changed how people thought and empowered them to succeed.
All of those movements were significant, and they allowed me to bootstrap an eight-figure business without investors or even advertising. But even if you combine all of those dramatic shifts, they pale in significance and size compared to what’s happening with the longevity economy.
As you might have already guessed, the Leading Expert Approach works in just about any industry or context, as long as you advocate for a shift away from convention (something smart marketers and entrepreneurs always do). By choosing to serve older consumers, the entire opportunity is to move away from the status quo, making thought leadership content the perfect approach.
The best way to empower people is to make them see what they’re truly capable of by first changing the way they think. The longevity economy needs plenty of leaders who take on that mission, and you’re about to become more than qualified. Plus, an entire ecosystem of ghostwriters, marketing consultants, copywriters, and other professionals will be required to fuel this massive transformation of the world economy.
2023 will go down as the year that people began waking up to the longevity economy. It’s still early, though, and some (as always) will wait until they think it’s a “sure thing,” thereby missing the most lucrative window of opportunity.
Leaders don’t hesitate. They lean into change and reap outsized rewards. Don’t wait.