| There’s a super effective marketing concept called “damaging admission”... which means you take a fault that your product has (compared to similar products out there) and you admit it, right up front.
It can increase your sales massively, no matter what it is you sell, create, or help people with. Use it wrong… and it can destroy your credibility… possibly, forever.
The #1 thing that most people get wrong with this concept…
… is they use it in the wrong context.
Let’s back up a little. What do a lot of people who are just starting out in marketing do when they learn a powerful persuasion technique like this? They try to use it to get one over on the next person. No judgment… it’s just human nature. However, more often than not, it backfires.
The biggest mistake you can make with the damaging admission technique is to use it to admit a minor flaw with your product… while a more major flaw exists.
In other words, you manipulate someone into trusting you (since you admitted a minor fault, therefore you must be honest) and you hide a more serious flaw that you know about to gain something.
Not the greatest example in the world, but…
Let’s say you’re selling a used car. There are a lot of cars like yours on the market, all of them seem in reasonably good condition, and so on.
Yours has two problems with it.
One problem is a minor dent in a place you can’t see if you’re not looking for it. The other is that in about 200 miles a $5,000 engine service is due.
So if you’re thinking short-term (like the imaginary marketer who’s just starting who I mentioned before), you’d be tempted to reveal to the potential buyers that yes, there’s a dent, but keep quiet about the upcoming engine service.
It might even work for you since you’re just selling a used car about every 3 to 5 years - if that.
However, if you owned a used car lot - meaning if you were an entrepreneur who’s in it for the long haul… you’d lose all your credibility with your customers and you’d go out of business soon.
That’s where the damaging admission concept comes into play.
See, admitting the biggest fault of your product (again, compared to similar products on the market, this part is very important!) will first do wonders for your credibility - both short and long term, and second, it will let you make the sale easier and the refund rate lower.
Now, remember how I said that the used car example is not the greatest example in the world for this?
It’s because while you could still admit that there's $5,000 in maintenance due on the engine in about 200 miles, it’s not the best way to sell that particular used car. Because even though you probably will score some points in the eyes of the consumer (and it might help you sell other cars on your lot) they would still probably be able to find a car just like yours without the maintenance looming.
The above lesson is super important!
In other words, this means not every marketing strategy is suited for every product and situation.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting.
What kind of products do you think a strategy like this would be best suited for?
It’s perfectly suited for products that are not being sold by thousands of other vendors. It’s also perfectly suited for products where there’s a very convincing reason to get sooner rather than later. And it also works perfectly for products that are part of a long-term customer relationship-building strategy.
In other words… anything that’s related to the business you and I are in… internet marketing.
For example, if you’re selling an information product and you know that the biggest fault it has is that it doesn’t cover the traffic part of the strategy…
… admit it straight up and turn it into a positive.
“I need to warn you about something. Some people have pointed out that there’s no specific traffic strategy for my product. This is a very good point… but also missing the bigger picture. I have deliberately excluded something like that, because we all have different approaches when it comes to traffic, and this method works with any of them.” OR something along those lines.
What’s the #2 thing that people get wrong with this concept?
It’s just remembering that with great power comes great responsibility. Meaning, theoretically you could use this to sell subpar products, and people, for the most part, would be none the wiser.
You probably would give up a lot of money in the long term, but in the short term, it would be up to you to use something like this ethically.
To Your Success, Paul Hanson
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