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How to plant objections in your copy to convert more

Yesterday we talked about how to approach objections on your website.

We saw how you should collect all possible objections your prospects might have, write them down along with their counter, and then use them.

Today, I want to give you a few simple, but powerful ideas on how you can “plant” these objections and their counter in your copy.

Plant is the right word here, because you won’t be throwing them up and hope your visitors see them and react to them.

You will intentionally and strategically place them where it matters most.

Make those objections work for you.

My top 3 ways for doing that are:

1. Addressing the status quo in your headlines and crossheads: Reserve these for your secondary (h2,h3) headlines and crossheads (the headlines preceding paragraphs).

I’m talking about using formats like “Not just another [status quo of how the product is perceived]”, or “[Product category] made [differentiator adjective]” for example.

Here it’s imperative that you know exactly what the status quo for your prospects is.

Ask yourself (and collect data on): “What do they intuitively know that doesn’t feel right or they’re tired of when it comes to the industry, the market or the product category?”.

In your objection-planting headline, point it out.

Tell them you know what they are afraid of or skeptical about – and then explain what you do to fix it.

2. Using the before and after effect in your testimonials

Fluffy, vanilla testimonials like “I was happy with their level of support” don’t work. Enough of that shit. Pardon my French.

You should build the habit of adding an element of friction in your testimonials.

What do I mean by friction?

When they start reading, there should be something that stops readers and makes them think “Yes, this is exactly my situation! I’m curious to see how they’re gonna deal with that, I’m pretty sure they can’t help me.”

That’s the before, where your customers talk about their problem before engaging with you.

Then the testimonial should throw in the after picture. This is where readers should go: “Ohhh wow, so it is really possible, EVEN considering my situation/problem/objection”.

This is what a powerful testimonial should look like. So plant an objection or two in there.

3. Inserting personalized FAQs

FAQs can be effective. And the best part is that everyone is familiar with them.

According to Jakob’s Law of usability: “Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.” – Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group

Users like the familiar.

So why not plant your objections in something as familiar as FAQ sections?

The best way to do it is to create customized FAQs for specific pages.

Be strategic though. You don’t want to have an FAQ on every page of your site. Your UX and copy should guide users, not your FAQs.

Good strategic places to plant these objections with custom Q&As are:

  • Pricing page
  • Support page
  • Competitor comparison pages
  • Use case pages
  • Product pages (Ecommerce)

These are only a couple of ways you can plant objections of course.

Curious, are you using any of these?

brain dump?

Every week I write about what I’m learning at my copywriting/UX desk ,with fun, insightful and quirky stories.

Let’s nerd about decision making, persuasion, habits, and conversion optimization.