Pretend you're perfect in all ways, and nobody will trust you.
Let's dive into being perfectly candid about your flaws.
– Neal
Brought to you by North Star Inbound—the sales enablement SEO agency.
Other agencies waste your time producing 1000s of pages that don’t generate sales.
North Star Inbound is laser-focused on 10% of topics you can and MUST own to drive revenue.
And they use those to deliver ROI in months instead of years.
And if you need the content produced, they handle that, too.
- BigRentz grew from 27K visits to over 400K, with SEO sales beating PPC.
- A dental client went from 0 to $137K in monthly revenue from SEO in under a year.
Book a call for a free content audit and 10% off any engagement.
Be candid with your flaws
Insight from us.
It’s human nature.
Very few people (and companies) are willing to:
- Admit their flaws
- Turn people away
- Upset people
It’s part of why being extremely candid with your flaws can be so powerful.
Because others aren’t.
Be willing to insult yourself
It’s incredibly bold to insult your product on a quality many consider important.
Like this classic VW ad calling their cars ugly:
.jpeg)
Or this one calling their cars slow:
.jpeg)
I love the old VW because they were brave enough to draw a line in the sand:
“We focus on reliability and practicality. We’ll let all the other brands fight over the fastest, the prettiest, and the most advanced.”
Side note: Today, nearly all car companies sell all kinds of cars. Lamborghini sells an SUV. Volkswagen sells luxury models. Hyundai sells trucks. I suspect this is why their advertisements are all so boring and similar now.
Being candid with your flaws works for a few reasons:
- It builds trust. If you’re willing to be candid about your product’s flaws, people trust you’re telling them the truth about its strengths.
- It tells you who it’s for. We all want a product that’s tailored to our specific needs. Yet most companies try to be all things to all people.
- A flaw is also a strength. There are always trade offs. When you make something better at one thing, it gets worse at others. If your car is pretty, it’s probably expensive. If your car is fast, it probably uses a lot of gas. If you car has room for 7, it probably will be filled with kids.
This Atoms’ ad tackles these trade offs head on:
.jpeg)
Be willing to alienate people
This old SAAB ad takes #2 (telling you who it’s for) to the next level:
.jpeg)
Instead of insulting the product, they insulted people who buy their competitor’s product—which candidly, is a small pool of people that can afford to buy a sports car.
The beauty of this ad copy is that it implicitly admits that the SAAB is nobody’s dream car.
That’s a brave thing to admit.
SAAB didn’t even trying to compete with the Ferraris and Corvettes of the world.
Instead, they put their car in its own category: A practical and affordable car that’s also sporty.
Be willing to turn people away
Do what nearly all other brands are not willing to do:
- Admit your flaws.
- Turn people away
- Upset people who aren’t your target customer
It'll attract the right people to you.
By the way, I’ve been curating and analyzing some of the world’s best ads on my LinkedIn. I’m now starting to use that to fill up our Ad Vault.
The goal is to make it a comprehensive, searchable, filterable resource for the best ads in the world—with quick explanations of the tactics they’re using.
It’s a work in progress, so keep checking back as we fill it up.
Something fun
A quick crash course on audio effects packaged in the most adorable way. From @everyth1ngy.
