Don't shy away from industry-specific lingo in advertising. Using terms that only your target audience understands (e.g., "SLPs" for speech pathologists) acts as an immediate trust signal. It proves you're an insider who deeply understands their specific problems, making the message more resonant.
In an era of information saturation, general advice leads to inaction. By providing highly specific content for a narrow niche, you make your audience feel seen and understood. This drives them to act, allowing you to achieve greater impact with a smaller audience by focusing on depth over width.
General advice is easily dismissed. By providing hyper-specific guidance tailored to a customer's unique context, like gardening tips for their exact climate zone via geo-targeted ads, you demonstrate a deep understanding of their problem. This specificity builds immense trust and confidence.
Go beyond simply describing customer pain points. Give their core problem a unique, memorable name (e.g., "the invisible sales team"). This act of naming establishes you as an expert, builds instant credibility, and gives the prospect a new lens through which to view their challenge.
Simply promising a desired outcome feels like a generic 'win the lottery' pitch. By first articulating the audience's specific pain points in detail, you demonstrate deep understanding. This makes them feel seen and validates you as a credible expert who can actually deliver the solution.
In specialized fields like fintech, subtle differences in terminology (e.g., "payment" vs. "payments") are powerful in-group signifiers. Getting these details right is critical for brands and ghostwriters to establish credibility. Getting them wrong immediately marks you as an outsider.
Your core values are a powerful marketing tool. Instead of keeping them internal, broadcast them. When you state values like being "fiduciary marketers," you build trust and attract clients who share those principles. This acts as a self-selection mechanism, pre-qualifying leads for a better-aligned partnership.
Don't save your best proof points for the end of an ad. To combat distraction, establish authority immediately by stating a powerful credibility marker—like running an eight-figure business or having an Inc. 5000 award—in the first few seconds. This frames the rest of your message and compels the audience to listen.
Explicitly calling out your ideal customer in ad copy (e.g., "demand gen marketers") does more than grab their attention. It provides a clear signal to the ad platform's algorithm, helping it more effectively identify and serve your ad to the right people. If the consumer is confused, so is the algorithm.
When you're not a subject matter expert in the audience you're selling to (e.g., marketers selling to developers), the most effective strategy is to rely heavily on your customers. Use qualitative interviews to deeply understand their world, which provides the authentic language and positioning needed for your messaging and campaigns.
The most credible salesperson is a former client who successfully used your service to grow their own business in your target industry. Their story becomes an authentic, built-in testimonial during the sales pitch, creating instant trust and rapport with prospects.