The four word sentence that’s a small business deal-breaker (and how to make sure they never say it)

Cathy Goodwin
3 min readApr 25, 2023

Small business marketing means understanding where they’re coming from. And frankly, they just don’t believe you can deliver the goods.

In the early stages of my business, I didn’t have a lot of testimonials.

So initially I was baffled the first time someone clicked on a “buy” button for a consultation…someone who was a total stranger, in another state, who’d never done a get-acquainted call. And I was surprised when people would click on my product “buy” buttons.

Some of my clients shared the same experience — total strangers would engage on their websites. Others had to spend much more time on one-to-one calls. Almost always, when we worked on the copy, they got to spend less face time and phone time to get clients.

It took me a while to figure this out. What clues did customers find in the content? What small tweaks to the copy would get prospects to say, “This one’s the real deal”?

As a college professor, in my former incarnation, I’d studied trust. And now I analyzed the content of the sales pages, blog posts and more.

Some differences surprised me. Who knew… telling a certain story would bring buyers? Being creative and original…more buyers!

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Cathy Goodwin

Create a compelling marketing message that attracts your ideal clients through your unique selling story. http://cathygoodwin.com