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The five content marketing strategies that actually boost sales are the “Big 5” from Marcus Sheridan’s They Ask, You Answer: publish deeply honest articles and videos about cost, problems, comparisons (“versus”), best-of lists (including your competitors), and reviews. These five topic types sit at the bottom of the funnel, close purchase-ready buyers, and single articles inside them can generate millions in sales. One article on Marcus’s pool site titled “How much does a fiberglass pool cost?” has generated more than $6 million in sales on its own.
In this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, I sat down with Marcus Sheridan, one of the premier thought leaders in digital sales and marketing, keynote speaker (about 70 talks a year), owner of the agency IMPACT, and author of the book They Ask, You Answer (rated Mashable’s #1 marketing book of 2017). Marcus saved his pool company (River Pools) from bankruptcy during the 2008-09 crash by becoming, as he puts it, “the WebMD of pools.”
Below is the full playbook: what the Big 5 are, how to build a content matrix around them, why the counterintuitive articles (competitor comparisons, honest “problems with our product” pieces) convert best, and the two tactics we discussed at the end (form-page videos and personalized Vidyard emails) that lift conversion 80-200 percent.
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Table of Contents
Key takeaways
- The Big 5 topics buyers obsess over before a purchase are cost, problems, comparisons (versus), reviews, and best-of. Nail these five and traffic plus sales follow.
- One Marcus article, “How much does a fiberglass pool cost?”, has generated over $6 million in sales. A single “fiberglass pool problems” article generates the highest volume of leads to his site every year.
- Cost articles decommoditize your product. Add a “See why it costs this much” link under your price to explain factors, packages, and value drivers.
- Problems articles get in front of the elephant. Address negatives openly and you own the conversation instead of letting reviewers own it.
- Versus articles win by refusing to pick a side. Compare on facts. Present pros and cons for each. Buyers reward honesty with trust.
- Best-of articles including your competitors work brilliantly. One “best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia” article that did not include Marcus’s own company earned $150,000 in sales in one year.
- Aim for 750-word floor, 1,000+ word standard, 1,500-2,000+ for competitive topics. Meat wins with search.
- Add a titled video next to every form. Titles like “Should you fill out this form?” typically lift conversion 80-90 percent and address the four fears buyers have about forms.
- Personalized Vidyard videos in customer emails (“Hey Steve, I made this video for you”) almost force the open and the watch. This is a customer-service moat that Amazon does not do.
The Big 5: the only 5 content topics that reliably boost sales
The Big 5 are the five subject types Marcus identified after publishing hundreds of pieces at River Pools and seeing which ones actually drove revenue. They are cost, problems, comparisons (versus), reviews, and best-of. Every buyer, in every industry, obsesses over these five categories before pulling out a credit card because they satisfy the psychological need to feel informed and to not make a mistake.
| # | Topic | What buyers want to know | Example title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cost | How much does it cost, what drives price up or down, why some options cost more | How much does a fiberglass pool cost? |
| 2 | Problems | How could this blow up in my face, what are the downsides, who is it not for | Fiberglass pool problems |
| 3 | Versus / Comparisons | How does A stack up against B, which is better for my situation | Fiberglass vs concrete pools |
| 4 | Reviews | Honest reviews, including negative signals, from real users | Playmore Pools reviews |
| 5 | Best-of | Best options in a category (including competitors, ranked honestly) | Best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia |
These sit at the bottom of the funnel and target buyers who are days or weeks from a purchase, not months. That is why they convert so much better than top-of-funnel “fluffy” content that most ecommerce brands publish by default.
Cost articles: how to decommoditize your product with pricing content
Cost articles are the highest-leverage content type in the Big 5 because 90 percent of the traffic-leading, sales-generating content on Marcus’s client sites revolves around cost and price. Most brands refuse to discuss price on their site out of fear of losing to competitors, which is precisely why the field is wide open.
The Marcus “How much does a fiberglass pool cost?” article has generated over $6 million in sales for River Pools. What makes it work is not the number, it is the honesty about what drives the number up and down: factors, package options, why some companies are expensive, why some are cheap.
The counterintuitive tactic he shared for ecommerce sites: under every product price, add a small clickable link that says “See why it costs this much.” That link should open a longform article or video explaining the value drivers, the tradeoffs, and who the product is for. You have just decommoditized a product page.
How to write a cost article that converts
Cover the factors that push price up and down, the tiers or packages a buyer typically encounters, the reasons some sellers charge more (and why that can be legitimate), and the reasons some sellers charge less (and the tradeoffs). Do not simply publish a number. Explain the entire pricing landscape as if you were an unbiased consumer guide.
Then apply the “this is for you if / this is not for you if” framing. It builds trust and it self-qualifies the reader before they even reach your cart.
Problems articles: getting in front of the elephant in the room
Problems articles publish the honest downsides of your product before a customer stumbles onto them elsewhere. When Marcus published “fiberglass pool problems” in the early days, no one else in the industry was addressing that keyword. It has been the top lead-generating article on his site every year since.
The mistake most brands make is being review-dependent, waiting for third-party reviewers to define the negative narrative for them. The correct move is to publish the negatives yourself, with integrity. You then earn the trust of buyers who were going to find the negatives anyway.
The template Marcus uses is to present the ugly first, then finish with the “if you fit these criteria, this is a great fit for you” turn. It reads like a friend advising a friend. The Saddleback Leather brand is a great example of this framing done well: they educate you on why lesser leather fails, then show their product surviving abuse.
How to find the “problems” topics your buyers are actually searching
The best keyword tool is listening to your customer questions (“Is it true that…,” “I heard that…,” “Somebody told me…”). Beyond that, use any keyword tool to search “[product] problems,” “is [product] cheap,” “how long does [product] last,” and “[product] honest review.” Doubling up (“how long does X last, an honest review”) often works even better because you catch two Big 5 categories in one article.
Versus articles: how to write competitor comparisons without being biased
Versus articles compare your product to a competing category or product and win by refusing to pick a side. The reason so many “X vs Y” articles fail is that they open with “here is why our product is obviously better.” Buyers see the bias in three sentences and bounce.
Marcus’s fiberglass vs. concrete pools article compares both options on facts, presents pros and cons for each, and lets the reader decide which is right for them. It ranks and converts precisely because it does not push.
When buyers do choose fiberglass after reading, they choose it from River Pools because River Pools is the honest broker.
The finding tactic: type your product into Google plus the word “versus” or “compare to” and mine the autosuggest. Every result there is an article you should be writing.
Reviews articles: don’t leave your reputation to third parties
Reviews articles put your brand into the review conversation instead of ceding it to third-party sites. You can gather user reviews of your own product and rank for “[your brand] reviews,” and (more powerfully) you can target reviews of your competitors’ products so that a buyer researching them lands on your page first.
The mechanic is straightforward. Publish honest, sourced summaries of competitor products (facts only, no injected opinion), and let a buyer who was already close to purchasing a competitor’s product realize you are the more transparent source. Marcus has closed multi-million dollar deals from a buyer who reached the site through a “reviews of [competitor]” search.
Best-of articles: including your competitors on your own list
Best-of articles list the top options in a category and, done properly, include your competitors and rank on facts. Marcus’s “best pool builders in Richmond, Virginia” article deliberately did NOT include his own company on the list of five, and generated $150,000 in sales in a single year from that decision. Buyers read the article, saw the transparent methodology, and thought “these guys must be honest, let me call them too.”
The reasoning: if a buyer is already on your site reading a best-of list, they already know you exist. Including yourself signals bias and hurts credibility. Excluding yourself signals integrity and earns trust.
When to include your own product (the ecommerce version)
For an ecommerce catalog where the buyer may not realize which brand’s site they are on, Marcus recommends including your own product but flagging the ownership up front.
His example script: “Here at Marcus’s Toothbrushes we get asked all the time about other brands we believe are good. Today we’re going to give you an honest assessment of the top 10 brands in the market.”
“Two of these we sell. Because we believe in them, we’ve included them, and the other eight we don’t sell but are recommending anyway.”
That transparency signal makes the affiliate-friendly best-of ranking read as trustworthy. It is the reason honest affiliate sites out-convert brand-owned “top 10 our own products” pages.
The content matrix: turning the Big 5 into a 12-24 month editorial calendar
A content matrix is a simple grid: your top 10-20 products across the top of the sheet, the Big 5 categories (cost, problems, versus, reviews, best) down the side, and every unique buyer question filled into each cell. For a catalog of 10 products, this exercise typically yields not 50 pieces but a couple hundred, because each cell often produces multiple articles.
The matrix gives you a 12 to 24-month editorial roadmap in one focused afternoon. It also forces you to know your products better, which pays dividends in sales calls and product-page copy.
Word count, site design, and the technical bar for ranking
Marcus’s minimum acceptable word count for any client content is 750 words. The standard target is 1,000+. For competitive queries, 1,500-2,000+ is safer, because the average #1 ranked page in SERPs sits above 1,000 words and search engines reward depth.
Design matters less than most brands think. Beautiful sites often convert worse than plain sites, because artistic designers optimize for aesthetics instead of conversions. The tension resolves when you treat great UX (fast, clear, well-structured) as the goal, not visual novelty.
The higher-leverage technical investment is video. On every major product or service page, you should have a robust video that explains who the product is for and who it is not for. Video is not optional at this point, it is a psychological requirement for buyer conviction.
The form-video conversion hack: 80-200 percent lift
Placing a titled video next to any form on your site (landing page, checkout, contact) typically increases form conversions by 80-90 percent on average, with 150-200 percent lifts common.
The trick is the title. A plain video does not work. A video titled “Should you fill out this form?” or “See exactly what will happen if you fill out this form” pulls the eye and the click.
Inside the video, address the four fears every buyer has when they hit a form:
- Are you going to call me to death (if the form takes a phone number)?
- Are you going to spam me to death (if it takes an email)?
- What are you going to do with my information (privacy)?
- What exactly happens after I hit submit (the process)?
Do it relaxed, in under 90 seconds, and close with “hopefully that addresses your concerns; otherwise, fill out the form.” Split test it. The 90 percent of pages where it lifts conversion will more than pay for the 10 percent where it does not.
Personalized video email: the customer-service moat Amazon can’t match
Personalized video email is a free tool (Vidyard’s Chrome extension, or Wistia’s Soapbox) that lets you record a short video for a specific customer with their name on a whiteboard in the thumbnail. In an email subject line reading “Hey Steve, I made this video for you,” the open rate approaches 100 percent because refusing to open feels impossible. The click into the video is nearly automatic once they see their own name on the thumbnail.
Use it on high-value orders and moments where customer trust matters most (post-purchase, escalated support, an unexpected shipping delay). It takes less time than writing an email, and it is precisely the kind of personalization Amazon cannot deliver at scale.
Frequently asked questions
What are the Big 5 content marketing topics?
The Big 5 content marketing topics are cost, problems, comparisons (versus), reviews, and best-of lists. Marcus Sheridan identified them as the five bottom-of-funnel article types that reliably close purchase-ready buyers because they answer the psychological questions every buyer has before spending money.
What is the “They Ask, You Answer” content marketing philosophy?
They Ask, You Answer is Marcus Sheridan’s content philosophy of obsessing over your customers’ actual questions and answering them honestly and transparently through articles and videos on your site. It saved his pool company from bankruptcy in 2009 and became the framework for his best-selling book.
How do I write a cost article that ranks and converts?
Write a cost article that explains what drives price up and down, the tiers or packages a buyer will encounter, why some companies charge more, and why some charge less. Add a “this is for you if / not for you if” framing at the end. Do not just publish a price. Explain the whole pricing landscape.
Should I write about my product’s problems on my own site?
Yes. Publishing honest problems articles gets you in front of the elephant, so you own the negative narrative instead of letting third-party reviewers own it. Marcus’s “fiberglass pool problems” article has been his top lead-generating page every year since it launched.
How do I write a “versus” comparison article without being biased?
Compare on facts, present pros and cons for each option, and refuse to declare a winner. End with “this is a great fit for you if…” for each side. Buyers reward the honesty by trusting your brand more, not less. The article also ranks better because Google rewards balanced, comprehensive answers.
Should I include my own product on my best-of list?
For non-ecommerce contexts (service businesses, local best-of), leave yourself off the list to preserve credibility. For ecommerce best-of lists where a reader may not realize they are on your site, include yourself but flag the ownership transparently up front (“two of these we sell, the other eight we don’t”).
What word count should my content marketing articles be?
The bare minimum acceptable floor is 750 words. The standard target is 1,000+. For competitive commercial queries, aim for 1,500-2,000+ words. The average #1 ranked page in Google sits above 1,000 words, and search engines reward depth over brevity for these topics.
Do videos really lift form conversion rates?
Yes. A titled video next to a form (with a title like “Should you fill out this form?”) typically lifts conversion 80-90 percent on average, with some pages seeing 150-200 percent. The video must address the four buyer fears: too many calls, too much spam, privacy of information, and what happens after submission.
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