This one didn’t come from a textbook. It came from watching the same pattern play out on discovery call after discovery call and finally putting language to it
A business owner sits across from me, virtually usually, and they’ve got great services. Real results. Happy clients. But their marketing messaging isn’t moving the needle. They’ve tried posting more consistently. They’ve tried new platforms. They’ve run promotions. And they’re frustrated because none of it is landing the way it should.
And almost every single time, the issue isn’t the content itself. It’s that their entire messaging strategy is only addressing half of the equation their customer is actually working through.
There’s a framework that explains exactly why this happens. It’s called the Forces of Progress, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it in every piece of marketing you encounter.
The Decision Your Customer Is Actually Making
Here’s what most businesses assume: if I show people how great my service is, they’ll want it. If I explain the features, highlight the benefits, maybe throw in a testimonial, they’ll make the move.
That’s one force. And it’s real. But it’s one of four.
The Forces of Progress model, which comes from Jobs to Be Done theory, maps out what’s actually happening inside someone’s head when they’re deciding whether to change. Whether that’s switching to a new service provider, investing in a rebrand, hiring a consultant, whatever the decision is. And there are always four forces pulling at them simultaneously.
Two forces push toward change. The first is the struggle with their current situation. The frustration, the inefficiency, the thing that isn’t working anymore. The second is the pull of a new solution. The appeal of what’s possible, the excitement of something better.
Two forces push against change. The first is anxiety about the new solution. Will it actually work, is it worth the money, what if it’s worse than what I have now. The second is the gravitational pull of habit. The comfort of doing things the way they’ve always done them, even when those things aren’t working particularly well.
The decision happens when the forces pushing toward change overpower the forces pushing against it. That’s it. That’s the whole equation.
And here’s why this matters for your marketing: most businesses spend all their energy on the two forward forces, agitating the problem and showcasing the solution, while completely ignoring the two forces that are actually keeping people stuck.
The Trap I See Constantly
I had a client. Service-based business, established, great at what they do. And their instinct with every piece of content was to sell. Monthly promotions. Discount codes. “Book now and save 20%.” Feature spotlights on every social post. Their entire marketing strategy was essentially: here’s our thing, here’s why it’s great, here’s a discount to make it easier.
And it wasn’t working. Not the way it should have been, given how good their actual service was.
When I looked at it through the Forces of Progress lens, the problem was obvious. They were only pulling. Trying to make the new solution look as attractive as possible.
Discounts, features, benefits. All pull.
But they weren’t doing anything about the forces keeping potential clients stuck. They weren’t naming the specific frustrations their ideal client was actually living with. They weren’t addressing the anxiety someone feels before investing. And they definitely weren’t acknowledging the comfort of just continuing to do things the current way, even if the current way isn’t great.
The result? Their content felt like a sales pitch. Because it was. Every single piece was “here’s why you should choose us” without ever addressing “here’s why you haven’t made a move yet.”
Why “Just Sell Harder” Never Works
This is the part that feels counterintuitive for a lot of business owners, and I understand why.
When you’re running a business and you need revenue, the instinct is to push harder on the sale. More promotions. Louder calls to action. Another discount. Another email blast.
The thinking is: if people aren’t buying, I need to make the offer more compelling.
But that’s only working on one force, the pull of the new solution. And here’s the thing about the Forces of Progress: you can make the pull as strong as you want, but if someone’s anxiety about switching is high and their comfort with the status quo is deeply rooted, a stronger pull doesn’t overcome that. It just makes the tension louder without resolving it.
Think about it in your own life. You’ve probably seen a product or a service that looked amazing. You wanted it. The pull was real. But you didn’t buy it. Not because the offer wasn’t compelling enough, but because something else was holding you back. Maybe you weren’t sure it would work for your specific situation. Maybe you’d been burned before by something similar. Maybe the effort of switching felt like more than you had bandwidth for right now.
Those aren’t objections you overcome with a better discount code. Those are forces you have to address directly. And most marketing doesn’t even try.
The Four Forces, Broken Down
Let me get specific about each one, because the application is where this gets useful.
Force 1: The Push of the Current Situation. This is the frustration, the inefficiency, the pain point your ideal client is living with right now.
But here’s the nuance most people miss. It has to be specific enough that they recognize it as their reality. “Struggling with marketing” is too vague. “Opening your content calendar and finding nothing scheduled beyond today” is a moment someone has actually lived. The push has to feel like their Tuesday morning, not a generic problem statement.
Force 2: The Pull of the New Solution. This is where most marketing lives. The benefits. The transformation. What’s possible. And it matters.
People need to see what the other side looks like. But the pull is most effective when it’s painted as an outcome, not a feature list. One is a result they can feel. The other is a line item on a proposal.
Force 3: Anxiety About the New Solution. This is the one almost nobody talks about in their marketing. And honestly, it’s often the biggest blocker.
Your potential client is thinking: what if I invest in this and it doesn’t work? What if I’ve been burned? What if this takes more of my time than I have? What if the results don’t justify the cost? These aren’t irrational fears. They’re real concerns from real experience. And if your marketing pretends they don’t exist, your potential client feels unseen. They’re sitting there with these concerns, and you’re just telling them how great you are. It doesn’t land.
Force 4: The Comfort of the Status Quo. This is the sneaky one. Because the status quo doesn’t have to be working well to have a strong pull. It just has to be familiar.
Your potential client knows their current system is inefficient. They know their content strategy isn’t really a strategy. They know their website doesn’t communicate what they do clearly. But they’ve been doing it this way for 3 years and it’s fine. It’s manageable. It’s the devil they know. Breaking that comfort requires more than showing them something better.
It requires helping them see the real cost of staying where they are.
What This Changes About Your Messaging
Once you see this framework, it fundamentally shifts how you think about content.
Instead of every piece of content being some version of “here’s why we’re great and here’s a discount,” your content ecosystem starts doing four different jobs:
Some content names the push. It articulates the frustration they’re feeling better than they could articulate it themselves. This is the content that makes someone stop scrolling and think, “how did they know exactly what my morning looks like?” Not because you’re psychic. Because you’ve done the work to understand their actual lived experience.
Some content paints the pull. It shows what’s possible. Real outcomes, real transformations, real shifts. Not feature lists. Not “we offer 12 blog posts per month.” But what that actually means for their business and their daily reality.
Some content reduces anxiety. This is the content most businesses never create. Case studies with real timelines. Honest explanations of how the process works. Addressing the “but what if” questions directly instead of pretending they don’t exist. When you proactively address the thing someone is worried about, trust builds faster than any testimonial slider ever could.
Some content disrupts the status quo. This is the content that makes the cost of staying comfortable visible. Not through fear-mongering, but through clarity. Helping someone see that their “fine” current approach has real, quantifiable consequences they haven’t fully calculated.
When your content is doing all four of these jobs, you stop being a salesperson pushing your product and start being a guide who actually understands where your client is and what’s keeping them stuck. That’s the shift. That’s the difference between content that fills feeds and content that moves people.
The Part Most Businesses Get Backwards
Here’s what I find over and over when I audit someone’s content: the ratio is way off.
Roughly 80% of their content is pull. Features, benefits, offers, promotions, testimonials. All designed to make the solution look attractive. Maybe 15% is push, vaguely naming the problem. And almost 0% addresses anxiety or habit.
But if you think about your own decision-making, it’s usually the anxiety and the habit that actually stop you from moving. Not the lack of a compelling offer. You’ve seen plenty of compelling offers that you didn’t act on.
The fix isn’t complicated in theory. It’s just that most businesses have never been taught to create content that addresses the forces keeping people stuck rather than the forces trying to move them forward.
When that client I mentioned shifted from constant promotion to balanced messaging, content that educated, content that acknowledged the real reasons people hesitate, content that made their world relatable instead of just sellable, the response changed. Not because the service was different. Because the messaging finally met people where they actually were instead of where the business wished they’d be.
The Diagnostic You Should Run Right Now
Go through your last month of content. Every platform, every format. And map each piece to the four forces:
- How many pieces name a specific frustration your client is living with? Not generic “pain points.” Actual moments from their day that they’d recognize instantly.
- How many pieces show what’s possible as an outcome, not a feature? The transformation, not the deliverable.
- How many pieces directly address the fears, doubts, and objections someone has before investing? The “what if it doesn’t work” and “I’ve been burned before” concerns.
- How many pieces make the cost of staying comfortable visible? Not through pressure, but through honest clarity about what the status quo is actually costing them.
If you’re like most businesses, forces three and four are almost entirely absent from your content. And that gap is exactly why qualified people are seeing your content, feeling the pull, and still not reaching out.
They’re not unconvinced. They’re stuck. And your content isn’t helping them get unstuck.
Why This Has to Be a System, Not a Campaign
This isn’t about creating a single “overcome objections” carousel and checking it off the list.
This has to be woven into the entire content ecosystem.
- Your website messaging needs to do all four jobs on the homepage alone.
- Your email sequences need to move people through all four forces over time.
- Your social content needs to rotate across all four so that over the course of a month, you’re not just pulling.
You’re pushing, acknowledging, and disrupting in equal measure.
And this is where it connects back to everything I talk about with knowledge graphs and AI visibility. When your content ecosystem addresses all four forces consistently, AI doesn’t just see you as someone who sells a service. It sees you as someone who deeply understands the problem space.
That’s a different kind of authority signal entirely. One that gets cited and recommended because the depth of understanding is evident in the content itself.
Scattered sales posts don’t create that signal. An integrated ecosystem that addresses the full decision-making equation does.
Who This Is For
This matters most for established service-based businesses. Consultants, coaches, designers, financial advisors, photographers, wellness practitioners who have real expertise and a proven service, but whose marketing keeps defaulting to “sell harder” instead of “connect deeper.”
If your instinct when leads slow down is to run a promotion or increase your posting frequency, this framework is the alternative. The issue isn’t volume or pricing. It’s that your messaging is only working on half the equation.
The Bottom Line
Your customer’s decision to work with you isn’t one force. It’s 4. And right now, most marketing only addresses 2 of them.
The businesses that build messaging around all four forces, naming the push, painting the pull, reducing anxiety, and disrupting the status quo, don’t have to sell as hard. They don’t have to discount as often. They don’t have to wonder why people who seem interested never convert.
Because their content isn’t just showcasing a solution. It’s meeting people inside the actual decision they’re making. And that’s a fundamentally different kind of marketing.
Stop selling at people. Start understanding what’s keeping them stuck. This gives you the map. Your content ecosystem is how you put it to work.
