You have to be more direct in your marketing today than ever before because there’s more noise on the Internet than at any other time in recent history. There are more things coming at consumers than ever before.
For example, you probably get a lot more email now than you received five years ago. There are more ways to communicate with people than there were five years ago.
For the longest time, it was just email or IM (instant message). Then social networks came into play—first with things like MySpace and LinkedIn and then everyone jumped on the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram bandwagon, and there are tons of new forms of social media popping up every day.
In fact, you are probably using social networks I’ve never even heard of. So there’s more information coming at you that has to be filtered out. As a marketer, you have to change the way you market because you have less time to get your message across to people. Think about this for a moment.
A person comes to your website and they see a curiosity type of headline like, “Discover the Seven Secret Methods To Build Your Business Like You Never Have Before. Please Read On Because This Will Be The Most Important Letter You’ve Ever Read.” What does that headline say to the customer looking for something on your website?
Absolutely Nothing! So, why are they going to stay?
They have to check their Facebook messages and Instagram Stories. They need to check their Twitter account and see if someone is talking about them. They have to do all these other things, so why would they stay on your website based upon that headline?
The answer is, they aren’t going to. You need to be more direct in what you’re marketing message actually is.
When you look at a headline and the first few paragraphs in the top portion of your sales letter, you have to look to see what it is you’re saying to the customer. You need to tell them why they need your product or service in that first few seconds. All the noise means we have to be more direct.
Journalists spend most of their time on the lead in of their story, meaning, that brief description of what it is they’re talking about; the first one to two sentences of their story. In the past, marketers were trained to put the most important information at the bottom.
It was looked at like a pyramid with the least amount of information at the top and the most important at the bottom. These days, you need the reverse, which is to say turn it upside down and put the most important information at the top and the least important at the bottom.
If your most important information is at the bottom, a person comes to your website, sees a bunch of bogus stuff at the top that isn’t important to them, and what happens? They leave. They didn’t even get to the most important part of your message.
They may not have even figured out what your product or service is or does. Take the time to sit down and figure out how you can make your marketing message more direct at the front of your sales process instead of making people wait to find out exactly what your product or service does. Tell them up front, and I guarantee you’ll increase sales.
