AMiable Solution #113: Buildup is for Beavers

If you want to pitch an offer, do it immediately.  Don’t produce it in stages, piling one small fact onto another, like a beaver building a dam, saving your biggest sales pitch for the final paragraph or final page of your campaign.  Most readers aren’t that patient.  If you don’t get to the point quickly, they won’t stick around long enough to hear the big conclusion.

Instead, treat your direct mail letter, web page, product description, brochure, or other marketing vehicle like a newspaper article.  Start with your most important information--your strongest sales pitch-- first.  Then, after a few seconds (which is usually all the time you get to hook a reader) if your reader abandons your copy, then you know he or she left fully informed.

If your format allows, get your main sales pitch out in other areas, too.  Incorporate it into your subheads.  Repeat it in your last paragraph.  Emphasize it in your postscript.  State it on your envelope or brochure cover.  Illustrate it with your pictures, picture captions, and other images.  Restate it on your order form. 

Strong marketing campaigns do require strong foundations.  However, most readers would rather know that you can hold the water back, not how you laid the sticks.