When I landed my first job as a copywriter, back in 1992, the Internet did not exist. Companies promoted their products and services mainly through print advertising, printed collateral and direct mail. Those who had the budget, also used radio and television to advertise. In those days, I was always given a word count to work from. If I was writing a full-page ad for a trade publication, and if the page was eight and a half inches by eleven, I knew that space was limited. There was a limit to how many words I could write for a print ad. Same goes for brochures, direct mail and radio and TV. My copywriting was always constrained by how much real estate on the page I had to work with, or how many seconds I had to work with.
I learned quickly that I could never say everything I wanted to say about a product or service I as promoting. There wasn’t enough space. So how did I know what to write? I asked a simple question. I asked my clients, “In this promotional piece that I am writing, what’s the most important thing to say?” Or, I sometimes phrased it another way, “After a prospect has read this ad, or this direct mail piece, what is the one thing that we want them to understand and remember about our product or service?” That question forced my clients to focus their attention. And it forced me to focus my writing.
Today, of course, space is technically unlimited. A web page can have unlimited words. An email sales letter can have unlimited words. Except that online, the new problem is attention span. A web page can contain an infinite number of words, but your potential customer does not have infinite patience. Your prospect’s attention span is limited. That’s why you must always discover what the most important message is for each project you work on.
My goal is to get my clients to articulate their unique message in one sentence. Some people call this a single-minded proposition. Others call it a unique selling proposition. The key thing to remember is that your message should be singular and unique. By that I mean that you should have one main message to communicate, not three. And your message should be something that your competitors can’t claim. It might be a product feature. It might be a benefit. It might be a promise you make to the buyer. Here are some examples.
- “M&M candies melt in your mouth, not in your hand.”
- “At Sleep Country, we will beat any competitor’s advertised price by 10 percent.”
- “The new iPad Pro is more powerful than most PC laptops.”
You can see how these phrases all answer the question that you should pose to your clients:
“After a prospect has read my copy, what is the one thing that we want them to understand and remember about our product or service?” We want them to understand that, “At Sleep Country, we will beat any competitor’s advertised price by 10 percent.” We want them to remember that, “The new iPad Pro is more powerful than most PC laptops.”
You may think that having a narrow focus like this is limiting. You may think that it limits your creativity. But you’ll discover, as I did all those years ago, that having a narrow focus boosts your creativity. When you know that your copy must communicate just one compelling idea, your mind goes into overdrive.
Avoid the pressure to say as much as you can about the product or service you are promoting. Effective copy is tight copy. Focus you thinking onto the one message that you simply must communicate to your prospective buyers. You may resist at first, but you will thank yourself soon enough. When your copy starts generating more sales.
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