Get To The Point

As a scientist I attend several international conferences every
year to give talks, show posters, and exchange ideas with my
colleagues. Many of the talks have time limits of 7 minutes with
3 minutes for questions. Have you ever sat down and timed
yourself to see what you can say in 7 minutes? Its not much, let
me tell you.

Even from a discipline that prides itself on sticking to
simplicity, a 7 minute talk is a challenge. It forces you to say
quickly and in as few words as possible your premise and
findings.

This is not so different from advertising on the internet. Wait a
minute you say, you are trying to relate internet marketing to
doing scientific research? Well, classified ads for instance
require a short but catchy headline (your premise) and a few
sentences describing benefits (or findings). There simply is not
enough room to discuss anything in a classified ad.

Sales copy is different. You have much more room for discussion.
Does this mean you should run off on some literary commentary?
No. To keep readers attention you must still remain focused to
your initial premise. The big difference is benefit elaboration.
Space now exists to list benefit after benefit by delivering one
scenario after another to prove your premise.

Now think about the things just stated:

(1) remain focused to premise,
(2) list benefits, and
(3) prove premise.

This is essentially identical to what we do in a scientific talk.
Is online marketing scientific? In some ways, yes. One must
research and brainstorm ideas to form the premise and benefit
list. Sales copy is then drafted with these research results and
one other underlying condition: getting to the point quickly and
staying highly focused to it throughout the copy.

I have come across many web sites with sales copy that extends
over more than 5 pages. It hops from one idea to the next without
remaining focused. I personally am lost in their premise after
page 2. There is no doubt that your copy should be compelling but
stick to the point. Don't go overboard with your benefits list. A
well laid out list of benefits will succeed at grabbing the
readers interest. If it's too long, people will simply click away
to another site. Do you really need a benefits list longer than 5
or 6 key items?

If your product is that good that it takes 15 to 20 items to
describe all of the benefits, you need to take special care to
capture them all and the readers attention. I suggest dispersing
several within the body of the copy. Don't itemize each.
Carefully draft your copy with some of the benefits included. If
this proves too hard then simply use only the most important. You
can weed out the ones that aren't necessary by going back and
thinking in detail about your target audience. See if you can
sort your benefits into different groups based on the people who
would make the most use of each benefit. Then write several
different pages of sales copy and advertise each to its
respective group.

Remember that the point to all of this is to capture a readers
attention and drive home the sale. Success will be very hard if
you make your readers work hard to understand and see your point.
Do yourself and your readers a favor by getting to and sticking
to the point.