Once you have successfully crossed over the hurdle of the headline and the initial sentences, you must then tackle the problem of maintaining a person’s interest.

If they are not interested, or if they lose interest along the way, they are going to stop reading, or stop listening, to what you are saying.

Thus it is vital that once you have them hooked and you have their attention, and you have them paying attention to your message, you absolutely must not lose their interest - because then you’ve lost the sale.

So, the primary problem after deciding how to attract their attention in such a way as to keep the prospect open minded and responsive to your approach is this:

Is the approach you are using strong enough to maintain interest in what you have to say?

So not only do you have to consider whether or not the approach you are taking is going to connect with your prospects and leave them vulnerable to emotional manipulation, and by that I just mean that your approach puts them into a state of mind such, that you are able to push their emotional buttons, and hopefully get them to buy whatever you are selling.

The question when forming a message really is: Is your approach enough to maintain their interest, rather than how to structure a sales letter.

If you don’t know how to structure a sales letter, there are plenty of free resources to show you how to structure your sales message.  Right now I’m talking more about the strategic elements, the overriding psychology of your sales message.

And in that overriding psychology, besides all the specific tips and techniques, the question which has to be foremost in your mind is this: Is this interesting? Will my prospects be interested in what they are reading, or what they are hearing?

Nobody wants to read a dry, boring, sales letter. In fact, most people don’t want to read a sales letter at all, if they know that it’s a sales letter. We can’t avoid that without getting into devious territory that it’s better to stay away from.

This is where storytelling comes in.

Telling a story is one of the best methods of generating interest. That is because people find stories interesting.

Yes, there are plots and story lines which I find boring, and if I am bored, I will most likely stop reading.

But even some boring stories are interesting.

And if a person is interested, they will keep reading.

A boring, yet interesting story will most likely not generate a sale for you, but at least it stands a better chance of getting your message read, than just relating dry, boring facts.

So, do not be boring – but you also don’t have to be the life of the party either.

Just be interesting. And most stories, by the very nature of being stories, are interesting. At least interesting enough to keep a person reading your message.

So it’s up to you to decide whether or not telling a story will fit in with the approach that you’re using. But if there is any way at all to tell a story with your approach, then you should seriously consider putting in the effort, and time to construct a legitimate story to go along with your sales message, because that will go a long way towards keeping your prospects interested.

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We have already discussed generating interest. It is generating attention in your headline, and maintaining that attention in the first couple of paragraphs of your sales letter.

The trick with the first paragraph of your sales letter is to take that attention, and turn it into interest. And there are a couple of ways of doing that.

But one of the best ways to do it, at least one of the ways that you should definitely test when you are testing your marketing materials, is in developing that attention you used in the headline for the approach you are using, and expanding upon that to make it something of continuing interest, for anybody who is attracted to your approach.

One of the tried and true ways of doing this, is to begin your message proper with a series of questions. Usually the one, two, three, Punchline approach, (or the 12345 approach) which is a series of questions in which the answers are the same.

And hopefully you word the questions, such so that the answer is yes.

So that at least mentally, at least internally, the person being exposed to your message is saying to themselves “Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes” and generating a positive attitude inside of themselves, which theoretically carries over into having a positive reception to your message.

And depending upon your approach, the questions would obviously be different, because you want the questions to fit together with the approach that you’re using.

And oftentimes, your headline will be in the form of a question.

And if your headline is in the form of the question, sometimes I have found that asking a question in the headline and then starting off the sales letter with one or two or three questions, is is a bit much. It doesn’t work as well.

So if you are starting off with your headline in the form of a question, you need to at least test the idea of starting off your message, to make your first paragraph, not a series of questions but rather, maybe, some kind of extension of the attention that your are attracting in the headline.

We’ll cover both of those methods.

The first being a series of questions.

It’s the sort of like a stand-up comedy routine, only without the comedy, where you hit 1, 2, 3 and then the punchline. Where you will in this regard, ask one or two or three questions, and then you hit them with a statement, which essentially negates the questions in some regard or, amplifies the questions in some regard, depending upon which approach you are using.

But in all cases, the statement, is a forceful and emotion packed statement, of your most powerful sales point that you’re trying to make.

The other method, is the one without the questions.

Essentially, depending upon if your approach appeared to tell a story, you begin with the most exciting aspect of the story.

If your approach is just basically listing benefits, and comparing your product to a competitor’s product, (and hopefully favorably) you would start off with your most emotion-laden, power-packed sales point.

I’ll be getting into all of this in more detail as these podcasts continue.

Right now, the idea is that you’ve attracted attention with your headline and you have also (at least subtly) stated your approach.

Now, not only do you have to hook them with your initial sentences, but you should use your first paragraph, maybe even your first two paragraphs as an opportunity to expand upon the approach you express through your headline, and start turning the initial attention into interest, which will continue throughout the remainder of your marketing message.

DMU

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Now, if you are familiar with any of the traditional shorthand for crafting a marketing message. It’s AIDA.

I personally believe that AIDA is a bit more simplistic than you should really be focusing on, but especially for beginners and for the development of the general ideas and crafting a sales message, it’s certainly a good place to start.

The first A stands for attention, the I stands for interest, the D stands for desire, and the final a stands for action.

Now, it is commonly assumed that the A for attention refers to your headline. Of course, it also refers to maintaining the interest of the prospective customer throughout the entire letter.

But it is the “ongoing attention” which is commonly referred to as “interest”, and the spark, the sizzle, the thing that gets a person to notice your message in the first place, and is the thing that initially attracts their attention, is commonly referred to as the attention part of AIDA.

So not only does your headline have to attract attention, and preferably contain some aspect of the approach that you are using, which will help in attracting the attention of those people most likely to be responsive to your marketing message, but attention also refers to, in in my opinion, to the first few sentences of your actual sales message.

If the first few sentences do not hook them, if those sentences do not attract their attention, and develop their interest in what you have to say, then they are not going to read any further and whatever attention that your headline is able to attract will simply be lost.

Because the approach that you used in the headline, and the techniques you used to attract their attention in the first place, all that energy will be dissipated if you’re initial sentences for your initial paragraph of your marketing message is weak, or doesn’t follow through in the promise of interest that was generated by your attention-getting headline.

That is why you must be cognizant of the relationship between the headline and the initial sentences of your message and take extra care to make sure that the approach and attention-getting techniques used in the headline are not counteracted or diminished in the first few sentences of your message.

DMU

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Previously I have mentioned that using the word free, or other attention-getting words in your headlines, when combined with the proper approach, can dramatically increase the number of people who actually read your marketing message.

So the question is how to find the proper approach?

Finding the proper approach requires doing a little bit of research. It requires you to know who your potential customer is, and what are the emotional buttons that you need to push in order to be most effective in delivering your message to them.

Hopefully, I don’t have to remind you that all marketing is, and all sales are, based upon emotion and your approach must be based on emotion in some way. Your marketing must be in some way based upon pressing the right emotional buttons.

So we can focus a little bit more on this by saying, the approach that you want to use should be the approach, which is the most effective approach in pressing the emotional buttons of your prospective customers. That is, the approach that will press the emotional buttons which are the emotions you have determined will be most effective for you in generating sales.

Now this can devolve into blatant manipulation of people, which would be a slippery slope in a bad direction to go, but you cannot shy away from dealing with the emotions of your customers. In fact, all marketing is based upon pressing the emotional buttons of the customers.

So before you can decide on the approach, you need to figure out what emotions are going to be the most effective for you to appropriate. And in order to decide on which will be the proper emotions to appropriate in your marketing, you must know who your customer is and why they would want to purchase what you’re selling in the first place.

Thankfully, the answers to most of this “deciding on the approach and which emotions to target” is made a lot more simple through one of the items offered in Direct Marketing University.

But for right now, suffice it to say that even if you don’t know what your customer’s emotional hot buttons are, you should at least have an imaginary perfect customer for what you are selling.

That is, the idea of the customer that you hold in your head when you imagine who your customer is.

Since that’s already in your imagination, just take a step further and imagine “What are the emotional hot buttons that will get that person to buy from me?”.

And then decide what approach will most effectively evoke those emotions.

And then use that approach in your headlines and in your marketing materials.

DMU

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I apologize for being a little off my game today. I am just getting over a cold.

Calvin

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Today’s podcast is about creating the best headline.

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In this, the inaugural DMU podcast, I take a moment to re-emphasize the importance of your Headlines. Stay tuned for frequent, (and more substantive) messages.

Oh, I almost forgot. Be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think.

DMU

(The following is just some housekeeping in order to get this podcast listed in the directories.)

My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-f3d004c702437b9bc2b5823530b121ab}

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A niche should allow a prospect to immediately visualize that they are receiving something special, extra, or unique. No one else offers it in the same way that you do. It is special; it is a part of your business.

Doing this means you can easily make a fortune giving your customers something that no one else is giving them! — You’ll never run out of cash-paying customers!

In deciding what your niche will be, you should first decide how it will benefit your customers, how it will benefit your business, and how it will attract customers from your competitors. A niche should become synonymous with the business you have created.

A unique selling proposition isn’t just the niche you have carved out for yourself, however. It is the overall distinguishing advantage that you hold out in everything you do. It is found not only in your marketing, but also in your advertising, services, and sales efforts.

Your unique selling proposition may be found in the quality of a product or service. Good quality means giving that something extra that makes a buyer feel they have purchased something that has extra value.

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Leave nothing to chance.

[pay] Test every sales variable that can help you in your efforts to pull orders.  Be aware of the positive and the negative data, and make adjustments where they are necessary.

Continue to utilize and improve on the new approaches, offers, prices, or packages that are performing well.

Once you have identified the most successful combination, keep experimenting to develop even better approaches that will do even better than your current control.

This simple, but powerful thing alone can drastically increase your sales by up to 1000% or more!

Your “control” is the offer, approach, and sales concept that through comparative testing is currently working the best.  It is your best performer now.

As you develop new and more effective approaches, each will be your new control. [/pay]

DMU

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And testing is the only way you can instantly tell whether you have a winner or loser! This way if you find out it’s a loser, you can cut your losses and run!

The purpose of testing is to achieve maximum results from your marketing efforts.  You’ll achieve maximum results from minimal effort!  You can take all of the “guess-work” out of making HUGE amounts of money!

You can dramatically increase your sales and profits merely by testing the market.  This one small thing can constantly make you more and more money!  This is the way to achieve super high maximum results from every single dollar you spend on your business!  It’s simple and easy to do.

Try different headlines, different packages, different prices, different back-end offers, constantly probing and looking for the most effective pulling power.  With each new test, review the performance of each, then analyze your data.

DMU

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