When you're marketing your product to your audience, it's a common instinct to overshare. It's easy to understand why—you've spent forever working on making your product great, right, and you want to make sure your audience knows all the awesome, geewhiz things it can do: every feature, benefit and great thing anyone has ever said about it.
Stop. You don't want to be THAT guy at the party who can't stop talking. When you try to share a laundry list of everything that’s great about your product, you exhaust your reader. She doesn’t know where to focus her attention—and the most likely result is that she’ll just stop paying attention.
Why is that? Well, consumers' attention spans are increasingly declining, down to about 8 seconds in 2015 from 12 seconds in 2000. So the moment your audience gets bored—or sees your content as too much "work" to read—you've lost them.
Instead, learn from the great showmen of our time and offer a slow reveal. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world, did he just get up on stage and just read a feature list? Of course not. He slowly built his case, teasing out details to build anticipation. And so can you. Focus your content on your product or service's unique selling proposition—and don't give away much more. You're more likely to pique your audience’s interest so they dig for more.
Be a tease.
It's like giving the bunny a bite of the carrot; nothing more. Whether you're introducing a new concept to your audience or trying to generate interest in one that needs some more traction, don't give it all away in your first nurturing email.
Instead, choose one or two big takeaways that will generate interest among your target audience. Focus on their pain points, problems that your audience wants solved—pronto.
Let’s say you're releasing a new product. Instead of running ads that describe every feature you’ve built into the new product, identify just two of its unique selling points and use those (and only those) to tease the product. If those points resonate with your audience, you'll have receptive ears for the rest of your message.
String them along.
As you continue your audience through their journey with your brand, tie that carrot to a string and let more tasty bites carry them along. With each consecutive piece of marketing collateral, reiterate the information that you’ve already given them—with just a little bit more.
In the product release example, capitalize on your audience’s interest. Take those two unique selling points one step further by offering added value. How will the product change your audience's life? How is it different from another product on the shelf (that they may already have)? How much time or money will the service save them? Tell them, briefly, then stop. Resist the urge to give away more—save that for when your audience is in a place where they’re ready to hear your story.
Save the "bang" for your sales page.
Now that your prospects are thoroughly interested, direct them to the sales page for your product or service. Here’s where you can spill the beans—but don’t forget what you’ve learned! Prioritize your best selling points, and be sure to make your information bite-sized. I mean, did you see the statistic from earlier in this post? The average attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish! Wait, where were we?
Ah, yes—address pain points and solutions at the top of the page, then dive deeper into unique features once you’ve hooked the readers. Now that your audience is listening—and paying attention—they can absorb all the great things you have to say about your product.
So remember—don’t be an oversharer. Build your story, piece by piece, until your audience is ready to listen.
