"Building Your "Pitch"

The first thing that any potential customer, buyer, listener or recruit will look at is the quality of the message. So, when you start thinking of promoting your product, idea, thought or service or message, you have to think about how attractive that message is to the general public. Q: What is the first thing you look for when you go to an advertiser's site? A: Information. That's right: information. Whether it be information about the product or information about the producer, either way, you are looking for information. So, naturally, before that advertiser ever sent out that advertisement, he had to make sure that the information was there for you to follow through with if he hoped to make a sale. This means, in plain english, if you have a message to your customers that you want them to follow through with, you have to tell them what the message is in simple terms. And then, if you want the listener or reader to do something with that message, you have to explain it to them so that it is easy for them to understand and follow through with. After all, what happens when you get to that advertiser's site and the product is not there? Suppose you see a picture of the product, but no information about how to purchase it? Would you buy it upon looking at first glance? In your busy day, would you look around the website for a few minutes to try to figure out how to purchase it? Would you find an email address and write to the advertiser and ask? Most people would not. Most potential customers would simply go to the next site or the next email if what they see from a first impression is not what they expect. Suppose that the message WAS there? Suppose you saw the product, and you read about how great that product was and what it could do. Then, suppose you were really hyped up about that product, but could find no information about what to do in order to get that product for yourself. The advertiser just lost a sale. In about three or four weeks, you will go to your local shopping center and then you may see that product. Chances are, you will buy that product from them. But, the advertiser who sold the product to you will get nothing to support the advertising dollars that they spent telling you about the product. If you own your own web site, and you spend quite a bit of time maintaining the information on that website, then you understand the frustration that comes with telling someone about a great book and having them buy it from another bookstore rather than you, so you can support your work. That's why making sure you give your potential recruits the information they need is important. Most people, by nature, want to support something they believe in. If you don't offer them a way to do that, they won't. So the best way to get your message out is not only to have a message, but to be able to present that message in as simple of terms as possible, so that the potential recruits have only minimal work to do for themselves in order to follow through. Let's take a look at where we are now: 1. First you have to have a product, idea, thought or service. Without this step, none of the others matter. 2. Then you have to make that product, idea, thought or service available to the public. The message has to be easy to understand, and simple to follow. I can't recall how many times I've visited a website that had lots of information on it that didn't make sense. The cause was just, I'm sure, but the presentation of the information was so hard to follow that I would skip the whole message and go on to the next web site. How many of you have ever read the Bible all the way through? If you weren't a literary person who enjoyed Shakespeare or any of the other classic literature, then you probably are thinking, "Not me, all those thees and thous and whatsoevers get me confused." There are a lot of great web sites out there who are very information-oriented, but forget that most people are straight forward people who want simplicity. When I was a child, my mother worked full time. So, to help ease her burden, she decided to let me do the cooking so when she came home, dinner was already done and ready to eat. She would set out a peace of paper with instructions for me to follow each day when I came home from school. It would look something like this: Shonda, Please make sure you put a load of clothes in the washer. There are some clothes on the bed that need to be folded. When you are done with that, clean that mess off the coffee table. Then you can start cooking at 5pm. Here is what we are having for dinner tonight: Meatloaf and Mashed Potatoes. To fix the meatloaf, first you will need to get all your ingredients together. ==== (I'm going to skip this part because I think you got the idea) One of the ingredients happened to be diced onions. Keep in mind, for a nine year old who had a limited vocabulary but a high IQ, which my mom knew I had because of previous testing at school and arguments with school administrators who wanted to skip me up a grade or two, I had no idea what "diced" meant. I sat there dumb-founded for the longest time, trying to figure out what "diced" meant. Finally, I knew it was going to get me in trouble, but I figured I'd be in more trouble if I didn't get dinner fixed, I called my mom at work. Of course, she answered with: "YOU CALLED ME AT WORK JUST TO ASK ME WHAT DICED MEANT?" and then told me to look it up in the dictionary. DOH! But the point is, had I not had my backside to worry about, I probably would have never had supper done that night. Most of your readers don't have backsides to worry about, (some of them simply are...but we won't go into that here...) and if you don't tell them in simple terms the first time, they'll probably just go somewhere else.