"Building Your "Pitch"

Written By:
Shonda Ponder

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, - continued below ...

continued ...
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.

About the Author
Shonda Ponder is the editor and owner of the Friends of Liberty web
site. Friends of Liberty is a Promotional Media Organization,
dedicated to teaching promotional skills to amateurs who are
politically active.
Friends of Liberty can be located on the world wide web at
http://www.friendsofliberty.com. Shonda Ponder can be contacted at
shonda@friendsofliberty.com

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