You'll notice a lot of reference in our newsletter to keeping things short. Want to know the psychology behind this and how you can use this strategy?
Well, the psychology is simple - most people are under time pressure, so "long" translates to "I'll look at it later" (later then often turns to never), whereas "short" has a much better chance of falling into the "This looks like something I can deal with now" category.
We use and have built into our product the "Teaser and Link" Strategy. This is simply a small piece of information with a link that takes the reader to the full article with all the information.
When you have a great piece of information; news, an offer, tips, facts, a special, a competition - whatever it is that you want to communicate to your target market, it is vital to face up to these realities:
- That if you send a large group of people all the information you want to send them, most will likely not read it.
- That although you may feel the information is relevant to them, they may not feel that same way. You have a very short space of "reading time" to convince the reader that your information is worth reading
So a better approach is to first give your reader something with which they are personally able to judge whether or not they want to read the information you are sending them. This is the "teaser" - a one, or at most two, sentence paragraph that does two important things:
- Accurately informs the reader of the nature and message of the information article you want them to read in order for them to be able to make a judgement call as to whether they want to read it or not.
- Create a heightened level of curiosity in the reader, so that they want to read your information.
If in the 3-5 seconds it takes them to read the teaser, they make a decision that they want to read the full article, they are then likely to "click through" to the article and read all of the information you have supplied. Whereas, if you simply supply the information, those who start reading, read in an undecided frame of mind - this has two negative impacts, firstly they may stop at any point and secondly, the message they receive when reading "without commitment" is significantly diluted, even if they do end up reading through the article.
In summary it is well worth the effort of writing a good teaser to get quality readership from the people most likely to respond in a way that contributes beneficially to your objectives.
Happy Teasing!
Derek Vincent
BriefYourMarket.com
3 Tips for Good Article Teasers
- Keep them short
- Raise the readers level of curiosity. Asking questions gets people thinking and providing interesting "some-of-the-facts" statements or statistics make the readers want to find out more.
- Keep focus on building your "Teaser Quality" reputation. It is critical that your teaser be accurate - a teaser that gets people to think that your information is relevant to them, but the information then disappoints them damages your reputation and reduces future "click-throughs"; whereas a teaser which leads the reader to an article they are impressed by increases their level of trust in you and is a huge investment in increasing future "click-throughs".
How you can begin using the "Teaser and Link" strategy in your marketing.
BriefYourMarket LITE allows you to leverage the content of your website by sending out teasers with links to great content on your website.
In addition to the above, BriefYourMarket PRO is designed with the built-in functionality to publish full information articles online and send only the teasers to your subscribers. Not only this, but, BriefYourMarket PRO take it one step further and provides a smart methodology of limiting which teasers are sent to which subscriber, based on segment and interest, thus bringing even greater focus.
Take a tour or contact me if you would like further info on these products.