Are You in the 5%?

Before marketing can have any impact at all, it has to do one thing. It has to grab your attention in under three seconds. Three seconds.

That’s where more than 95% of all marketing fails. Which means marketing dollars wasted. Here are five ways to stay in the 5% instead. And you have to do them in your headline, in your website’s header, in your intro — whatever the prospect sees or hears first.

Make Yourself Nervous.
If you really want a prospect to keep watching, reading, listening or scrolling, leap out of your comfort zone. Make an audacious promise. Lay down an astonishing claim. Ask an intimate question. Stop them in their tracks.

Sell Pain Relief.
Understand your prospect’s pain at a deep level. Express it in vivid terms. Then show how you take the pain away. If you don’t know their pain, you can’t relieve it. If you can’t relieve it, stop until you can. 

Get Seriously Funny.
Overwhelmingly, people remember funny ads. Humor makes your message stickier than almost anything else. So use it. And push past cute or clever. Get really funny. Like, LOL funny. Seriously.

Be Completely Different.
If you want to stand out, say something different. Stop using the same words and phrases as your competitors. Just stop. It’s lazy, and it doesn’t work. If you do things differently, say so differently.

Be Ruthlessly Brief.
No one has the time to read or watch or hear everything you have to say. So say what matters — and say it faster. Edit down to the bare essentials. And when it’s as short as it can be, make it shorter.

The Hard Part.
Those five tactics work. They get more business on the books. So why do so few use them? Because they’re hard to do. Because they meet great internal resistance. Because of inertia. And because they take nerve.

But if your company can commit to just one or two — truly commit to them — you’ll be shocked at the difference they’ll make. Try it. Just try it.