When I said “THIS is Personal…” , did that generate a wee bit

of interest?

Look around you. The old school way of thinking about keeping “private matters private” has long since disappeared down the whirlwind of Social Media. Everything is public now – privacy is essentially dead.

Most people don’t mind a bit. In fact – they’re attracted to “personal” information like moths to light. I used that principle in writing this subject line – to GET your attention right off the bat and create interest so you’d want to open it up and read further… fulfilling the first two keys in the classic copy formula AIDA:

Attention. Interest. Desire. Action.

The first task therefore in your business marketing MUST be to grab attention. You have to get noticed above the clutter of thousands of competing messages.

Then you need to build interest… and that’s a key step many miss. The way to build interest is to tailor your message directly to the prospect – through stories, alarm, promises of benefits, etc. – that establish that what you have to say has personal relevance to them.

A common mistake some big-brand advertisers make is to focus entirely on capturing Attention via Entertainment – spending huge dollars to create a brief attention-getting experience – but following that with nothing else… and then hoping a fond memory alone will drive interest in or fondness for their products. That can work, but it’s an iffy proposition.

Make sure you follow ATTENTION by building personal INTEREST… and then move on to DESIRE and then ACTION.