It's the way that you say things that makes the divergence in the middle of products that sell and products that don't.
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It's not about how cool the goods is.
It's not about why it's cheaper.
It's not about why it's faster.
Your buyer doesn't legitimately care about those things.
But tell your buyer something unique - with a powerful, image filled punch in the first few words - and you've got their attention.
Words are noteworthy things.
But it's the way they go together that whether titillates or bores.
As a publicist for 20 years, I have a deeply honed knack for the art of the pitch.
I can coach you on how to use it for all of your sales purposes, from "unique selling propositions," to boilerplate descriptors, to verbal toplines and packaging verbiage --- by showing you how to pitch the press about your goods and here's how you do it:
1. Determine the differentiating point about your product:
What is it about your goods that is truly unique?
Things such as "cheaper," "faster," "better service" do not count.
Really look at the attributes of the goods as it relates to the buyer for whom it is meant to advantage or the back story of where it came from. An example it might be that you make a wine pourer that magnetically smoothes out young wine. The most unique thing about it is that it's used by those who aren't wine aficionados, but do buy mainstream wine brands in the grocery store. Though changing a wine with magnets or whatever else is determined a 'no no' by a wine aficionado, a grocery store wine buyer loves the idea of development an inexpensive bottle of wine taste better. So the fact that the inventor of the tool has a Phd in wine, and that he's a former physician, is memorable and differentiates it from whatever else.
2. Make it timely:
Connect your goods to a season, a holiday or a trend that makes your story more likely to be reported now than anytime. This is the divergence in the middle of a "news" story and an "evergreen" story. News obviously comes first, evergreen sometimes not later. An example might be that
Champagne and sparkling wine is traditionally a celebratory drink. It then goes to theorize that the every year December holidays are a big bubbly drinking time. Finances are a huge concern at certain times of the year; regularly around tax time in April and then again in December when the holiday gift buying frenzy starts. Fitness is a timely story at two times of each year, from January to March when good intended souls are development good on their New Year's resolutions and in May when we start to think about putting on a bikini for the summer. Fashion has several seasons, Spring/Summer, Fall/Winter, Back to School and Cruise. Breast cancer is spoken about every October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Leukemia in November, Mother's type things in May, Father's stuff in June. Every industry has its season. Look for them and shape your pitch to make it relevant to time.
3. Leverage irony:
Irony, drama, juxtaposition are gorgeous tools to account for stories. whatever unusual often captures the attention of a journalist. And, no matter how mundane your goods might be, there is roughly all the time something ironic to say about it.
If you are selling association advice online, it may be that your preliminary inspiration to start this firm came from you own dissatisfaction in trying to get a date when you were younger. That is legitimately irony. I worked with a "loveologist" who ironically adequate was a Hungarian orphan! She came to the U.S. And got her PhD in human sexuality and now teaches it to citizen all over the world. Now that is truly paradoxical!
4. Use lively thoughts:
Paint mental pictures with your words. Create images that provoke the mind to think in ways that it regularly would not.
By the way, "provocative" doesn't mean 'sexy' or 'controversial.'
The best way to find provocation in a goods is to decide the two most polar opposite attributes about the product; this may be the inspiration for its creation or character traits about the founder.
An example of a lively pitch is something we used for Wine & Spirits Magazine. They were seeing to attract younger, Generation Y-type readers. So, they held an event featuring restaurants whose sommeliers were under the age of 35. The positioning we created for that event compared it to a favorite, raucous Generation Y event, the Coachella Music Festival - so we named it the "Coachella of wine events." For whatever who knows about the raw musical power and vibe of Coachella that sentence gives a vivid image and suddenly makes wine, which often has a stuffy connotation, approachable. The pitch we used for this event went deeply into the "under 35 sommeliers" concept in a way that made them approachable as well and it went like this:
They're hot.
They work for Batali, Myers and Fraser (famous chefs)
They can tell the divergence in the middle of an Austrian or Washington Riesling with a sniff.
They'll all under 35.
La's brightest young wine talent will be featured at the "Coachella of Wine events" on May 22 for the Wine & Spirits magazine Hot Picks event..."
Those words paint a real photo in your mind, don't they? Could you just see these guys? Are you loving the fact they are probably in jeans rather than a suit with a silver cup and a ribbon around their necks? Isn't it amazing to think you could legitimately ask a sommelier a dumb demand and not feel intimidated?
If you said yes to any of these questions, then you're getting what I'm talking about.
5. Make it short!
I cannot stress the brevity of a pitch being pivotal to your success. A pitch should never be more than 1 - 2 paragraphs, or 4 short, lively sentences. That's it.
The best way to do this is to write the pitch as long as it takes for you to recapitulate your vivid mental picture. Then, go through it, word by word highlighting the specific words that are traditional to the story. Then use a second color highlighter to accent the words that are secondary to the story. Finally use a third color to decide the tertiary words. Then, cut and paste the traditional words only into a isolate document. Wordsmith the paragraph from there. Throw out the rest.
Use noteworthy words instead of long graphic phrases. Look for substance and meat in your thoughts and words. Leave out whatever extraneous, fluffy or unnecessary to the actual story.
This exercise, by the way, will change the way you think about every transportation in your life. It's noteworthy and most importantly for these purposes, gets attention.
I all the time advise, "just say what you mean." Fancy descriptions and stylistic writing should be left for literature when the mind has time to dream and soak up pause, article and meaning.
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