If you fish you’re familiar with the concept of catch and release. This is where you work hard to hook a fish and reel it in only to release it once you’ve landed it. It’s from the “it’s the journey, not the destination” school of sportsmanship. There are a lot of marketers, and salespeople, who take the same approach. They attract a prospect’s attention, convince them of the value of their products or services and then, instead of closing the sale, they release them.
The reason I bring this up is because a friend of mine forwarded me a colleague’s ezine that he had found entertaining. He was right, it was entertaining. The author is a very funny man who makes his living as a motivational speaker. His ezine had me chuckling from beginning to end and motivated me to look to his web site for past issues.
The problem is that while I took the bait, there was no hook. Nothing that said, “Hey, if you like this, you’ll love my book” or “I’m even funnier in person, maybe you’d like to have me speak to your national sales convention, click here to see my preview video…” This guy earned the right to ‘pitch me’ but he didn’t. A rule of thumb that I advocate states that a good ratio of useful content to sales or marketing content is 70/30. In other words if I devote 70% of my content to entertaining or informing you, it’s acceptable to devote 30% of my content to persuading you to explore a further business relationship with me. Look at a newspaper or magazine for pete’s sake. How much of their content do they devote to features and how much to ads? Get the picture?
So my advice to my client’s friend is don’t be shy about tooting your own horn. After all, not only will you leave your readers laughing but you might end up laughing too … all the way to the bank!
