Small details often mark the difference between promotional materials that motivate your prospects and those that are quickly tossed aside.
One of those details is flow… how the words roll through your reader’s minds, carrying
them onward through your message.
You know what I mean. Sometimes you try to read something and an awkward sentence
acts like someone pulled the emergency brake. You come to a screeching halt, re-read the sentence a couple of times, and then haltingly go forward. The momentum is gone, along with most of the enthusiasm you had for learning what the writer had to say.
When it’s something you’re required to read, research on a subject of importance, or new news that could affect your life, you struggle through it. But when it’s a marketing message, you’re more apt to just move on, deciding your time could be better spent doing something else.
The Rule of Threes:
Copywriters use all sorts of flow techniques that would make their high school English teachers cringe – and hand out an “F.” We do things like beginning a paragraph with “and,” using ellipses and dashes, and writing incomplete sentences. We do that because that’s how people talk in real life. (Probably even that English teacher.)
So what about the threes? When you’re giving reasons why your prospects should choose you as their Realtor, three seems to be the number keeps the copy moving forward while still offering enough information to be convincing.
I know, you may have 15 reasons, but you can probably pare them down to the 6 or 9 most compelling, divide them into logical groups, and space them throughout your message.
If you try to list all 15 in one paragraph, your readers may not make it past number 7.
Note: If you do have a long list of features or benefits that should be placed together, put them into a bulleted list. That sets them apart visually and makes it easy for your reader to skip through and catch the ones most important to him or her. And that’s all any of them are searching for.
Check your work! Before you send an e-mail, print a letter, or send any promotional material off, read it aloud. See if it flows easily. If it does, wonderful! But if you stumble in a spot or two, take the time to re-write that section until it does flow smoothly.
The very last thing you want to do to any of your prospects is cause them to disregard your message!
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