How many things does a customer remember after being exposed to your company’s brand. The answer is one. That’s it, one…if you are lucky. All of your golden toned prose promoting your cost effective this and superb that, has gone to waste. The typical American is exposed to at least 5,000 sales messages per day. So again, focus on one idea. In advertising it’s known as the single take-away.

Some businesses are careless marketers and are content to let their prospects make up their own single-take-aways, for example here are some common ones:

Customer generated single-take-aways:

“Wow, that company must have built their website before the internet was invented.”

“Wow, that company sure thinks a lot of itself, but not much of me.”

“Wow, I wonder who their customers could possibly be?”

“Wow, their web designer must have had a huge box of lime green pixels lying around.”

“Wow, what in the world don’t they sell?”

“Wow, that company’s video was taken on a cell phone.”

Those are the single-take-aways you might get if you don’t provide one of your own.

Here are the single take-aways you want:

“Wow, I didn’t even know that was possible (or available). Sign me up!”

“Wow, that will solve my problem right quick.”

“Wow, at that price I should get several.”

“Wow, I just love that mascot.”

“Wow, with that quality of website and mailer, that company must be top notch.”

“Wow, those people have got to be the experts!”

Don’t wait to offer your single-take-away in a brochure, web or e-blast. Put it right in your headline — your “salty headline” — to make your prospects thirst for more. Then maybe someone will go on to read your golden prose. At Orbit, we pay more attention to developing headlines and visuals than the text that goes with it.

What’s your company’s single-take-away?