It's pretty hard to run a successful online business if your prospective customers don’t read or watch your marketing material all the way to the end. So I’m going to show you how to keep your reader's or audience's attention until the Call to Action.

This applies in everything you do. Every PDF, video, blog post, webinar or podcast you make is marketing material. Your prospects are continually evaluating you based on what you present to them.

The essence of the technique is build curiosity about something that you are going to reveal to them. This ‘something’ needs to be either what they are looking for or clearly a benefit.

So your title has to have the Big Promise in it… ‘How to Lose 17 Pounds of Ugly Fat in 17 Days without Dieting’ … ‘How to Get Your Prospects to Watch Your Videos All the Way to the Call to Action’

The purpose of the title is to get your prospect interested enough to engage with your material. It promises that if your audience stays with you to the end, they will learn what they want to know.

The purpose of the introduction is to build your prospect’s anticipation … to motivate him or her to pay attention, eager to know what you will reveal.

There are several ways to build anticipation and keep it high. One essential technique is to make certain that your audience knows where you are going.

Here’s a mistake that illustrates the point. I would give my audience background material without explaining why. They would think that I was off topic and lose interest.

A way to justify the background information and keep your audience interested is, “… I’m going to show you how to.... But first I need to tell you… because….”

I learned the importance of painting the big picture and explaining why when I was teaching people how to fly airplanes.

At first my students would stay with me for a few lessons then often lose interest. Then I started telling them in each lesson:

• What we about to do
• Why that exercise helped them develop an essential flying skill
• What they had accomplished during that lesson
• How this led to their pilot licenses
• What we would do in our next lesson and why

After I started building anticipation for each lesson and the series of lessons, the number of dropouts dropped dramatically.

I do that in the marketing and business operations courses that I teach and find that I have a high retention rate.

This technique works wonders in online courses as well. It even works for a series of blog posts that are designed to build a loyal following. Russell Brunson adds a little twist to the procedure that he calls the ‘Soap Opera Method.’

Soap operas, like any kind of television series, have the same characters from episode to episode. To keep your anticipation up they end each episode with, “tune in next week to find out how….” Of course, this approach obligates you to produce that next episode.

So the basic principles for keeping your audience’s attention throughout your marketing material are to:

• Start with a title that peaks curiosity and promises something that your prospective customers are looking for.
• Tell your audience what you’re going to tell them and why they will benefit from knowing it.
• Layout the road map of the presentation or series of presentations and how they will benefit from taking the journey.
• Keep your prospects aware of where they are on the journey, how they have benefited so far, and what is ahead of them.

One final little trick that makes this easier for you to do: Always try to imagine that you are a prospective customer who is looking for what you have to offer. Your title should promise to deliver what they are looking for. As your prospects dives into the literature, make certain they know that you haven’t forgotten what you promised, that you are moving them toward their objective and finally that you did what you promised to do.