Years ago I was watching a documentary on advertising. The creative director of a major agency was being interviewed about what makes a successful advertisement.

Halfway through the interview he pulled out three tennis balls and demonstrated something that still sticks with me today.

He was talking about the most powerful way to make sure your marketing message gets through to your intended audience.

First, to demonstrate what most marketing does, he threw all three tennis balls at the interviewer. The interviewer tried to catch the balls, but as you can imagine, he missed them all.

They repeated the exercise and the second time he caught one ball.

He then went on to explain that this is what many marketers do.

They cram their websites and brochures and ads and elevator pitches with tons of information about their business, product or service and they expect their audience to "get it."

This is the equivalent of throwing a bunch of tennis balls at your audience.

What happens?

You're lucky if the audience walks away with anything. Much less the one key thing you want them to know about you.

Back to the tennis ball demonstration.

Next, the creative director tossed just one tennis ball to the interviewer.

Guess what happened? Yep, he caught it, easily.

Same thing happens with your marketing.

If you focus your marketing on one key message you can be sure your audience is going to "catch" it.

This puts you in control of your marketing. And it makes your marketing much more effective.

But it does take some work upfront because you have to decide what that one key piece of information is.

You've got to know what to say in order to persuade your audience to take the next step you want them to take.

You've also got to know your audience and do some other homework so you can determine what that key message is.

It's not hard.

But it is one very important step you must take in order to be an effective marketer.

(C) Copyright 2006 Debbie LaChusa