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1. Make a list
2. Make a list
3. Make a list

When I was in college, I wrote a music review column for the school paper. As far as I could tell at the time, no one paid any attention to my brilliant articles. No comments, no praise, just a lot of… nothing.

And then one week, I decided to do a column on the ‘10 Best Albums of the Year’.  Everything changed… comments, arguments, opinions, coming from every direction. People were paying attention.

I learned something that week– people love a list. Maybe they don’t love the list, but they can’t avert their eyes from it. If you list the 10-best of something, they just have to see what you said was #1. I suspect this is to be certain that they agree with you. If they do, you are a genius. If they do not, you are an idiot. (A corollary lesson is that you’ll never go broke telling people things they want to hear).

Another possibility is what I think of as the ‘in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound syndrome’– once they see the first item on a list, they’ve just got to follow it all the way through (a good reason why if you do use a ranking list, it should always be in descending order). The movie might stink, but you’ve got to see how it ends. Whatever the reason actually is, a list seems to improve the odds that people will read what you have to say.

Why does any of this matter to a marketer? Well, whether you’re trying to convince people you’re a genius or sell them something, you need them reading to get anywhere. So look for opportunities to use lists in your promotional copy. 3 problems your product will solve. 5 ways you beat the competition. 10 reasons they should Act Now!

Your copy still needs to be compelling, but the list format tilts the playing field in your favor. Actually, there are 3 reasons for that…