Okay, so marketing something in one sentence is hard, and I don’t know how to do it for everything. The problem is, this is becoming ever more important. The consumer, if I may be so bold as to generalize for a second, has a short attention span. And it’s getting shorter every day.

As a culture we’ve grown accustomed to everything happening faster. We have fast food because we can’t cook for ourselves anymore. We have instant movie downloads because we can’t go to the theaters or rental stores anymore. Everything is instant. It saves us time and money, so we can fit more into each and every day. I’m not saying that I agree with this culture, but it’s a fact every marketer should pay attention to.

Where a long, well-written letter might have worked 10 years ago, a 140 character tweet will work now. Where a phone call with a sales rep who is well spoken and extremely helpful would have worked 5 years ago, a text message will work now.

What’s the point?

The point is, get to the point. Use headlines, large text, short sentences, and quick videos to get the message across as efficiently as possible. If you want people to pay attention, fit it into their daily lives.

It can be hard to change your ways, to shrink a catalog down to a page, to shrink a page down to a paragraph, to shrink a paragraph down to a headline. But it’s becoming more necessary with each passing day.

It applies to almost every form of marketing, from email to television. So get things started with an inventory of marketing materials and ask yourself:

“How short can I make this and still keep the message strong?”