When you use any technique too often, it gets old. If you are constantly yelling at your prospects “Last chance”, “Never again”, “The greatest package ever”, and other gross exaggerations, it’s like the little boy who cried “wolf”. The ears of the townspeople were dulled to his cries, and when the real McCoy came along, no one cared.
That’s the way it is with hype. A little goes a long way. A dab of hyperbole will turn heads, catch the eye, and lead the reader further into your body copy. Keep it up and they’ll get annoyed, and try to read through it to find the “meat.” Use it left and right and you’ll end up in the garbage can. The words of your message will never be heard.
Don’t bludgeon your customer with too-strong hammer closes. Don’t push them to the wall too hard. Get them in agreement with you and let them walk — dance! — with you to the close. If you shove and push them, hitting them over the head with belligerent closes, you’ll lose more than you gain. Not only that, but you risk losing all credibility when you treat them harshly.
There is an entire approach online that highlights this: the 8-page homepage. Using longform copy in a website format forces the reader to scroll, and scroll, and scroll… to work too hard. And much of it is simply yelling for yelling’s sake, hyperbole for hyperbole’s sake, and with a few simple changes could be made infinitely more successful. Letting the customer explore your site a bit, while keeping your message in front of them, is an incredibly effective technique, and the hype can be spread out a bit as well!
Ultimately, if through harassing hyperbole you send the message, “If you don’t act now, you might as well go jump in front of a bus!”, then they’ll probably tell you to jump in front of the bus, trash your message, and forget you
