TL;DR: Stop creating “tossed salad” marketing—a random mix of benefits that confuses your audience. The most successful campaigns (91% of them, in fact) are built on one big, compelling idea. All your stories, proof points, and features should serve only to reinforce that single message. This creates clarity, builds trust, and makes your copy incredibly persuasive.
You’ve done the work. You’ve built a great product or service, and you know it has a dozen amazing benefits. So, when it’s time to market it, you do what feels natural: you try to tell everyone everything.
Your website homepage lists ten features. Your ads shout five different benefits. Your social posts are a whirlwind of value propositions. You’ve created a “tossed salad” of messaging, hoping that if you throw enough ingredients in, one of them will stick.
But your audience is just… quiet. The message isn’t landing.
The hard truth is that in your effort to say everything, you’re communicating nothing at all. Clarity isn’t found in volume; it’s found in focus.
The Seductive Trap of ‘More’
Why do we do this? Because we’re afraid. We fear that if we don’t list every single feature, the customer won’t see the value. We believe that more bullet points equal more credibility.
But your customer isn’t a machine processing data. They are a human being looking for a solution, a feeling, a change. When faced with too many competing ideas, the human mind doesn’t meticulously weigh each one. It shuts down. Cognitive overload leads to inaction.
Your message becomes noise. And noise is always ignored.
The Power of One: A Simple, Unbreakable Rule
Years ago, the marketing masters at Agora Publishing, a titan of the direct-response world, analyzed their top 100 performing offers. They found a stunning pattern: 91% of them were built around a single, dominant idea.
They called this The Rule of One.
The rule is elegantly simple:
Your entire piece of marketing—be it an ad, a landing page, an email, or a sales pitch—should be focused on one big idea, speaking to one core emotion, telling one captivating story, and presenting one clear call to action.
This isn’t about dumbing down your message. It’s about sharpening it into a spear so effective it can’t be ignored. When all your energy is channeled into a single point, its power to penetrate becomes immense.
How to Find Your ‘One Big Idea’
Your “one big idea” isn’t just a benefit or a feature. It’s the central, compelling concept that your entire message hinges on. It’s the hook that makes everything else fall into place.
To qualify as a truly big idea, it must pass this three-point test:
- Is it easy to understand? Can you explain it in a single, clear sentence? If it takes a paragraph to set up, it’s not the one.
- Is it easy to believe? It should be surprising, but not so outlandish that it triggers instant skepticism. It needs to feel both fresh and plausible.
- Is it interesting or unique? Does it make your audience stop and think, “Huh, I’ve never thought of it that way before”? It must have a spark of curiosity.
For example, for our agency, instead of saying, “We do design, development, SEO, and marketing,” our “one idea” could be: “We build living business ecosystems, not just websites.“
This one idea is easy to grasp, believable, and frames what we do in a unique way. Suddenly, all our services aren’t a random list; they are the essential components for building that ecosystem.
Building Your Message Around The One
Once you have your core idea, your job as a writer becomes infinitely simpler. You are no longer a juggler; you are a storyteller with a clear plot.
Every part of your copy now has a single job: to prove or support your one big idea.
- Your Headline: State the one big idea.
- Your Opening Story: Illustrate the one big idea in action.
- Your Bullet Points: Don’t list features. List proof points that reinforce the one big idea.
- Your Testimonials: Select quotes from clients that validate the one big idea.
- Your Call to Action: Offer the one next step to experiencing the one big idea.
Before The Rule of One (Tossed Salad):
- “We offer responsive web design, fast loading speeds, and SEO optimization!”
After The Rule of One:
- One Big Idea: “We build websites that get you clients while you sleep.”
- How? Through beautiful, responsive design that builds trust.
- How? Through lightning-fast speeds that keep visitors engaged.
- How? Through expert SEO that brings you dream clients 24/7.
See the difference? The first is a list. The second is an argument. One is forgettable, the other is compelling.
Clarity is Kindness (and Good Business)
In a world screaming for attention, the clearest voice wins. The Rule of One is your path to becoming that voice. It requires discipline and the courage to leave good ideas on the cutting room floor to make room for the single great one.
But the reward is a message that is not only heard but felt. It creates a natural, effortless connection because you are respecting your audience’s time and intelligence. You are giving them the one thing they crave most: a clear solution.