MAKE YOUR MARKETING MATERIAL COME ALIVE!
Marketing material should encourage new or existing customers to buy your company’s products or solutions. But so much marketing collateral is dull, drab or incomprehensible that it often deters customers rather than attracting them.
The design of your material and the images used are obviously important. However, there is another vital aspect that’s often overlooked – the writing. Strong, powerful and clear writing can really bring an item to life.
My aim in this article is to give you a few tips that will improve your writing.
Structure
Whatever you write, make sure you plan it carefully beforehand. Firstly, think about what you’re going to say:
What are your key aims?
These might include:
What are your key messages?
Think about the central theme(s) of your marketing item. Don’t try to cram in too many key messages: I suggest a maximum of three.
What is the best medium for your messages?
Is it an article, case study, press release, advert or brochure? Is it a website, email newsletter, or blog? Your decision will be based on your aims, the cost involved and the audience you want to reach.
You then need to plan the structure of your item. For instance, if it’s a case study or article, it needs a strong start, a solid middle section and a clear conclusion. In adverts, direct mail and brochures, the ending should include a ‘call to action’.
For a press release, the main messages need to be summarised in the first paragraph (with an even tighter summary in the first line). Many people won’t read any further than this if it doesn’t interest them.
A well-structured article will include links that help the text to flow well: links between sentences, paragraphs and even between large sections of text. This will make the whole item easier to read.
Style
Think about the audience for your material. This will affect the style you adopt. For instance, younger people respond better to a very informal, chatty style. Some businesses prefer a much more formal approach.
The style will also depend upon the type of marketing material you’re writing. For example, a blog tends to be an informal, personal view; whereas a financial services brochure might be much more conservative.
One common mistake is to write website pages in the same style as a brochure. Web pages tend to be ‘scanned’ rather than read. They therefore need to be written in bite-sized, easily digestible chunks of information. Use sub-heads and bullet points, so that someone who scans the page can still pick up the key messages.
Wherever possible, I prefer an informal approach to writing – using ‘you’ and ‘we’ rather than ‘they’ and ’it’. This helps the reader to feel more engaged.
Simplicity
This is one of the most important elements of good, clear writing. Some people write to impress, using long, convoluted sentences with a lot of jargon. That’s anti-productive. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to grasp your main messages.
Use simple words, simple sentences and simple paragraphs. As an exercise, look through something you’ve written recently. Calculate your average sentence length. Ideally, it should be less than 20 words (some people would say even fewer!)
Ultimately, well written material should:
I hope this helps! For more tips, please feel free to follow my two blogs - on Ecademy and on my website.
Happy writing!
Phil Allcock
Freelance Copywriter
www.phila.co.uk