Many businesses are unsure what to say in their marketing materials.
Dave Simon from Double Your Profits Consultancy on writing effective content
Here are nine step-at-a-time copy-writing guidelines to help you get the best marketing results.
Let's start from the context and go though to the content – it's the best way to get everything right.
Talk TO Customers
The key point from communications psychology: write invitations, avoid making announcements.
Write To Get People To Do What You Want Them To Do *
And remember that the nicest invitations are addressed personally, not 'to whom it may concern'!
So – Define Your Ideal Customer To Focus Your Efforts *. This is vital to get your project right.
Then, make sure you write to someone, not anyone. Say 'you' and 'yours', focus on their point of view. Discuss their opinions. Answer their questions. Use their language (and avoid jargon!).
Plan Your Layout
Are you thinking about a one page leaflet, back and front? Websites on desktop screens or mobile phone screens? One advert or a series? Sales results show size & frequency do NOT influence sales.
Your budget may be an influence here, but optimising for ease of reading for your Ideal Customers is another important factor – it's no good spending time and money if they don't respond to you.
This factor will guide sizes and shapes for text, images, links/buttons, offers and next steps.
Design Shapes and Colours
Make a start on this now – it means various processes and decisions can be done right first time.
Without this clarity, you may find duplications and confusions become likely, costing you time and money.
Start finding images and/or taking photos to show customers' results (not your products).
Clarify Your Aims
Do you want to sell more, increase prices, reduce costs... or some combination?
Being clear about this will help to guide your efforts. Talk to your advisers to get a perspective.
Double-check this when you think you've finished – did you get accidentally side-tracked?
Call To Action
Write Your Last Sentence First To Maximise Customer Action *
Make sure you avoid any confusions – tell customers exactly what you want them to do next.
Write A Story
Tell a story to keep your readers interested. The more they read, the more likely they are to remember your invitation and act on it, sooner.
You don't have to get it right first time. You don't have to make it huge or professionally perfect.
But it must be about stuff your Ideal Customers like and it must lead them towards the actions you want them to take (see Call To Action above). Along the way you need to make some promises about what they will gain from your product or service. And a few surprises will add interest.
Include as many reasons to buy as possible – it's a shame to miss one that turns out to be vital! Research shows that longer stories sell more – as long as they are readable and interesting.
Build Your Offer
Design Your Special Offer To Achieve Which Result You Want.
That could be reduce customer risk, to increase your attractiveness, to up-sell your prospects or simply to generate more enquiries. You need to understand what sort of issues affect your Ideal Customers so you can choose what sort of offer will work – preferably without costing you lots!
Start Styling Content
Decide fairly early to have styles for Headlines, Subheadings, links, images, paragraphs and so on.
All these help effective communication, and may also help your page ranking in websites.
Next define styles for all of them. Styles can be changed later if necessary, without too much aggro.
Some basic factors to work with include:
- Headlines – Power-Up Your Headlines To Attract The Maximum Readers – go for longer ones. Put in a promise to really attract attention.
- Leading sentence – use your first sentence to link headline and the following story.
- Subheadings – scatter many to guide readers minds and help them scan intelligently.
- Paragraphs – keep them fairly short – like three sentences, less for mobile phone screens.
- Sentences – again keep them short – average less than 16 words, like this one!
- Text – use easily readable fonts, one for text, one for headings; avoid 'fun colours', etc.
- Images – photos work best, or pencil drawings. Aim to use a similar style throughout.
- Links – avoid single-word links, include instructions like 'click here'.
Tell your story
Use flashbacks, twists and turns, questions and so on to keep readers curious.
Shape the text to give interest – use bullet lists, indents, follow image curves, etc.
Position images on alternating sides of the page to shape text.
