Feedback: What Makes Good Writing
Recently, we interviewed Christine Whitmarsh of Christine, Ink and she had a few things to say about what makes good writing. I wanted to get your feedback on a couple specifics and see if we can get Christine to join the dialogue as you ask your questions.
Christine was asked “what are your thoughts on the way company insiders try and talk to their potential buyers?“
And she replied: “They are so determined to pack as much information and insider jargon into each piece of writing (sales letter, brochure, web site, etc.) that the actual writing itself is sacrificed and the reader is quickly lost in the shuffle. I often have to remind my clients ? it’s a writing piece made up of words before it’s a marketing piece made up of calls to action.”
Do you find yourself overpacking your materials or including terminology that only you and your team know? What are some simple ways to prevent this?
Christine was asked “what are some ways this [buyer disconnected] mindset could discourage the action step companies desire?“
And she replied with a few ways including: “Too many separate topics and ideas introduced resulting in no clear purpose of the [promotional] piece.”
Do you plan out each article, whitepaper, or brochure with a somewhat or very specific action step in mind? Do you buy this focus on fewer topics as being more successful?
Do you have anything you would like to add to the discussion?
–jc
Jacob Bear
Great comments!
Regarding Jon’s questions at the end: If you’re targeting your marketing materials to different sets of prospects (and you really should be doing this), then it makes sense to focus on fewer topics. This is almost always the preferable situation.
But sometimes you need to find a way to say it all, especially if you don’t know which aspects of your business will have the most appeal. There’s a simple way to do this, and it can also ease the pain of excess terminology.
Many people won’t read your marketing piece word-for-word, but only scan it. If you include lots of bold headlines, and each one summarizes one of the benefits of doing business with you, there’s a good chance a sincerely interested prospect will find what they’re looking for.
In fact, writing headlines is a good first step to writing a marketing piece. Come up with 10-20 headlines. Each one should either describe the benefits of responding to your call to action, or it should explain some technical term. For example:
“How ’selective combobulation’ slices through red tape and reduces your overhead”
You would then follow this headline with a paragraph or two about–you guessed it–selective combobulation and how it reduces overhead. You can probably also sneak a subtle call to action into a lot of these sections.
Once you’ve got 10-20 of these (and it’s OK if some are redundant), you pick out the best ones, arrange them in any order you like, do some final editing and polishing, and presto! You’ve got a killer marketing piece that promotes your business in detail and is still easy for your prospects to read through.
You can also “recycle” your individual healline/paragraph combinations for shorter, more targeted marketing pieces.
Any comments?