More often than not when companies call us to draft copy for websites, corporate brochures, flyers and marketing materials we find that they have had already made a start – or have documents that they have used previously.
These documents come in useful for one thing, to provide some basic background about the business. Nine times out of ten what they do not do is give us any indication of the personality of that company, how it differs to others in the market and on occasion an idea of what they actually offer. This is because most businesses make two mistakes:
- Presume that marketing materials are easy to draft, after all it’s just words on a page.
- Make the copy too complicated in a view to impress the reader.
What actually happens is that drafting copy, which starts out as an exciting task, becomes a chore. There is usually a lengthy approval process with lots of people involved, who have lots of different opinions about how a document should be written. The reality is that the basic principles of copy writing apply to any organisation, in any sector.
Here are a few tips to drafting copy that will deliver results:
- Have a clear audience in mind before you start writing.
- Choose a tone of voice appropriate to the recipient.
- Keep it simple, don’t include jargon or big words – it doesn’t impress, in fact it distracts.
- Draft the copy in detail before going back through and taking out the sentences that aren’t required.
- Ask someone else to go through the copy and take out the sentences that they feel aren’t necessary.
- Take the ‘what we do’ test: ask someone who doesn’t work with you or in your industry to tell you from the copy alone exactly what product or service you offer. If they can’t tell you the copy is not going to work for you.
This should provide you with the first steps to having copy that will deliver results. If after all this you are still at a loss and pulling your hair out – as opposed to getting excited by what you are writing – then call a professional.
Marketing communications, which includes copy writing, is a specialism and although it requires an investment it will be far less costly then drafting and redrafting copy time and time again or worse still sending a document to print which is incorrect or unlikely to deliver the results you are expecting.
We hope that this advice is helpful and inspires businesses to review their marketing materials. Most importantly we want companies to get excited by producing good quality, copy which impacts on the bottom line.
Happy writing.