Writing marketing material is not as easy as it sounds. We read marketing messages all day. So how hard could be to throw up a bill board that says “quality guaranteed” or a print ad that says “complete business solutions”? Well, the fact that those are the first things that come to mind for most of us shows that many companies do not put enough thought into their writing.

In May 2010 Inc Magazine wrote an editorial about just that – the lame way people write for their businesses. And the article gave examples of some out-of-the-box marketing copy. Although those were good examples, they weren’t very helpful to the business owner who just can’t afford to answer in a tone that might offend someone. While it’s memorable, there is a reason businesses chose to stay neutral in their ad copy. But yes, it is boring when they do that.

So how do we find the right balance? Well, there is a way, and it takes skill. It also takes thought, and in many cases, it takes getting feedback, and many revisions. Although your readers might read quickly, something registers when they read your material…and if nothing registers, well that’s a sign you’ve done an extremely bad job at writing for your business.

To give an example of bad copy, a mail card came in today from a company who wanted to explain that they offer more than what people know them most for. So they listed those things they do that no one know they do. But instead of listing how their clients and potential customers would benefit from their unknown services, they simply listed them using sentences like this (We’re changing things up a bit so you don’t know who we’re talking about):

“Did you know ____ is a big honking internet company? That means your customers are using our internet presence to find stuff.”

“We make videos.”

“We guarantee that if you pay us we’ll put you at the top of our listings.”

Uuuuhh, gee, thanks a lot big company that paid tons of money to send me and lots of other people this card. I now have no reason to call you and ask for more information about your services because no where did you specify how I can benefit from them. All you did was talk about yourself and what you do, which by the way is the same thing that lots of other people do, and you never differentiated how you do those things better than your competitors, who have been doing this longer than you have.

But it’s okay, even though we’re not going to buy from company X because of the poor writing job they did, we can’t blame them since we’re all guilty of having made the same mistake at least once before.

Here are three ways you can apply the lesson learned from the mistake above:

1. Since potential clients have probably never experienced using the product or service themselves, the company should have pointed out a statistic that would wow their clients, proving to them that other people do in fact buy from them and don’t regret it.

2. Instead of saying premium services are offered, show how much more likely a customer is to get a return on investment by spending that extra cash on your product or service.

3. Instead of saying you’ve got a new product or service, mention what’s new and different about the way your company does things, or the benefit of buying into your product as opposed to another’s.

Sound simple? It is actually, but tricky. Of course there’s more to this type of skilled writing, but following the above guidelines will help improve your advertising copy by a lot, and will get you started in the right direction.

Author Bio: Queenie Ormidale works at Central Park Business Centre, which has been offering Vancouver office space, administrative services and virtual offices to businesses since 1986. You can republish this article without this last sentence so long as you credit the author with a link to their website at www.executivesuite.ca

Category: Marketing
Keywords: company, marketing, material, writing, business, readers, skill, advertising, copy