|
First impressions count.
From the appearance you cut as you walk into the room, to
the strength of your handshake, people monitor and register
everything, whether consciously or unconsciously. And more
importantly, they start to form judgements.
In marketing terms, it’s often the brochure that is
required to make the first impression. It might be used
to generate leads, as a precursor to sales calls or as a
leave-behind after a meeting. What that means is that just
as it is imperative that your sales staff are making the
right impact when they meet clients, so must your business
brochures impress and engage their readers as soon as they
pick them up. That means they must be clear and focused
and should guide the readers, naturally, through your argument,
or pitch, till they reach the end – and a specific
call to action.
Clarify your objectives
But what is the art
of brochure writing? Firstly, anyone wondering how to write
effective brochure
copy must start
with a clear idea of what they want to articulate: a single,
focused message or proposition. That might be to explain
your company’s unique selling point, to demonstrate
your capabilities to a particular market sector, or to showcase
a key product.
Having identified the
objective, it’s
then time to consider how this will be of interest to your
readers. What
will make the biggest impact on them? If your readers are
financial directors or accountants, then you need to make
sure your message has a clear fiscal element: how will
what you are offering benefit the bottom line for their
organisation?
Consider your audience
A similarly focused
message must be developed for each audience: indeed, it’s
often the case that different marketing brochures should be
produced with different audiences
in mind. Trying to encapsulate all the different target
groups
in the same piece of collateral often leads to confusion,
rather than clarity.
The audience you’re writing for
also has a major impact on the tone and style your brochure
writing should adopt.
Whilst every brochure can make use of effective titles,
subtitles, boxes and bullets to ensure that the copy is readable,
the
kind of language used when talking to the executives of
a large multinational will necessarily be different from that
used when targeting techies.
Equally
important to the choice of language is the type of company
and the perception you want to create: a large financial
institution is unlikely to speak in the same excitable tones
that a marketing company might adopt.
Develop a structure
The next crucial element of effective
brochure copywriting is a powerful structure. The introduction
has to create an
immediate impact, convincing the reader that time taken to
study the brochure will be time well spent. It must illustrate
how the brochure will be relevant to the reader – by
linking in with the kind of issues and challenges that their
organisations might be facing – and also articulate
the central message. Just what is it that your company can
do to improve their business?
After this vital introductory section,
it’s time to
expand on the central message. All the most effective business
brochures do so in a logical, compelling way, that makes
it easy for the reader to follow the argument. That means
not introducing too many points at once, and ensuring that
all potential benefits are linked in to the central message.
Establish a dialogue
Finally, the brochure
has to include a call to action. You’ve
won the reader over: you’ve gained and maintained their
attention. Now they’re interested in your company,
your products, or your services. What do they do next?
Sometimes it can be as simple as “contact us.” Sometimes
you might want to say that you will contact them. Or alternatively,
invite them to find out more by requesting product information
sheets, visiting your website or registering for a seminar.
That way, you can gain a better understanding
of just how effective your brochure is as a marketing
tool – as
well as establishing a dialogue with your readers.
Brochure writing
from Writing Machine
These insights into brochure writing
are all part of Writing Machine’s highly successful
approach to delivering business brochures that make an impression.
With over a decade’s experience
working for the likes of Nortel Networks, Microsoft,
Invest.UK and many other leading
organisations, we not only know how to write effective
brochure copy but our corporate CV proves our ability.
Our in-house team of professional writers is committed to
creating brochure copy with immediate impact: copy, moreover,
that articulates a compelling message with crystal clarity.
|
