Blue Ferret Communications

Way too often I find people minimizing or outright ignoring the writing in their sales processes.  “It’s just writing, anyone can do it.”  “Oh, the product sells itself, we don’t need to write anything about it.”

I don’t see many of those people keeping jobs — or their companies staying in business for long.  Especially nowadays.

The quality of your writing makes a big difference in at least 4 areas of your marketing strategy. These aren’t all the areas writing makes a difference, just the most important.  You’ll see why.  First up, headlines.

1. Headlines

Information is indexed by title.  That’s been the case since we started writing books.  On the Web, and particularly with social networking sites, the same is true.  Email subject lines, webpage headlines/subheads, newsletter article titles…everything out there is sorted by its headline.

Which means your headline is the first thing people see.  95% of the decision to read is made right there.  You might think this means you should do simple headlines in your marketing – but that’s a mistake.  People today are on information overload; they have to pick & choose what to read to stay sane.  This means your headlines must always be INTERESTING and DIRECT.

a) Not Interesting or Direct: “The Latest in LCDs”
b) Interesting and Direct is more like: “How Many of These Mistakes Lurk In Your Company’s Tax Filings?”

Headlines make a difference because they determine whether or not ANYTHING ELSE gets read.

2. Presentations

What you write for a speech determines how much of a connection you make with the audience.  NO successful speech fails to connect.

I’ve given many presentations, to audiences of varying sizes.  Some were off-the-cuff, and they did all right.  But the best ones were the times I used an outline to help me facilitate that connection.  Like the one in front of you.

Even if the audience never sees this outline, it’s there to direct the speaker.  If the writing in the outline isn’t focused, and helps the speaker progress toward his goal, then the speech will fail and be forgotten the moment the audience leaves.

Presentation writing makes a difference because it can make – or break – multiple relationships at once.

3. Website Content

The era of ‘brochure sites’ is over.  Websites that spew out corporate-speak and expect any responses at all are failing.  And they deserve to fail, for one reason: they don’t take into account the audience’s needs.

I’ll keep saying this everywhere I go: If your website content does not answer the questions your market has, it fails.  Visitors nowadays want to DO things on your site instead of staring at it.  They’ll tell you what things if you ask them.  Direct them to these things with your writing.  For example, maybe they have a question about Roth IRAs, but they can’t or don’t want to call.  So they check the site.  Did you answer the question?

A boring website can literally destroy a business.  You can talk endlessly about your good service at a sales meeting…but what happens if the customer checks your site beforehand, and doesn’t see any reasons there to work with you?  Chances are your very best sales pitch won’t sway them if they already have that in their minds.

Website content makes a difference because your audience can see it at ANY TIME in the sales process.  For good, or for bad.

4. Emails (all of them)

Billions of emails are sent each day.  Most, as we all know, are spam.  Some are important, but they fail to convey their message.  Why?  Because they often either:
a) Ramble on,
b) Miss the point,
c) Have poor grammar, or
d) All of the above.

People today have a micro-attention span when it comes to email.  If you want yours read, your email must get straight to the point, and do so clearly.  Besides, both rambling and poor grammar can trigger a spam filter.  Then nobody sees your email.

Email writing makes a difference because just one can hurt OR help your relationships with clients, co-workers, partners, etc.  People have literally become rich, or lost everything, because of 1 email.

What Have We Learned About Good Writing?

All this might seem a little negative.  But it’s meant to show you a little bit about how much power there is in business writing.  In the past you could get away with dull writing, since there were fewer competitors and fewer sales channels.  But now everyone must deal with the Web.  And when it comes that, your writing MUST make a difference.  Because the Web does NOT forgive.