You have so much to say about your business! After all, you're passionate about what you do, you've been doing it a long time, and you offer such a wide range of products or services that you can hardly wrap your head around them all. Or maybe those products and services are inherently complex, unusual, or hard to explain to Joe Q. Public. So you end up practically writing a book instead of producing tight, concise marketing content that people might actually want to read and absorb. It's a natural error -- but also a potentially costly one.
Have you ever had the devil's own time trying to machete your way through thousands of words of web or print marketing content? How many minutes (or seconds) did you struggle before simply giving and moving on to a competing company's easier-to-follow material? If your own marketing writing doesn't immediately grab your audience and then ease them into the basic concepts of what you're all about, you might as well just leave that "lorem ipsum" placeholder text on your site instead of creating any content at all. At the same time, however, you've got a lot of information to get across. So let's look at some smart ways to finesse this challenge.
Use more pages or panels. Maybe that five-page website, single-sided onesheet, or trifold brochure doesn't suit the scope of your marketing message. Instead of shoehorning tons of text into a few pages or panels, consider going with a different format. Spread your content out over more web pages, or go with a booklet or media kit instead of a brochure. You may spend more money, but what's the point of investing even a penny in marketing pieces that don't generate business?
Break "mega-blogs into blog series." In my networking group, each member delivers a little 30-second spiel every week about some aspect of their business. Nobody could describe everything they do or want in 30 seconds -- so we don't even try. We're encouraged to share "LCDs," or Little Chunks of Data, during these moments. For instance, one week I might mention my blog writing ser4vice, while the next week I might talk about press release writing. Over time, we slowly educate each other on one chunk of our work after another until we end up with a comprehensive understanding. Well, this technique works for blogging as well. Take that massive topic you were about to tackle in one enormous post and break it down into a series. You'll not only have a more readable result, but you'll have several posts instead of one.
Declutter your vocabulary. All those five-dollar words in your marketing content might make you sound knowledgeable, but they add to the overall length and "weight" of the writing in a way that bog your message down. Make like Hemingway and opt for the simplest, shortest words wherever you reasonably can. Your content won't just feel shorter -- it may actually take up less room on the page or screen. You may even find the content creation process faster and easier.
If you're going to go to the time and trouble of creating marketing content for your business, you might as well do it right. Break down and simplify your content, and you'll probably reap noticeably better results from all that work. Of course, you always have the option of simply handing that work over to a seasoned freelance copywriter like Yours Truly -- so contact me, and let me make the process even simpler for you!
