Whether you’re an entrepreneur or corporate professional, you need to persuade people with your writing. Even if it’s enrolling folks to come to a meeting or assist in a project, you are writing sales copy.
Working recently with a client on her marketing materials, I said I didn’t understand what she provided her clients. She said she purposely made the description of her services nebulous as she didn’t want to give them too much information. She wanted to make the write-ups intriguing and have the reader asking for more details.
I said, “Intriguing is good. Confusion isn’t. These are confusing.”
I reminded her of the old adage, “A confused mind says no.” And confused minds often just move on. They don’t engage to get more info.
In your quest to write intriguing marketing materials, are you leaving your readers scratching their heads? Instead, you want them nodding their heads, saying, “Yes, I need this” and “How can I get this ASAP?”
It’s common for people to want to get clever and cute when describing what they do. But it’s more lucrative to just tell them clearly, spelling out the benefits to them. Start there. Then you can see if you can add cleverness. But never sacrifice clarity and persuasion for clever.
We rewrote her materials to be much more benefit-oriented and engage the reader directly. She’s thrilled with the shift. We’ll see if it increases her sales — but we’re both pretty sure it will.