When I got sick as a kid, my mother used to put me on the BRAT diet: nothing but Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and Toast until I felt better. The foods were easy to digest and let my body spend its energy on healing rather than on breaking down food to get at nutrients.
Like a sick child, your clients don’t have energy to spare on your marketing copy. In order to help them get at the essential nuggets of information you want to communicate, follow the marketing copy BRAT diet: Bullets, bRevity, Audience, Target.
Break It Out with Bullets & Lists
Breaking out content into bulleted or numbered lists improves marketing content by:
- Letting clients scan for important information.
- Keeping the page neat, with plenty of white space.
- Breaking complex ideas into manageable portions.
When listing, be sure to follow parallel structure, which dictates that all list items must be the same part of speech (e.g. all gerunds, as above).
Aim for Brevity
It’s easy to ramble on, especially about a product or event that’s exciting for you. But rambling copy loses energy quickly, which causes readers to lose interest. Stick with predominately short sentences, and aim to vary the rhythms of your writing. One-word sentences and sentence fragments can add punch and emphasis if they’re sprinkled among crisp, complete sentences. Sparingly.
Remember Your Audience
Keep in mind that you’re writing to someone other than yourself. This can affect your word choice (particularly if you’re dealing with jargon or lingo your clients might not know yet), your organization, and your tone.
Help your readers stay organized by using subheadings and short paragraphs. You might be willing to sift through a lengthy treatise on your products or services, but your clients will quickly become frustrated with content that lacks pith.
Focus on Your Target
Marketing copy should be tightly focused. If you want to address many facets of a single issue, consider breaking them into a series of linked pages. Or try visual organizers that allow readers to view one section of a page at a time.
Keep in mind that the goal of your marketing copy is not to make a prospect think, “Wow, what excellent web copy this is!” In fact, good web copy should completely disappear into its message. In other words, it should be so easy to digest that prospects don’t realize they’re digesting it at all—they’re just getting the message you want to send.
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