Clear business content writing and copy for your organisation
MARKETING ASSETS
website content, SEO web copy
sales brochures, sales letter copy
blog articles, video scripts
direct sales letters, product brochures, service guides, sales pamphlets, tag lines
e-newsletter campaigns, social media content, branding messages, product explainers
video scripts, radio & audio advertising, motion graphics copy and more…
INFORMATION ASSETS
white papers, discussion papers
case studies, industry articles
fact sheets, pillar pages
help guides, FAQs, infographics, product manuals
long-form website pages, cornerstone SEO content, ‘how to’ articles and more…
MEDIA & PR ASSETS
media releases, news articles
thought leadership articles
company profiles, mission statements
press releases, boilerplate statements
magazine & newspaper articles, advertorials
opinion pieces, brand stories, customer stories
company profiles, professional & personal profiles
manifestos, vision & values statements and more…
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Albert Einstein
Why hire a copywriter or content writer?
Got a tricky topic to explain? Not sure what to do next?
Business content writing is hard. So before you do anything, it’s essential to express your topic ‘in words’ first. Your carefully crafted words define your content’s initial foundation, no matter what form your final communication takes.
Importantly, clear writing leads to an effective piece of communication that:
Generates awareness of your topic and deepens your reader’s thinking
Improves your audience’s understanding of your subject
Educates your audience to help them make better decisions
Connects your reader to the relevant advice or solution they seek
Sincere and direct business content writing, that resonates with your target market, enriches customer relationships and improves outcomes.
If this sounds useful, let’s talk about your business communication goals today.
Need help with your next content writing project?
Download your free planning guide & worksheet today!
‘How To Organise Your Content: The Essential Guide to Planning Your Next Business Writing Project’
This short guide is designed to help you start writing a new business communication. Whether it’s producing a resource for your marketing, media or customer education activities, the fundamental steps to plan a business content writing project are the same. Plus, after you’ve scoped your first project, you can reuse this information to write future resources; saving you time and money.
Or read the complete 5-step guide now.
Table of Contents
Step 1: Define your writing project
The first step in creating your business content is to determine what type of physical resource you require. You may want to write a white paper, a media release, an industry report or a new section on your website.
Equally important is to clarify why you need this resource. A greater goal drives your company’s decision to invest in a new resource. What’s that goal?
Of course, for any business, ‘making money’ is vital for growth, so a resource to attract new customers and increase sales is an easy answer.
However, creating content that grows your business in other profitable ways – e.g., nurturing existing customers, creating strategic opportunities, promoting a new product, expanding the customer service skills of your sales team, and so on – may be the real reason.
Perhaps you’ve discovered a gap in your customer’s knowledge that’s preventing them from buying your product or service? Or your latest offering needs more website customers to expand your online sales? Or your newsworthy story needs to reach a local audience in your community newspaper? Several objectives for your writing project may exist; however, one will stand out.
Knowing what you want to create, and why, will lay the groundwork for your writing project as well as help you track the results.
- The physical resource will be:
e.g., a 16-page whitepaper, a 5-page website, a 2-minute video script
- We want this resource to:
e.g., educate new prospects, engage existing customers, generate referrals
Step 2: Define your target audience
The next step is to determine who you want to influence and impact through your written communication. A clear understanding of your ideal client is vital to writing a persuasive or compelling business communication.
Some initial details to know about your intended audience will include:
- What age are they?
- What gender are they?
- How much do they earn?
- What level of education do they have?
- Where do they live?
- Is English their first language?
This information gives your writer a necessary representation of your target market. It hints at your reader’s possible social connections, daily responsibilities, buying power, technology skills and preferred communication methods.
But this information is also superficial. It can foster assumptions about your ideal customer.
Therefore, it’s essential to delve deeper into the character of your target consumer; to better understand their values, beliefs, attitudes, interests and motivations. Who are they? How do they live their life? What’s important to them?
Of course, some personality details won’t be relevant to your business or marketing communication. But here’s a handful of useful questions to help you discover what may motivate your target audience to engage with your topic:
- What do they value and what interests them?
- What activities do they spend time on?
- What is their attitude towards, or opinion of, your topic?
- What challenges are they experiencing?
- What are their needs and motivations?
Lastly, if you struggle to define your target market, you could leverage your current customers and learn how they think. Ask your customer service team what feedback and questions they receive. Conduct interviews or survey your customers to find out what makes them tick.
- The target audience has the following attributes:
Age:
Gender:
Earnings:
Education:
Location:
Language: - On the topic, the target audience has the following:
Values and interests:
Activities:
Attitudes and opinions:
Challenges:
Needs and motivations:
Step 3: Define your topic
Before any real writing begins, it’s beneficial to outline the key concepts and main points you wish to address in your business or marketing communication.
Briefing your writer with a clear topic and core ideas will give them an excellent springboard to research your subject discerningly and achieve a communication that meets your expectations.
Alternatively, if you can’t define the key concepts, find a subject matter expert in your organisation for your writer to interview. Direct access to a reliable source of company-approved information will help the writer start quickly and work effectively.
To determine the content of your communication before you engage a writer, consider the following questions:
- For marketing communications — What are the most important features and benefits of your product or service in the eyes of your target consumer? How will your product or service improve their life?
- For informational communications — What are the most critical issues and concepts you want your target audience to understand? With this information, how will their life be changed?
- For all communications — What’s the ‘take-home’ message you want your target audience to remember after reading the communication? This message isn’t a polished mission statement or a catchy tagline. It’s merely a guiding statement your writer will use to establish the focus of the communication.
- The communication project needs to address these:
Features:
Benefits:
Issues:
Concepts:
- The ‘take-home’ message is:
Step 4: Define your reader’s next step
For business communications that seek to engage a target market, it’s paramount to define your reader’s next steps. In short, you should help them to continue what you inspired them to start.
Depending on the communication you’re creating, and the objectives you want to achieve, this ‘call to action’ or CTA can differ.
In fact, CTAs can range from a simple ‘visit our website for more information’ to a detailed ‘fill out our new puppy survey today to find the perfect dog bed for your precious pooch’.
The ideal CTA tells your reader what action they should take and motivates them to do so.
When you provide your writer with the type of action you want the reader to take, they will craft a compelling CTA that complements the communication and inspires your target audience to act.
- The basic action we want the reader to take is:
Step 5: Define your project’s success
Your organisation needs to justify the investment of time and money required to create the business content. Therefore, before you commence your business content writing project, a final consideration is to determine how you’ll measure its success.
For instance, you could aim to achieve a specific number of new customers, leads, transactions or enquiries within a defined timeframe.
Success measures are generally tangible, such as website visitors, document downloads, online registrations, email opens, event attendees, likes, follows and so on.
The communication’s call to action (CTA) is also a useful way to assess and drive success.
A carefully crafted CTA – that doubles as a trackable event to monitor your audience engagement – is ideal. For example, inspire your reader to click on a unique weblink that your company can trace and identify how many people have taken the specified action.
Understandably, success will look different to different types of organisations. Sometimes you seek a change in behaviour or perception, and that’s difficult to measure. Therefore, deciding upfront what result you need is the key to validating the success of your communication. Without this information, you’re wasting an opportunity to improve your efforts next time.
- We want this communication to achieve:
e.g., 100 new website visitors per day, 5 new enquiries per week, 50 repeat customers per month …
Final remarks & instant downloads
In closing, the five steps described in this guide will help you plan and launch your next business content writing project with ease.
Alternatively, the same information can be compiled by your company to effectively brief a professional copywriter or content writer, who’ll undertake the project on your behalf.
Good luck in planning and producing your business resource. I’m available to discuss your project and support your writing needs. If you have any questions or comments, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you!
