Marketing Writing – Gather Your Resources Before You Rewrite Your Business Materials

When you’ve been in business for a while you find that it’s time to rewrite your business materials. You get tired of being embarrassed and apologetic when you hand out your marketing collateral. You don’t like sending a prospect to your website, and starting off by stammering about how the site is out of date. You’re tired of how that makes you feel unprofessional. You’re ready to start the process of rewriting. Here are some ideas to get to help you prepare for your task.

1) Start to collect a file of ideas. What changes do you want to make? What additions do you need to make? What is new and different about your business that you want to reflect in your written materials? How are you changing your business positioning? What new markets are you pursuing? What is lacking in your materials that currently forces you to have to explain too much when you respond to requests for more information?

2) Collect ideas of materials you like. Make notes about the specifics of what you like about them. Is it the colors, design, or words? Be able to explain what you want to use in you own materials. Drop these into a file so you know where they are when you’re ready to get serious about your rewrite.

3) Get clear on exactly what marketing pieces you need and how they fit together. Think of this as creating a system where you have a marketing piece for all phases of prospect readiness: first – a general information overview, then – more information, next – complete in-depth information. Be sure that you have this systematized information ready on all aspects of your business. If you offer different services, have materials for each service.

4) Take the time to define and refine your target market. Get help with this if you need it. What problems do prospects want to solve? What are the specifics of their issues? How do they suffer or worry or because of the problem? How does the problem affect their life? What words and phrases have prospects used to describe these troubles?

5) Think about those things you apologize for when using your current marketing materials. How do you need to fix that? What must you put in place so that you can feel confident and proud providing your marketing materials?

6) Are you aiming for a new target market? How do your current materials need to changing to reflect the new market? Is this additional marketing added to your old marketing or is it a switch from an old market to a new one? How do your materials need to be different to reflect your market changes? If you’ve been working with this new market already, you’ve probably been mentally “writing” the new materials through what you’ve already been saying to the new type of clients. Get this down on paper.

7) Think about the things that worked and didn’t work with your existing materials. Did you print up large quantities and never distributed them because the business changed? This is very common. If it’s happened to you, what lessons did you draw from that? Did you have the materials printed prematurely before your concepts had jelled and were final? Did you fail to test enough before you had the printing done? Did your business change form after the printing was done? What mistakes do you want to avoid?

8) Write down all your ideas and organize them logically into a list. You may realize that there are unanswered questions you must research. Put those questions on the list. Write down all your ideas for any resources where you can either learn or get advice. This list will become your “command center” for your rewrite. Make sure it’s compete.

Prepare to rewrite your business materials efficiently and thoroughly. You’ll be delighted at the results you will get from your business writing when you take time to gather your resources before you start.

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Marketing Writing – Gather Your Resources Before You Rewrite Your Business Materials

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