Creating content? All the strategizing in the world to reach your target audience will fall flat if recipients can’t follow what you’re saying – or worse yet, if their eyes quickly turn away from the marketing piece you produce. When you’re ready to write – whether a blank page intimidates you or feels like an opportunity to go wild with creativity – image.works has time-tested tips for ensuring your efforts gain traction with your audience.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the expression KISS? In short, do that, but let’s talk about this in more detail…
Content: Choose quality over quantity.
This applies to the number of times you reach out with reminders about the same information, as well as the amount of information you include in one marketing piece. Recipients usually won’t take time to dive into a deep pool of text. Research indicates that 50 – 125 words, along with an image or two, is an ideal length for an email. Most of our newsletter articles are in the range of 350 – 500 words. (Note that one exception is blog length for SEO; Google’s algorithm prefers more content.)
The key is to focus. Stay on topic. If you try to combine multiple promotions or tack on a sidenote about a completely unrelated service or product, you risk cluttering your collateral and losing your audience. Go for brevity and clarity!
White Space: Leave some on the page.
Large blocks of text are not eye-catching. A page drowning in words tends to overwhelm readers. They need breathing room and organization to help them digest content. Consider bullet points, margin size and spacing between paragraphs. If you’re wondering what you can reword to fit more on the page, you probably already have too many words. White space is a design element that can work wonders for the appeal of your marketing pieces. Embrace it!
Text Style: Keep it simple.
If you don’t want your marketing pieces to look like a circus, don’t clown around with too many style options. Minimize your use of bolding, italicizing, underlining and colors – and ensure the size is acceptable.
It makes sense for all headings to have a larger size than – and different color from – the main paragraphs, and the treatment for subheadings follows a similar logic. However, consider that underlining in a digital document signifies a link, not emphasis, and the use of italics is governed by a style guide. (We stick to AP style for the most part at image.works.) An occasional bold word, phrase or sentence in bodies of text can be helpful for emphasizing key points, but overuse subtracts from the impact. While a rainbow of colors might be fun to play with, we’re all more comfortable reading paragraphs of plain, black text.
Never fear! The experts are here.
Keep your next marketing campaign simple for you by turning to us. The expert designers and writers at image.works have been helping clients create high-impact, attractive marketing promotions for more than 20 years. And the proof is in the results! Contact an account representative today to find out more.
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