In my last blog, we talked about the questions your clients ask (either out loud or in their heads) before they will consider buying your product.
Once you’ve brainstormed all those questions, you have to consider the most important questions for the target market.
Copy generally has to be short, and you can never fit everything you want, so you have to leave some stuff out. That’s why you need to know the ‘must have’ pieces of information versus the ‘would be nice to have’ pieces.
Now obviously, the order of importance will vary with the target market but let’s say the product is an educational puppet show for primary school children. The target market is 25-year-old female teachers, a few years out of college who teach grades 1-5.
Out of all the possible things you should include in the brochure, let’s take a punt and say that these are the most important questions (and therefore, that’s the order in which you should address them in your copy):
1. How much will it cost?
2. What grades is it suitable for: 1-3, 5-7?
3. Have the performers been cleared to work with children?
4. How many students can you perform for at any one time?
5. What size space do you need?
6. Is it customised for your school, or is it ‘off the shelf’?
7. Is the show tied to an aspect of the curriculum?
8. Do you travel to regional centres and how much extra would it cost to come to us?
9. Do they have a DVD we can look at?
10. Can parents attend if they want?
When you know the order of what needs to be included, you can work out what needs to be left in and what can be left out.
So, now that you’ve got the order right let’s look at how you can start writing the actual copy.
