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The business world is dogged by terrible writing. Its brochures and websites filled with long vacuous sentences that fail to communicate, inspire or keep readers engaged. The problem is that the business world has grown up with writing that’s focused on the company rather than the reader. They’ve been brainwashed into thinking that using impressive sounding words and phrases is the way business writing should sound. But when people aren’t interested in, or understand, what you have to say, your writing fails it’s core goal: to communicate. 1. It’s too long – A lot of B2B copywriting is flabby. It uses 30 words to say something that could be done in 10 e.g. “After deliberating the upcoming fiscal agenda, the School Council has passed a vote to approve the aforementioned adjustments to next semester’s budgeting proposal” could be changed to “We approved the budget.” 2. Boasts rather than informs – Business writing seems to be more concerned with preening and impressing than telling people why they should buy their product. It drones on about the company’s achievements and how its products surpass expectations, like the boring guest at the party. Nobody likes people that endlessly talk about themselves. The same applies to business writing. It needs to focus on what the reader wants to know, rather than what the company wants to tell them. 3. Bogged down in clichéd claptrap – One of the mistakes B2B copywriter’s often make is it infest their writing with jargon, claptrap and clichés. It uses gobbledegook like ‘best of breed’, ‘blue sky thinking’ and other vacuous terms that don’t really mean anything. These phrases are so overused that people’s eyes glaze over whenever they read them, which means beautifully designed brochures end up gathering dust on people’s desks. 4. Hyped up to the max – You want people to buy your products. You want them to think your products are great. But you’re not going to persuade them if you use over the top language that makes you sound like a snake oil salesman at the fair. People are already cynical of sales writing. Using disingenuous claims and hype is the fast-track way of telling them their cynicism is justified. Copywriting works best when it’s written like a conversation with a friend in a bar or to a neighbour over the garden fence. But too often business writing feels like a conversation with a fax machine, drawling out the same verbiage you’ve heard a million times before. So if you’d like to make your B2B copywriting more readable, credible and effective, take heed of these four symptoms and cleanse them from your writing whenever they occur. ---------------------------------------------- Article provided by The Copywriter’s Crucible – a melting pot of punchy, persuasive copywriting and marketing advice
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