Business 101: Holiday Marketing Brush-up – 10 Ways to Clean Up Your Marketing Copy

When was the last time you reviewed your marketing copy? If it’s been a while since you last breezed through it, now is the perfect time to review and refresh for 2011!

10 Ways to Clean Up your Marketing Copy (A Checklist):

#1: Check Messaging – Chances are your company has evolved and so should your messaging. Perhaps you realized that being the lowest price on the block didn’t work with your high value, high service culture.

Check your core messaging and adjust to reflect your current positioning. Often it doesn’t require an entire rewrite – just a thorough edit.

#2: Verify Market Conditions – Does your positioning relative to the current industry trends and/or market conditions reflect the actual current conditions?

If you help companies manage exponential growth, that may change drastically during a recession, for example. Instead of managing growth, shift your copy to focus more on mitigating risk or preparing for the next upswing.

#3: Update Language – Does the hip and trendy lingo referencing the “World Wide Web” sound outdated and old fashioned? Unless you are going for retro sarcasm, the old-fashioned lingo just makes you sound out of touch.

Update the language to reflect the most commonly used (plain language) terminology.

#4: Check References – Do you use any statistics or independent studies to back-up your claim? Chances are that astounding factoid from 2003 is a little less amazing nearly 8 years later!

Review your studies and sources for updated statistics and industry projections. Even if you don’t reference the date, outdated references may no longer be accurate.

#5: Update Product and Service Offerings – Did you expand to include any new products or services that you just haven’t had a chance to add into the marketing yet? Now is the time!

Add any new products and services and delete any that you no longer offer or are working on phasing out with the exception of past clients.

#6: Review Testimonials – Does your marketing copy include testimonials? Confirm the company name hasn’t changed, the person giving it still works there and that what they say about you still fits.

Consider replacing your testimonials with new ones your company has likely outgrown the old ones anyhow.

#7: Check Links – Does your marketing copy include any links to other sites, such as links back to media coverage or client case studies? Take a few minutes to click through your outbound links to check for outdated or broken links.

#8: Update FAQs – Do your Frequently Asked Questions reflect the actual questions you get from potential customers? Often the FAQ page is written when a product or service is first launched and it’s the best guess at what the commonly asked questions will be.

Take a moment to review the questions and compare to the actual questions you hear again and again from potential customers.

#9: Review Team Profiles – Do your team profiles look more like high school yearbook cutouts? It’s time for a new photo and profile (or at least an updated version).

Check for title changes, update role descriptions, share new key accomplishments and update levels of experience.

#10: Ditch the Dull – If you haven’t just plain done a refresh on your copy in a few years, it’s time to update it, even if everything is technically accurate. Because you find it dull and stale, your potential customers will too!