Put your marketing materials through the horoscope test

It's not easy to get people to read your marketing materials right to the end. But if too many people switch off, you have wasted time and money.

Here is a new way to think about your marketing writing. Apply this test to your leaflets, direct mail campaigns, brochures, sales letters and web sites. It works for spoken presentations too.

First the theory:

I noticed that sometimes I read horoscopes to the end, but sometimes I don't get that far. So I thought about why that is and came up with the horoscope test for marketing materials.

Here's a typical horoscope, and some reasons why people might switch off.

So in just three sentences, there are at least six places where large sections of the readership will stop reading. That's fine for horoscopes (although I suspect they try to write them to keep you reading). But it's not fine for marketing materials.

Now apply the theory:

Here's an example. Let's say you are selling IT equipment and your heading is:

'Integrated hardware and software solutions'

That doesn't say what you do, or whom you do it for. Why would anyone read on? How could you show more people that you can help them?

How about:

'The right PC and the right software for small businesses - for less than the big chains charge'

Immediately it gets the message across. Anyone with a small business might keep reading. This is one alternative I thought of - I'm sure there are even better ones.

Apply this test to every sentence in your marketing materials. You know the sort of person you want to read to the end. Will they?

© Peterborough Copywriting Bureau 2005

Want more tips like these every fortnight? Go back to the Marketing Booster page and subscribe.

Back to writing tips menu page