Brooklands College, Weybridge - 22nd May 2007 - Richard Groom
Exact your audience with the right words
This turned out to be not only a very popular event - one of West Surrey branch's most popular for many years - but also very useful and informative.
Richard Groom presented his talk by way of a number of Tips which he uses (and teaches) in his copywriting work. His first two tips are especially important for us marketers to remember when writing a leaflet, brochure, advert, website or direct marketing material:
- Identify your customers' problems
- And Identify your customers' needs
"People have to know they have a problem, and that you can solve it, or they won't want to buy from you. So by concentrating on their problems in much of your marketing writing, you will get them interested and they'll stick around long enough to read about your solution.”
Richard's third tip was to use mind mapping techniques to overcome writer's block. He described how this very useful technique can successfully be used to "brainstorm " the subject area and take the pressure off writing the first sentence, a problem many of us will have encountered.
Taking unnecessary words from your first draft (the highlighter trick) was the important fourth tip. It is surprising how many unnecessary or superfluous words we often write in our first draft.
Richard then described some useful books in any copywriter's library:
- Two dictionaries
- Roget's Thesaurus
- Fowler's Modern
- English Usage and one other usage guide
- Bill Bryson's "Troublesome Words", and
- a good book of quotations
After briefly describing the horoscope test - at which point will you reader switch off if the subject appears not to apply to them, Richard finished his talk by giving us some special tips for writing websites. Tips include using short headlines, short sentences, short paragraphs, and use a variety of techniques to "break up" the page.
We are currently trying to organise for Richard to come back to CIM West Surrey later this year to build on this presentation through one of his half-day workshops.
By Rosemary Morgan