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Why Your Marketing Brochure Sucks

Many brochures are awful—and yours might be one of them.

As far as marketing materials go, brochures pack a lot of bang for their buck.

Marketing brochures are cheap to produce and easy to hand out to potential customers, and you can fill them with whatever information you wish.

However, just because they seem easy to produce doesn’t mean that all brochures are equally effective.

In fact, many brochures are awful—and yours might be one of them. If you’re not getting the results you’re looking for or your ROI on marketing is low, it may be time to admit that your brochure sucks. Continue reading “Why Your Marketing Brochure Sucks”

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7 Tips for Nailing Your RFP Response (And Winning the Project)

Make sure your RFP response is the best it can be. (Photo: Kirill Kedrinski)

Requests for proposals (RFPs) are common in the corporate and nonprofit worlds. When organizations need help with a project, they often write RFPs and send them out to get a wide range of proposals and bids.

Winning the project can be very competitive, which can make responding to an RFP a little intimidating—especially if you’ve never written a response to one before.

Here are seven tips to help you through the process. Continue reading “7 Tips for Nailing Your RFP Response (And Winning the Project)”

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7 Steps to Writing an RFP That Gets High-Quality Responses

A request for proposal (RFP) is exactly what it sounds like—you submit an RFP to vendors and ask them to submit a bid and detailed proposal before you decide which one wins your project.

The competitive nature of the process helps ensure you’re working with qualified vendors who aren’t overcharging.

Even though the concept of RFPs is simple, they can be challenging to write. Read the following tips to make sure you’re going through the right process. Continue reading “7 Steps to Writing an RFP That Gets High-Quality Responses”

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Why Style Guides Matter in Business Writing

Pick a style guide, any style guide.

You have a sense of style with your wardrobe. You have a sense of style with your home furnishings. You may have even created a sense of style with your car.

But what about with your writing?

Do you use the first person in some articles and third person in others? Do you spell out state names sometimes and other times abbreviate them?

To be an effective business writer, you need to have a consistent style.

The best way to achieve consistency is by following a style guide or a style manual.

Two of the best-known style guides are The Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style. Many publishers use one of these books as a guide for language use, such as spelling, abbreviations, and punctuation. They’ll then add their own style preferences that are particular to their own organization.

Copy editors are tasked with reading and editing copy that is in keeping with that house style. Continue reading “Why Style Guides Matter in Business Writing”