Business writing

Why read this? : We look at why business writing’s such an important skill, and how you get more out of it. Learn its role in brand identity, brand activation and customer experience. We also share key tips on writing for your target audience, and the structure and process of business writing. Read this for ideas on how to boost your business with better business writing.

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The role of writing for marketing

Business writing plays a key role in marketing. Its main uses are in :-

brand identity : Your writing tone of voice brings to life your brand’s essence, values and personality. It defines the words you say, and how you say them, and helps you sound consistent. It helps customers know who your are, and that you’re relevant to them.
brand activation : business writing comes in across what your brand does to talk to customers. For example, in your advertising and on your website. It’s a big part of how you deliver your communication objectives.
customer experience : for customer, your business writing is a big part of who they experience you. You use it to share information and engage customers at key points in their journey.

Writing and brand identity

Our brand identity guide shows how your brand consists of intangible and tangible assets. You make the use of these assets mandatory (rules) or optional (playbook).

Writing plays a key role in each of these. The words you choose and how you say them positions your brand with your target audience. They reinforce what your brand is and what it stands for.

Wha you write in key areas like your packaging, website and advertising brings to life your brand’s essence, your values and your personality.

Your brand’s writing style is called its tone of voice.

Consistent use of tone of voice helps create familiarity. It creates strong associations in the minds of customers. They recognise and remember what you sound like. This helps customers feel like you’re having a face-to-face conversation with them when they read your writing. It’s like your brand’s talking directly to them.

(See our articles on finding your brand’s tone of voice, and making your brand sound right for more on this).

Brand book

As per our brand identity guide, tone of voice goes into your brand book guidelines. This outlines how to write and design for your brand, and how to bring the brand values and personality to life.

It should include examples of Do’s and Don’ts for anyone writing for the brand. These show previous examples which “fit” and are “on brand”, and also what would be rejected. The aim’s to get a consistent writing style in everything the brand does.

For example, how formal or informal should the writing be? Are contractions OK? (e.g. we’ll vs we will) What about specific brand or category terms and names? How they should be used? Be specific.

Setting these tone of voice rules makes sure your brand sounds consistent in all its business writing. You make sure all your brand activation activities meet these guidelines.

Writing and brand activation

Brand activation’s what you do to bring your marketing mix and marketing plan to life. And there’s lots of business writing areas involved in doing that.

The most obvious area is promotion. This is how you communicate your brand. And at heart, writing is clearly about communication.

As per our marketing communication guide, the role of communication and promotions is to move customers though the brand choice funnel.

Your business writing objectives usually relate to specific stages of that funnel.

Trust and awareness

Advertising copy‘s the main business writing tool you use to help build trust and make the customer aware of who you are. It’s about crafting attention grabbing, relevant and credible messages.

You use headlines, slogans and short impactful pieces of writing so customers notice your brand. And you support those with your credentials and origin story to show you’re genuine.

Get this wrong, and you risk losing customers at the first hurdle. There’s many challenges and lots to learn in this area. But get it right, and it gets customers interested in finding out more about you.

Consideration

Once you’ve got their attention, the next business writing job is to persuade customers your brand is worth their consideration. There’s different ways to do this, depending on the target audience and what they need.

For example, you can write educational or entertaining blogs. The marketing benefits of blogging are all about interacting with customers and reinforcing your positioning and brand identity. A good blog experience makes customers more likely to consider your brand.

(See our writing blogs guide and our editing blogs article for more on blogs).

Writing for search

Great blog writing is supported by the adjacent skill of writing for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

First, you do keyword research to understand what customers search for online. Then, you write about those topics to help solve those needs, and to help you show up in search rankings.

There’s a close connection to marketing technology. Tools like Yoast or SEMrush help you improve your chances of your writing showing up on search. Customers have to be able to find your business writing on websites and online stores for it to have an impact.

Trial and loyalty

Finally, your business writing has to persuade customer to try and buy your product. For example, you need your product page copy to persuade the customer to buy in e-Commerce. At this point of the customer journey, it’s all about writing great sales copy.

This also needs to build customer loyalty so you get repeat sales. Your best customers stick with you because they trust you to meet their needs. You drive that loyalty by talking with customers via your CRM activities like e-mails and social media. You use your business writing skills to keep these loyal customers happy and make sure they have a great customer experience.

Writing and customer experience

Customer experience is about looking at each stage of the customer journey and making sure it’s as good as it can be. There’s lots of specific business writing jobs to be done in this area.

For example, the call to action on your advertising copy. The call to action is a clear statement of what you want the customer to do next. Visit your website. Click this link. Visit our store. Contact us.

Great business writing makes this crystal clear. Customers know what they need to do.

Your website‘s a big focus area in customer experience. Great business writing makes it better for visitors.

For example, clearly written privacy policies and terms and conditions pages help customers decide if you’re trustworthy and credible. Well written Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) remove the hassle of having to contact you.

So, we’re now clear on how business writing supports your brand identity, brand activation and improving the customer experience. The next step is to get more into how it helps meet the needs of your target audience.

Writing for your target audience

You have to understand the target audience and what they need to be able to write relevant business writing content. Content that they’ll like and want to read.

For example, are they looking to be entertained? Or to solve an issue or problem? Why would they want to read your writing? The way these types of questions are usually answered is with a customer persona.

This is put together using marketing data taken from market research, and the segmentation, targeting and positioning process. It visually brings to life what the target audience looks like and what they need. It drives the tone of voice and topic choices, so the content’s written with that specific customer in mind.

This makes your business writing more efficient, effective and impactful. It’s clear who the writing’s for, and what it needs to say and do.

The purpose of your business writing

All your business writing should connect back in some way to your brand purpose. You usually spell this out in your brand identity, brand activation and customer experience goals.

For example, does the writing need to make customers think or feel differently about the brand? And if so, how? Is it to build their knowledge, or shift their attitudes? Is it just to get them to do something different? If so, what does that look like?

If you don’t know what your writing is for, then your audience won’t know either. Your customers should be clear what’s in it for them to read your business writing.

Do it right, and you get their time reading your words, and the opportunity to influence their thinking, feelings and actions. There’s an exchange of value in business writing between you and the customer. It’s an example of reciprocity (see our behavioural science article for more on reciprocity) where the more value you offer customers, the more value you they feel obliged to offer in return.

That’s what drives the value in great business writing. The better written it is, the bigger the impact it has on customers.

So, you meet their needs and solve their problems. You leave them with a better opinion of your brand or a clear next step (call to action). And the specifics of those you cover in the communication brief.

The communication brief

Writing a brief helps put structure into the task of business writing. It makes sure everyone’s literally working off the same page.

That brief could be part of a bigger project like new advertising or a website. Or, it could be a specific stand-alone writing project, like a blog or article.

Whatever it is, a clear brief helps make sure your business writing is focussed on the task at hand. That it does what it needs to for the business, brand and customer.

It covers key areas of your brand identity like the essence, values and personality. As we showed above, these influence your tone of voice.

The brief also covers the business, marketing and communication objectives. These set the goals and measures for the writing. These define how you’ll track the change in thinking, feeling or doing. And how you’ll evaluate the impact.

The brief also covers the rationale. The reason why and reason to believe which support the key messages. The key evidence which makes your messages credible and believable.

And finally, the brief sets the project scope. How long the writer has to complete the piece. And the budget for writing it? And who has overall approval of the end result.

From a business writing point of view, there’s a few extra considerations in a writing specific brief. For example, the media context i.e. where and how the writing will be read. It should specify if this limits word count, for example. Or if there are specific guidelines from the media owner to follow.

Word count limits

For example, if the writing’s for a print advert, you’ll have limited space to work with on the page or poster. It’ll need to fit around photography and / or graphic design elements. You may have a minimum and / or a maximum word count. And even if it’s on your own website, you may still have word count limits depending on how your Content Management System (CMS) works.

Spoken video content

If the business writing’s to be spoken as part of video content, then you have to factor in how it sounds when read aloud. (as opposed to written on the page).

Video viewers have short attention spans. Spoken business writing has to be concise, and sound natural. Not stilted or awkward sounding.

You’ll need to keep your words simple and your sentences short so it’s easy for listeners to process each sentence.

You have to think about the rhythm of the words more. How they sound when you say them.

Other touchpoints

Business writing for packaging will also have space limits. Plus, you’ll have to include mandatory legal text about the products. For example, warning statements and contact information. Some categories like food or medicine also make you specify use by dates, ingredients and nutritional information, and allergy information.

You have to make sure the business writing is crystal clear on website pages like your privacy policy and terms and conditions. There can be legal consequences if it isn’t. Great business writing protects your business.

A clear writing purpose helps you define the expected business writing outcome. From there, you next move on to the structure of the writing. How you’ll organise it so the customer follows the path you want them to.

Business writing structure

The start point with writing structure is the 3-step process of writing the beginning, the middle and the end.

So, the first thing the reader sees. The last thing the reader sees. And then everything else you write in-between.

It’s not rocket science. But there is a skill to using each part of the structure well, and joining them all together so your writing flows.

The beginning

The first thing your reader sees is clearly important. It sets the tone and expectations for everything else. It’s what hooks them into the rest of the writing.

In marketing and e-Commerce, it’s particularly challenging. Customers see and hear thousands of advertising and sales messages every day.

Your writing has to stand-out. To cut-through the noise from all the competing writing out there.

If it doesn’t, no-one will ever read it.

In the past, you had 30 seconds to land your message in a TV advert. Nowadays with streaming and on demand, the viewer can skip after the first few seconds if the advert doesn’t grab them.

There’s been a big increase in short 6 second adverts thanks to You Tube. That’s 6 seconds to land your message. If you assume 2 words per second, that means landing your message in 12 words or less. That’s 5 words LESS than the sentence you just read.

Make an impact right away

So, your opening sentence or statement must capture attention. It must make an impact. You must make clear to the customer what they’ll get from reading or listening. Will it inform them how to solve a problem? Will it entertain them, so they have a great experience?

The beginning of your business writing has to be sharp. So, be bold. Be creative. Make it clear what they’re getting. Make it clear why they should read more.

The end

We’ll come back to the middle section, because the end is the next most important part of the writing structure. It’s what the reader will remember afterwards. You want the end of your writing to wrap up your key points with a clear, simple outcome. It should help the reader think, feel or do something different with a clear call to action of what to do next.

For example, if it’s a click or a link to a website, make sure it naturally flows from the end of the writing. If it’s a specific behaviour, then use the end to encourage the reader to do that thing. Great endings in business writing are all about driving the next action.

The middle

Obviously, the ‘middle’ of the writing structure is what links the beginning and the end. We’ve left it till last but don’t undervalue it. It’s important too.

It’s where the biggest quantity of writing in terms of words, ideas and concepts sits. But because of that, it’s also the area where if you don’t get it quite right, there’s less obvious impact. It’s more forgiving of mistakes. Readers rarely give up halfway through. And your good points can make up for minor bad points.

Think about the key points to land in this middle section. It often helps to write an outline. This outline should list the key points in an order which feels natural to the reader. When you do this outline before you write the detail, it gives the middle section a sense of order and logical progression from one point to the next. It stops you writing a rambling series of unconnected points which don’t link back to the goal. Clearly, you don’t want that.

Drafts and editing

Writing is an iterative process. It starts with writing a first draft, which is then reviewed in an editing stage.

This refines the draft and adds improvements to make the writing sharper, clearer and more impactful. There’s lots of comments, questions and feedback. This draft – editing loop usually has several rounds before the writing is approved.

This editing process improves the quality of the writing. It’s a tough and detail-focussed skill. It takes time and focus to work out how to improve the writing. But before that, it all starts with the first draft.

Write your first draft long

Having a clear purpose and brief is a good start to the business writing process. But you still have to start putting words on the page. And that isn’t always easy. It’s not always clear how and where to start.

Sometimes, the words will just flow. Ideas spark in your head from the brief. But other times, there’s the horror of the blank page. The horror of the mental block, and nothing coming to mind.

It doesn’t really matter either way. Because your sole job in the first draft, is just to get something down on paper. Something. Anything. Because here’s a golden rule of writing all good writers know.

First drafts will be rubbish

Yep, the first draft is usually a stinker. Clunky, horrible and full of mistakes. But the second drafts improves it. And subsequent drafts improve it even more. So, whatever the state of the first draft, it doesn’t matter too much. You’ll improve it. And a rubbish first draft is still better than a blank page.

The whole point is editing and re-drafting makes the writing better. There’ll be a sweet spot in terms of the number of drafts where you just can’t make it any better. But to get started, just write something down that’s at least vaguely in the direction of your writing objective.

You’ll often find once you start the first draft, it’s like breaking a dam. You’ll suddenly find words, ideas and concepts pouring out, until you can do no more. And then you’ll read back what you’ve written and realise it’s (a) probably too long and (b) the structure isn’t doing what you need it to do.

And that’s good. Because that’s where editing comes in.

Editing makes your business writing next level

Getting the words on the page is really only the first half of the skill of writing.

Editing those words so they ‘fit’ together properly takes writing to the next level. Well- edited writing flows, inspires and informs. It takes that rubbish first draft and polishes it into something which sparkles on the page.

The aim of editing is to improve writing by correcting, connecting and simplifying.

Correct

At the very basic level, editing lets you go back and correct spelling and grammar mistakes.

You should check all the points make sense and you haven’t contradicted yourself. Anyone who’s written a first draft and then gone back and read it later will recognise these as common quality issues in a first draft.

Connect

Next, editing when you have the full version of the writing, helps you connect pieces together better.

In the first draft, you don’t know for sure what the end will be.

When you edit the first draft into the second draft though, you do know what the end will be. You can refer to what’s coming more easily, or give hints if you want to create a sense of intrigue.

Simplify

And finally, editing helps simplify the writing. Simple is better for the reader.

When you read something, your brain’s in an active state. It takes energy to read. That’s why you rarely read a book from start to end, unless it’s very short. There’s only so much reading your brain can handle in one go. So to make it easier for the reader, the more you cut down your writing, the easier you make it to read.

It’s draining to read long sentences, with fancy words. Shorter sentences and simpler words are easier to process. (see our readability article for more on this).

Editing tips

Whether you edit your own writing or you’re approving writing from an agency, get into the habit of correcting, connecting and simplifying. Simplifying, in particular, is where editors often adds the most value.

When you edit, consider if there’s a simpler word you can use. Can you cut words and still have the same meaning? The shorter and punchier you can write a key message, the better for your reader. That’s not to say you should always aim for short words and sentences. Your brand identity might suit a more verbose and academic style.

But as a general rule of thumb in business writing, shorter is better. And editing is the key skill, which gets you to short and impactful writing. No one will thank you when for using long words and over-elaborate sentences.

Active voice

Try also to write in the active voice rather than the passive voice. It keeps sentences shorter and sounds more confident and dynamic. Your sentence structure should be subject-verb where possible. This is much more readable. Look for variations of “is”, “are” and “were” attached to other verbs. These are often signs of the passive voice. See if you can flip the order round to make it more active.

Kill adverbs appropriately

You should also take care with adverbs. Adverbs are often not needed in business writing. Unless they change the meaning of the verb, try to avoid them. Look for words that end in “ly” and question if they add value to the sentence. If the sentence still means the same without it, kill the adverb. No one will miss it.

This editing skill to go back and take words out can be a challenge. Especially, it you write and then edit your own work. You get attached to the words. They’re your words, your creation. You want to protect them.

It’s always a good idea to get someone else to read your writing and help with the editing. Get a different viewpoint and perspective. Professional editors can be invaluable sources of feedback to raise your writing game. It’s usually what separates average writing from great writing.

Conclusion - Business writing

In this guide, we covered where to use business writing in marketing to grow your brand.

It has many uses across brand identity, brand activation and customer experience. Great business writing attracts and engages audiences. It persuades customers to buy, and to stay loyal to your brand.

We covered why having a clear purpose for the writing helps you to focus the writing process on creating relevant content. And why then having a good structure or outline for your messages helps you take the reader towards that end purpose or goal.

Then finally, we outlined the basic process of writing. Where you start with a first draft you know will need more work. And how editing adds value and improves the quality of your writing. Drafting and editing to make your business writing clear and concise is very important. It’s the difference between writing that rocks and writing that sucks.

You know which of those outcomes you want.

Three-Brains and writing skills

The Three-Brains team know a lot about business writing. We work with businesses to improve writing skills to create more impact with customers. How to get better writing out of freelance writers and marketing agencies, for example. And how to improve the effectiveness and clarity of your own business writing.

Get in touch to learn how our coaching and consulting services can help you raise your business writing game.

Business writing

Business Writing

Ready to test your knowledge?

The role of writing for marketing

Writing and brand identity

Brand book

Writing and brand activation

Trust and awareness

Consideration

Writing for search

Trial and loyalty

Writing and customer experience

Writing for your target audience

The purpose of your business writing

The communication brief

Word count limits

Spoken video content

Other touchpoints

Business writing structure

The beginning

Make an impact right away

The end

The middle

Drafts and editing

Write your first draft long

First drafts will be rubbish

Editing makes your business writing next level

Correct

Connect

Simplify

Editing tips

Active voice

Kill adverbs appropriately

Conclusion - Business writing

Three-Brains and writing skills

Read more articles on writing

Latest Writing blog posts

The 3D benefits of creative thinking

Finding your brand’s tone of voice

Business writing

Business Writing

Ready to test your knowledge?

The role of writing for marketing

Writing and brand identity

Brand book

Writing and brand activation

Trust and awareness

Consideration

Writing for search

Trial and loyalty

Writing and customer experience

Writing for your target audience

The purpose of your business writing

The communication brief

Word count limits

Spoken video content

Other touchpoints

Business writing structure

The beginning

Make an impact right away

The end

The middle

Drafts and editing

Write your first draft long

First drafts will be rubbish

Editing makes your business writing next level

Correct

Connect

Simplify

Editing tips

Active voice

Kill adverbs appropriately

Conclusion - Business writing

Three-Brains and writing skills

Read more articles on writing

Latest Writing blog posts

The 3D benefits of creative thinking

Tone of voice examples – making your brand sound right

Finding your brand’s tone of voice