Fulfilling demand for information

There’s a valuable range of material that goes under the heading of “Further information”. Brochures, positioning papers, data sheets and case studies all fit in well here.

You might use them as the fulfilment to a direct mail piece – if the customer responds to the mailer, they’ll receive more information. Or as a download from a Web site. You can also use them as “leave behinds” after a sales meeting, to keep the customer interested and your details sitting visibly in their office.

By putting together a complete range of this type of material, you can be ready to provide information to decision makers at any level. Board-level customers will be interested in your stability and pedigree and will find the detail in your corporate brochure. Line managers will want to know what benefits your products will bring to their business and their staff, and they’ll learn about that in your product brochures. Business managers will want to see a demonstration of return on investment, and case studies can provide the evidence they need. Technicians will find data sheets and positioning papers of particular interest as they evaluate how your product or service fits in with what they already have and do. In reality many pieces of collateral will interest a wider range of audience, but you get the picture.

To get people to read documents, especially when they’re more than a few paragraphs long, you need to have those documents written well. They need clarity, with a logical flow, meaningful headings, and a strong conclusion, all couched in language that’s pertinent to the reader and devoid of in-house terminology.