No matter what you’re creating, if it’s marketing related, I will ask you: Is it clear, compelling, and concise?
This has been a mantra of mine for the last 10 years. I discovered the 3C’s while reading a blog by Google about how to design effective display ads.
Back then, display ads were notoriously cluttered with every possible word and image. At the time, I was working for a newspaper group managing digital ad production. The team designed ads, and I ran and reported on the campaigns. Here’s what a common request looked like:
I need the logo at the top and the phone number, website, and street address at the bottom of the ad. On slide one, put “Best in town” with a picture of the building. Slide two, have a picture of the inside with “exceptional customer service.” Slide three show these six products with the name below. On slide four, I want this picture of the owners and text saying, “Come visit us today!”. And have a button that says “Click Here.”
Did you get all that? This is for a banner ad that someone only sees for about 5 seconds (if you’re lucky). What problem are they solving for me? How would I benefit from interacting with this business?
I’m lucky because times have changed. Back then, I trained the sales reps to look at what national brands were doing and always touted “Clear, Compelling, and Concise.”
But it is still relevant today.
What are you working on for your marketing collateral or message? Name it, anything. I will take a wild guess and say you need to ask yourself these questions.
- Is this clearly telling the customer or client what I do to help them solve a problem?
- Is this drawing their attention and giving them a compelling reason to connect with me?
- Is this concise and only provides the necessary information to take the next steps to move forward?
You must make it easy for your customers and clients to understand your goal of presenting this to them. Don’t get caught up trying to give everything to everyone. It will just cause unnecessary confusion. And when you confuse, they move on.
Banner ads are an easy target. But don’t forget about the emails you are writing and the data reports you’re building. The landing pages you are creating or social posts you are sharing. Everything you put out into the wild needs that critical eye and questioning if you’re hitting the mark.
Clear, compelling, and concise.
