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Five quick tips to hone your next financial copy brief…
Successful finance brands have an advantage: a (hopefully) good pedigree to support the launch of new products. But for new market entrants, the position is different: it’s all about winning belief and trust right from the start. My financial copywriting experience over the years spans both these scenarios.
If you’re preparing to hire or brief a financial copywriter, these five quick tips will help to get the best results.
1) Think about tone: who is the voice of your brand? A ‘trusted colleague’? A ‘friend’ or ‘mate’? A ‘helpful stranger’? Talk this though as part of the brief. If you’re looking for a new approach, a quick pen portrait of your prospect segments will help shape the brand’s tone of voice.
2) Be smart about compliance: discuss key FSA compliance issues at the outset, but don’t over-obsess with detail too early. Wait. Give your writer the chance to develop a flowing platform, then involve them in the legal fine-tuning alongside your team. You’ll get a far more polished result that still ticks all the regulatory boxes.
3) Insist on clarity: of course financial products can be complex. But sales copy can still be succinct, precise and clear. Has your writer really distilled out what a customer most needs to know?
4) Talk to - not at - prospects: be careful your pitch doesn’t become an intellectual cudgel. You’ll garner far more attention if copy creates empathy: “In fact, most people don’t even realise that…”
5) Check a writer’s copy samples: not just in finance, but for other sectors too. Good finance copywriters offer wide commercial experience. My folio includes retail and IFA copy for pensions, mortgages, insurance, Foreign Exchange, lending and savings/investments (ISAs). But it also includes work for major automotive, hotel, food and technology brands – to name but a few.
... I'm going to be talking to several people to find out precisely what they find confusing, giving them some clear guidance about what they should be thinking about faced with their own mortgage situation. Our first co-buyers are Suzy and Georgina...