Fact Sheet, A Great Tool for Marketing

A fact sheet is a one or two-page document which summarizes the essential information about a product, service or business. It is one of the simplest pieces of writing used in marketing, public relations and corporate communications, to give readers an orientation about a business.

It is an easy-to-skim, compact and concise piece of writing which is aimed at giving the reader all the salient information about the subject under description without taking so much time. It can be adapted for many purposes and is often used as a marketing tool to bolster business development. Besides being easy to read and digest, fact sheets are often designed to have an aesthetic appeal that tends to make good impressions about the organization that published them.

Fact sheets save the reader the time and energy which would have otherwise been spent reading and digesting large amounts of information about a company, product or concept before getting to the crux of the matter. This is because it is usually structured to provide answers to the who, why, when, what, where and how about the subject matter.

Fact sheets can be created for a myriad of purposes including:

• Product or service briefs for sales teams
• Investor intros for startups
• Pitches and teasers for fundraising
• Human resources and executive team briefs
• Business reporting
• Various marketing collaterals
• PR and media relationships

In order for you to pique the interest of your audience, it is always good to set clear objectives for creating a fact sheet. Ensure that every information put out there has a clear relationship with the objectives.

Considering their enormous benefits, many companies include fact sheets in their marketing strategy to succinctly communicate information about their offerings. And this helps them boost engagement with their target market.  Although it sounds far easier than it actually is, creating professional fact sheets require some above-average skills in copyrighting, UX and UI designing.  As a general rule of thumb, if the stakes are high, hire a professional to get the job done for you. But nothing stops you from experimenting with fact sheet development in the meantime. After all practice they say, makes perfect.

To create a great fact sheet, you must have a well-defined purpose or objective in mind. The objective or purpose would determine the structure of the fact sheet you want to create for your business. A Fact Sheet designed for sales or marketing purposes must focus on presenting succinct information about a product or service to pique the audience’s interest and also inform them about all the important features they would need to make a decision about the product. In this case, you have to anticipate likely questions and provide answers to them in your fact sheet. On the other hand, if the fact sheet is for internal reporting, emphasis must be laid on analytics and other relevant metrics of business growth.

To ace the fact sheet content marketing strategy, the following are a must:

• Keep it brief, crisp, concise and direct, it should not be more than one to two pages;
• Make it user-friendly, coherent and attractive by integrating pictures as well as fine designs;
• It must be conversational;
• It must have a call to action;
• Make it readable – use at least 12 point font;
• Keep the most important information in the first paragraph;
• Provide links and other authentic sources for additional information;
• A great Fact Sheet must be self-contained. Don’t make references to a previous document or assume that the audience already has information regarding the product or service;
• Use bullets where you can;
• Leave lots of white spaces;
• Emphasize where you want the audience to direct more attention to. You can highlight them, use block letters, use text boxes, and graphical representations.

It’s time to practice what you have learnt today. Why don’t you give it a go and share your experience with us? We’ll be happy to appraise your efforts and offer further help. Leave your comments in the box below.