Beware of Three Syntax Sins when Writing Business Proposals

Beware of Three Syntax Sins when Writing Business Proposals Sometimes the writing voice that speaks with confidence in your mind can trick you. Internally, you sound powerful, in control, and impressive. On paper, however, it can be a very different story. Poor syntax takes the confident writing voices in our heads and garbles it into an ineffective, hesitant sounding mush. We might not realize it because, frankly, we are used to seeing poor syntax in business writing. So the weak, timid-voiced writing passes through our proofreading radar unnoticed. Beware of the following three deadly sins of poor syntax when writing business proposals. If you eliminate these problems, your proposal will shine with confidence. 1. Refine Your Clarity Don't write with passivity. The passive voice likes to place the center of your sentence's action the subject that's doing the verb at the end of the sentence: i.e. "The sales numbers were calculated by John," which should be "John calculated the sales numbers." Here's a quick fix: if you scan your proposal for any use of the word "by," you will catch many of your passive sentences. The passive voice does have its uses, however. Its mild, cool-headed rhythm can be useful for conveying a business-like tone. But do not use it in excess. Strip your sentences of adverbs those little words we like to sprinkle into sentences to amplify our verbs and adjectives. It's amazing how clean, crisp, and powerful a sentence becomes when you strip the adverbs from it. Good novelists discovered this trick ages ago. However, you don't need a long list of adverbs to do this syntax cleanse. Just scan your manuscript for the most common offenders: the word "very" and any word that ends with "-ly" and remove it from the proposal. Your sentences will drop their excess weight and fly. Example: Before adverbs removed: Our CEO very happily confirmed that the incredibly effective new product line has attracted amazingly quick responses from very influential investors in a highly competitive market. After adverbs removed: Our CEO confirmed that the effective new product line has attracted immediate responses from influential investors in a competitive market. Of course, adverbs do have their purpose. Sometimes they help with tone and the rhythm of a sentence. But use them judiciously. 2. Drop the Jargon Using jargon creates a sense of insecurity. It's also annoying and distracting. What is jargon, exactly? It's the language of the business cultures we inhabit. Have you ever been asked what the primarytakeaway was from the meeting, instead of, "What did you take away from that meeting?" That's a classic example of jargon turning verbs into nouns. But jargon also turns nouns into verbs called "verbing." About Educationpublishing an article about verbing, and it used a dialogue from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon to make its point: Calvin: I like to verb words. Hobbes: What? Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when "access" was a thing? Now it's something you do. It got verbed. . . . Verbing weirds language. Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. That's exactly what jargon does; it turns language into a barrier for understanding. The solution is simple: look for unconventional language or insider's terms specific to your work culture and replace them with plain, clear language. Jargon steals some of the professional sheen from your proposal. And, your proposal will be misunderstood if the client doesn't speak the same jargon. 3. Use Correct Terms: Avoid Lazy Proofreading Triple-proof your text to ensure you used the correct terms specific to your client's work. Incorrect terms, even if from human error, make you appear ignorant. Your reader will not trust you if you're misusing technical language and terminology. Do the extra work of checking your sources and brushing up on the proper terminology for the subject. Sometimes simple writing fatigue causes these errors. Try to avoid rush jobs that depend on late night proofreading. If you know the job will require an all night work session, try to schedule time the next day to do more proofreading when you have fresh eyes. When you are very familiar with a document, it's always best to let a day lapse before you proofread. Your eye becomes so accustomed to the document that it becomes very easy to miss an error. Our onlinebusiness proposal writing course will help you avoid these three deadly sins of bad syntax and fill your proposals with a powerful, effective, and confident voice.

How To Plan The Best New Product Launch Marketing Campaign

How To Plan The Best New Product Launch Marketing Campaign New product launch marketing campaigns. One of the most intimidating things a marketing professional and their team  can be tasked with. Basically, the weight of the entire world is on your shoulders, or so it feels like 80% of new products fail. Let’s make sure yours doesn’t! Your company has been working their butts off for months on this amazing widget and it’s up to you to make sure that the product, service, or whatever you may be launching has enough hype (and actually sells). Whether you’ve done multiple new product launches or if this is your first time, you’ll learn a few new things about product launches in this post. We’ve included detailed steps to successfully launch a new product launch marketing campaign and the most memorable examples that you can learn from. Get ready to rock your next new product launch. 🚀 80% of new products fail. Learn how to plan the best #productlaunch #campaign of all time withHow To Plan The Best Product Launch Marketing Campaign Before diving into how to plan a great product launch marketing campaign, download this marketing plan timeline template. It will help you strategically plan your new product launch so you know exactly what needs to be done and when. Be Brave and Push Boundaries Easier said than done, right? If Apple can do it, can’t we all? The answer is yes. Your product may not change the world, but it is going to be life changing  to your customers, and you need to position it that way. Marketers, listen up. If you aren’t involved in the product ideation process, that needs to change. You know your target audience’s needs just as well as anyone else at your company, if not better. Get involved in the ideation meetings to help your company launch the absolute best products for your customers. Be bold with your product launches. Launch something your competitors haven’t because if you don’t push boundaries, you aren’t going to grow. Simple as that. Once you have a bomb product to launch, your product launch marketing campaign will speak for itself. Make Your Launch Campaign Emotional Emotions drive purchasing behaviors and decision making. Throwing facts at your target audience about your new product isn’t enough to make people buy and spark up emotion. If it was, we would all be rich. No matter what your product or service is, this step is applicable to you. Whether you’re selling a slinky or migraine medication, your product can be tied to an emotion. A slinky is a much more light-hearted and fun product, while migraine medication takes away pain, resulting in happiness. The point is that both products cause some type of emotion. Keep in mind that people purchase products to solve a problem. These problems that they have are frustrating, inconvenient, and annoying. Even if they are just bored because they don’t have a fun slinky to play with. 😉 If your marketing campaign shows them how your new product can make that feeling go away, that’s where the money’s at. Build Hype for Your Product Launch Remember when Universal announced The Wizarding World of Harry Potter? Can you imagine how many people planned their vacations to Florida as soon as the announcement came out? Or the number of days that people dreamed of going there before it even opened? That, my friend, is called hype. Now, you may not be launching something comparable to Harry Potter World, but your product is awesome and valuable, and your target audience needs to be excited about it. It’s your job to make them excited! There’s something about not knowing all of the facts and details that make people want to know even more. Make sure to build up the well-deserved hype for your product and make people anticipate the arrival of it. Recommended Reading: Everything You Need To Know  About Your Creative Strategy To be able to successfully hype up your new product the way it deserves, you need to have a plan. Plan Your Product Launch Marketing Campaign Your company has been working on this new product for months or maybe even years, so why would you wait until the last minute to plan your marketing campaign? If you want your new product launch marketing campaign to succeed, you should start planning two to three months in advance (at least). A rushed campaign won’t give your new product the attention it deserves. To pull this thing off, you need a solid plan and a tool to help you implement that plan. ’s Marketing Campaigns  is the best way to consolidate all of your marketing campaign needs in one centralized location. You can†¦ Plan your entire marketing roadmap Maximize your team’s resources from one place Monitor progress and make quick adjustments Measure the success of your campaign with reports Sound too good to be true? Here’s how it works! Manage All Your Marketing Campaigns with To start, create a project in and select Marketing Campaign. From there, give your project a title and select your beginning and end dates. You’ll be able to plan every marketing element that you want included in your new product launch campaign, and you’ll want to exhaust every channel, so this campaign is going to be big. You’ll need emails to ads to social media to webinars (and so much more)... Don’t worry, has got you covered. Once you’ve added your start and end dates to the project, you’ll see the campaign’s timeline illustrated on the calendar in . Next, you’ll start adding individual marketing tactics to your project. Either hit the + sign on a date on the calendar†¦OR †¦click the tab at the top of your marketing campaign. This will prompt you to add a project to your campaign. You’ll for sure want to create ads for your new product launch, so let’s add the ad project type. From there you can†¦ Assign tasks and due dates for your team members. Get approvals on things like imaging and copy. Add attachments and make comments. Have full visibility into every task, project and campaign your team is working on. After you’ve added all of your individual projects to your marketing campaign, you can see what your timelines look like and how they fit into the entire strategy. is the best (and easiest) the only marketing suite that helps you organize all of your marketing in one place. It’s organized, effective, and versatile. If you want to simplify your processes and plan successful campaigns, schedule a demo of . Take Pre-Orders for Your New Product Pre-orders may not be relevant to your product and if they aren’t, scroll right down to step 6. But if they are relevant, listen up. Pre-order sales can make up to 23%  or more of your total revenue for your new product. That is almost a fourth of your entire sales, sales that you could miss out on. [Tweet â€Å"Pre-order sales can make up to 23% of your total revenue for your new product. #marketingstrategy†] I know for a fact that I’ve pre-ordered something because I don’t want to risk the chance of it running out when it goes live. Loyal customers trust your company so much that when you launch a new product and build up so much hype around it, that’s enough for them to hit purchase. So make sure you implement a solid pre-order purchase well before your product launches. Use Influencers to Build Hype As social media grows, the use of influencers is growing right beside it. I think we can all admit that we’ve bought something recommended on a social platform, I know I have. To find influencers that are a good fit for your product, you’ll have to do a lot of research. When choosing influencers to work with, there are four main traits  you want to look at: Niche Reach Engagement Reputation You need to find an influencer with a similar following to your target audience, which you can gauge by the type of products and information the influencer is currently sharing. While reach is important, it isn’t the only thing you should look at. Just because it looks like someone has a lot of followers and a large reach, doesn’t mean that they have quality followers. The engagement that they are getting on their posts and content will show you if their followers have real connections with the influencer. Real connections = $$$. Lastly, check out their reputation. If you decide to work with this person, customers are going to associate your product with them. Make sure they are honest, trustworthy, and respectable so that they can represent your product well. You can start using influencers in the early stages of your product. Let them test it out, give feedback, and become familiar enough with your product so that they can honestly recommend it. Also, make sure that they are involved in the campaign before pre-orders so they can help build up that hype. Alrighty, marketers. You officially know how to plan a successful new product launch campaign. If you want some inspiration to get you started, we’ve put together a list of ten successful examples and key takeaways from their campaigns.